Pervert! bills itself as a homage to the late exploitation-cinema genius Russ Meyer. For once, such evocation is not hyperbole. Director Jonathan Yudis has studied Meyer well, and has to that end crafted a genuine, loving and stylistically accurate celebration of all the things that made Meyer great.
And though Yudis can't quite nail the weirdly perfect balance of high and low culture that distinguished the best films on Meyer's resume, he makes up for it by piling on the offbeat humor, the funky camerawork and the humongous bouncing breasts that also mark the cinema of the Breast King.
Yes, breasts. That is what Pervert! is about — big, beautiful, jiggling breasts, the bigger the better. There's a semblance of a plot — something about a young man home from college embroiled in Oedipal conflict with his crazy-cracker father and his new, extremely buxom, extremely horny stepmother — but Yudis and writer Mike Davis don't take that too seriously.
The plot is the means, not the end; if the story exists, it's only to hustle the film through its parade of mammarian protruberances. Drunk on funbags, the film careens through itself like a cokehead in a strip-joint, and its energy is infectious.
As the aformentioned stepmother, adult film star and occasional politician Mary Carey makes her 'legitimate' film debut. Her acting is roughly on par with what you'd expect from one whose fame came on the porn circuit, but that's incidental. What is important is her cheer and enthusiasm; her performance is rough when it comes to dialogue, but in terms of physicality and presence, Yudis couldn't have hoped for better.
It's not just her impressive physique (which is indeed impressive, especially as it appears to be silicone-free), it's that she knows how to use it. With her body language and facial expressions, she somehow comes off as both sweet-natured and filthy-minded — the dirtiest girl next door. Whether she's running through the desert, getting randy in a truck or doing obscene things to an ear of corn, she looks like she's having fun; this buoys Pervert! above both the average slap-n-tickle slapstick and the po-faced gauziness of modern erotica.
Too, Yudis' distinctive sense of humor keeps this from being a mere parade of parts, male and female. He's inhabiting the directorial sensibilities of another (and as accurately as could be hoped too, right down to the smash-cut inserts of naked chicks in headdresses and/or coyote skins running through the desert toward or from God knows what), but the laughs come all from him. He's got a taste for the strange and the sidelong; the number of discursions would make the film feel unfocused if it weren't so consistently amusing.
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