Bye Bye Pussycat

Russ Meyer, notorious sexploitation filmmaker and breastman, is dead. Noted for soft-core classics like Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! and Vixen, Meyer, 82, died in his Hollywood Hills home from complications due to pneumonia.Today's Los Angeles Times obit notes that Meyer was "something of a one-man studio, Meyer produced, directed, financed, wrote, edited and shot 23 tantalizing but teasing films that pioneered a genre of skinflicks with much violence and large-busted women but little sex. The titles of the X-rated fare that made him millions are descriptive — 'The Immoral Mr. Teas,' 'Erotica,' 'Wild Gals of the Naked West,' 'Heavenly Bodies,' 'Mudhoney,' 'Mondo Topless,' 'Common Law Cabin,' 'Supervixens' and 'Europe in the Raw.'

'I love big-breasted women with wasp waists,' he told the London Times in 1999, two decades after making his final film. 'I love them with big cleavages.' Little wonder that Time magazine critic Richard Corliss called Meyer's films 'bosomacious melodramas' or that Meyer came to be viewed as an auteur."

Known affectionately as "King Leer," Meyer epitomized the Southern California myth of moving to Hollywood to live out your fantasies on film. His vivid imagination inspired others: three rock groups have named themselves for Meyer films — Mudhoney, Vixen and Faster Pussycat.

LAist will miss him, god rest his horny little soul.