RM made stars of LA strippers and Playboy girls. He made sex fun, violence camp, and sleaze appealing. He was the ultimate Bizarre film-maker.
To this day, his aesthetic is admired and copied. Quentin Tarantino, John Waters, even The Spice Girls and Janet Jackson have more than nodded in Meyer's direction in their work.
His career started in a more sober fashion, as a World War II newsreel cameraman, but his first film, made in 1959, could be seen as the first real US porn film. The Immoral Mr Teas turned a profit of million - a vast sum in those days.
Russ wrote, directed, edited, and often self-financed his own films. He turned in his finest work in the mid-60s, with his quartet of 'gothic' movies. Motor Psycho, Faster Pussycat Kill! Kill!, Lorna and Mudhoney were shot in black and white for economic reasons, but the stark crispness of the films means they still look iconic. They were racy, and classed as pornography at the time, but Meyer's sharp artistic eye elevated his work far above cheap skin flicks.
His venture into mainstream cinema came with Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls, and even that was an orgy of girl rock'n'roll, drugs, lesbian sex and cross-dressing. Meyer's very brief sidestep into serious cinema (The Seven Minutes) was swiftly followed in the 70s by a run of superbly trashy sex-and-violence flicks. His work in the 80s and 90s strayed into self-parody, and he became reclusive, although he was happy to answer his phone and chat to anyone who cared to call him.
Meyer had taken the nudie stag films of the 50s, and stretched them into proper, full-length movies, complete with storylines, characters, and elaborate set-piece fights. Films which were shown in cinemas rather than at stag nights, and enjoyed by a young, hip crowd. He made porn funny, in a bouncing, jiggling, giggly way. But perhaps Meyer's greatest achievement was to make his films appeal to everyone but the most prudish. Accusations of screen sexism were stomped on by the strong female stars of the films, who initiated sex, were wilfully violent, and camply bitchy. And still, today, his films are loved by hipsters, freaks, geeks, and fans of really, really, really big tits worldwide.
Russ Meyer died of complications of pneumonia on 18 September. He was 82.
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