The Russ Meyer Tribute Nobody Asked For
There’s a fine line between homage and humiliation. Pervert! (2005), directed by Jonathan Yudis, claims to be a loving tribute to the trash-art sexploitation films of Russ Meyer. What it ends up being is like watching someone attempt to paint the Mona Lisa with ketchup packets and a mop: messy, sticky, and more embarrassing than enlightening.
This is not a movie. This is a fever dream you’d have after binge-watching Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! while drunk on bottom-shelf tequila and suffering from food poisoning.
The Plot (If You Can Call It That)
Here’s the gist: James, a college kid from New Orleans, shows up at his father’s desert ranch. Dad Hezekiah is an old coot who makes female body sculptures out of meat (because nothing says “dad’s hobby” like carving ladies out of flank steak). Stepmom Cheryl immediately tries to seduce James, because the family tree here is less a tree and more a tangled tumbleweed of bad decisions.
James hooks up with Cheryl, they get caught, she storms off, then promptly drops dead. Dad shows up crying over another woman’s corpse. A nurse arrives, handcuffs dad to the bed, then starts having sex with James because in this universe, grief is apparently the strongest aphrodisiac.
Oh, and James? His penis detaches itself and murders people. Yes. That is the actual plot point. A voodoo witch doctor cursed him, and now his penis is basically a homicidal boomerang. Imagine Christine but with genitalia instead of a car.
There’s also a sexually confused mechanic subplot, because the director apparently thought “you know what this circus of dismembered body parts and necrophilia jokes needs? A homoerotic B-story with carburetors.”
The Characters: Meat Puppets with Dialogue
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James (Sean Andrews): A hero so bland that his detachable penis has more personality than he does.
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Hezekiah (Darrell Sandeen): An elderly rancher who makes meat sculptures of women. He looks like he wandered out of a barbecue pit and into a porno set.
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Cheryl (Mary Carey): The horny stepmother who sets the “tone” of the film by immediately trying to sleep with her stepson. Subtlety dies here.
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Patty (Juliette Clarke): A nurse who handcuffs dad and then decides, “Screw it, let’s bone the son.”
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The Mechanic (Jonathan Yudis): The director’s self-insert as a sexually confused man delaying car repairs so he can seduce James. Somewhere, Russ Meyer is rolling in his grave and muttering, “Not like this, kid. Not like this.”
The Penis Problem
Movies have given us some strange killers: possessed dolls, demon clowns, evil videotapes. Pervert! asks the bold question: “What if the murderer was a detachable penis?”
Here’s the problem: it’s not even played cleverly. It’s not horrifying, not witty, not satirical. It’s just gross. The penis murders women, James looks shocked, and everyone goes back to having sex like this is business as usual. The gag wears out faster than the VHS tape this was probably distributed on.
If Russ Meyer celebrated sexuality with camp and exaggerated verve, Pervert! makes it all feel awkward, sticky, and desperate. It’s like the film is elbowing you in the ribs every five minutes going, “Huh? Penis joke? Get it?!”
The Visuals: Sun-Baked Awkwardness
The desert setting is actually the film’s only clever decision. Wide skies, cracked dirt, lonely highways—it’s an aesthetic ripe for exploitation cinema. Unfortunately, the cinematography is so cheap it feels like someone borrowed a camcorder from a pawn shop and filmed between shifts at a Quiznos.
And then there are the meat sculptures. Imagine Texas Chainsaw Massacre if Leatherface took a community college art class. It’s supposed to be shocking and surreal, but it just looks like an out-of-control 4-H competition.
The Humor: Dead on Arrival
This is billed as a horror-comedy. The horror is nonexistent, and the comedy is the kind of stuff you’d expect from a horny 12-year-old with a VHS camera.
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Stepmom tries to seduce stepson.
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Penis detaches and kills people.
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Mechanic is confused about his sexuality.
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Dad cries over corpses while carving meat women.
It’s a buffet of ideas that could’ve been shocking or funny if handled with the wit of, say, John Waters. But Yudis directs with the finesse of a frat boy scribbling dirty cartoons on a bathroom stall.
The Tribute That Failed
Russ Meyer’s films were trashy but joyous. They were sexploitation with energy, women with power, stories that reveled in excess but had personality. Pervert! misses that entirely. Instead of empowered women, we get caricatures who exist only to be naked, murdered, or both. Instead of camp, we get clumsy parody. Instead of fun, we get a feature-length groan.
It doesn’t celebrate Meyer’s legacy—it desecrates it with a rubber penis prop.
Performances: Brave, But For What?
You almost feel bad for the cast. They commit to the madness, but what are they committing to? Sean Andrews plays James like he’s embarrassed to be there (which, fair). Darrell Sandeen at least leans into the deranged dad role, but he’s given nothing to work with beyond “cry over meat women.” Mary Carey, an adult film star, deserves credit for bringing more charisma than the script deserves—but even she can’t salvage dialogue that feels written on a bar napkin at 3 a.m.
Highlights (If You Can Call Them That)
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A penis kills people.
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A woman flashes the monster.
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A nurse handcuffs an old man to a bed and immediately has sex with his son.
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A mechanic subplot that feels like a deleted scene from Napoleon Dynamite’s creepy cousin.
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Meat sculptures. Lots of meat sculptures.
If this sounds appealing, seek help.
Why It’s Bad (Beyond the Obvious)
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Tone: Doesn’t know if it wants to be parody, tribute, or porn. Ends up as none.
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Story: Thin as tissue paper. And twice as disposable.
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Horror: Nonexistent. If the scariest thing in your movie is a detached penis, you’ve already lost.
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Comedy: Forced, awkward, and only funny if you’re watching it ironically.
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Respect for Meyer? None. It misunderstands the very thing it’s trying to honor.
Final Thoughts: Flaccid, Forced, Forgettable
Pervert! is the cinematic equivalent of being trapped at a bad bachelor party: loud, crude, trying too hard to be edgy, and ultimately leaving you embarrassed to have shown up. It’s not scary, it’s not sexy, and it’s not funny. It’s a long, awkward joke about penises that even a middle schooler would find stale.
Russ Meyer deserved better. Hell, audiences deserved better.
