Most likely, director Russ Meyer's reputation as the near-undisputed king of feature-length sleaze and exploitation precedes him. Perhaps more so for such underground classics as Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! or Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, than the two films receiving HD restorations this month – Motorpsycho and Russ Meyer's Up!. However, while released ten years apart in 1965 and 1976 respectively, both come together to highlight two very different sides of Meyer's work while also capturing his sustained interests as a director.

Motorpsycho, certainly the better of these two films, is an exploitation/rape revenge film which focuses on three men from a motorcycle gang as they terrorise a small town. Motorpsycho is intelligently designed with close attention paid to the formula of the revenge western – it begins with a woman being wronged and quickly establishes the idea that this self-sufficient male lead, Cory (Alex Rocco, seen later in The Godfather), must seek vengeance on her behalf. Of course, Meyer would never stop after only one scene of violence and so he ensures that his ‘no-good bike-riding punks' also attack various other women, steal cars and, slowly, become increasingly insane. The use of a biker trio, a common social concern for middle-class America in the 1960s as well as a symbol of anti-authoritarianism for many disillusioned young men, is witty, but Meyer's film is at its most interesting when it twists the politics of its characters. One sequence sees the most villainous of the trio repeatedly refer to our heroes (Cory and Ruby Bonner, a woman widowed by the gang) as ‘commies' and ‘reds' while seemingly trying to calm himself by singing pro-military songs to himself.

While its defiant female characters and its use of the popularity of biker gangs at the time of release make for an interesting foundation, Meyer's film is enhanced by his own cinematography and terrific eye for sparse locations. Mostly played straight as a revenge thriller, Motorpsycho is engaging and biting, a sharpened but familiar experience.

On the other hand, Russ Meyer's Up! is surely one of the most baffling films ever made. Written in part by Roger Ebert (yes, that Roger Ebert), Up! is a bizarre, intensely transgressive film that morphs slowly into a whodunit where the victim is an elderly Adolf Hitler who also happens to be a major sex fiend and BDSM addict. With so much aggressive sex and nudity, which makes it almost impossible to find an appropriate still, Up! is clearly an attempt by Meyer to push the boundaries of what is acceptable on screen. His penultimate film, followed only by Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens, is an exercise in bad taste so excessive that it may make John Waters blush, complete with Hitler being sodomised and whipped, sexual assault played as a gag more than once and a Greek Chorus that is actually a nude blonde woman the entire time.

The major problem is that, beneath all of this abject madness, noise and carnality, the film seems to forget to be funny. Its colour cinematography, again by Meyer himself, is this film's one redeeming quality. Other than that, it is an edgy and provocative exercise that feels practically fruitless – a sex comedy so obsessed with cramming its brief running time full of nudity that it forgets to have much of a plot or, for the most part, any good gags. Still, watching Hitler himself be whipped and attacked by a piranha is, undeniably, quite special indeed. More frequently reprehensible and off-putting than fun or sexy, Up! is admirable if only for its brazenness.

Both Motorpsycho and Russ Meyer's Up!, in all of their madness and sleaze, have been restored with immense care and made beautiful by the Museum of Modern Art, well matched by striking, colourful packaging and cautiously curated special features by Severin Films. Receiving their HD premiere on these new releases, both films look stunning.

Motorpsycho and Russ Meyer's Up! will be released on Blu-Ray and 4K UHD on April 28th by Severin Films.

Motorpsycho Special Features:

Audio Commentary with Film Historian Elizabeth Purchell and Filmmaker Zach Clark
Desert Rats On Hondas – Interviews With Stars Haji and Alex Rocco
Trailer

Up! Special Features: