It's feature #2 and Russ Meyer is already repeating himself. After the Earth-shattering box office receipts from The Immoral Mr. Teas informing the world that audiences just want tits already, Meyer the savvy businessman proved he is one and the same as Meyer the crazed auteur and churned out a near-identical product in an attempt to rekindle America's loin-fires while concurrently lining his crusty pockets with spermy bills.
Roles are reversed in this pornographic proletariat tale of an unassuming Handyman (Anthony James Ryan, a Russ Meyer war buddy and friend for 60 years) obsessively tailed by busty blonde Eve (Eve Meyer, one of many amply endowed women unfortunate enough to share matrimonial vows with our pug-faced director). Theoretically she wants to put her plumb bob birdsmouth on his journeyman's hip rafter. You know, because....carpentry terms...I'm not sorry. The Handyman is oblivious not just to Eve's sociopathic advances but to a whole world brimming with exaggerated "sexy things" at every turn. Considering this man is defined by his work, one could glean that Meyer is commenting how the career is the man, and obsessive grinding of a workaholic personality files sexual interest down into a fine dust that scatters in the wind like a sandstorm of emasculation. Or he just frivolously chose a handyman. One can never fully tell with ol' Russ.
What this title did do was galvanize the cartoon cortex in Meyer's brain. I mean Looney Toons style insanity that reaches an apex with his third feature Wild Gals of the Naked West. But all must begin somewhere, and 'Eve' shows us that whatever seeds were planted sprouted into unsubtle sight gags and slide-whistle pratfalls that would make Daffy Duck proud (before he was shot point blank in the face. RIP and damn you, Fudd). Our introduction to the lankiest of handymen involves his inability to end the eternal, infernal clinking of his alarm clock bell. It wakes his rotund neighbor who believes this to be a bomb. It scares an old codger out of bed who, already bedecked in full boxing regalia gloves and all, fruitlessly battles a spectral opponent. Finally, a poor fool hears the tinkling terror while urinating, believes it's the cops, and makes a run for it while spraying the world with his (possibly) insipid stream. Stupid? Yes. Kind of funny? Surprisingly, yes.
The Handyman's dalliances with incognizance culminate with Eve breaking into his quarters to....strip? Explain her obsessive travels and screw his brains out? She opens her coat to reveal an array of brushes and brooms as an offering to our handiest of men.
What? Yeah.
This finally revs up our protagonist's (?) engines and elicits actual emotion after a masterclass in pure stoicism, perhaps even re-igniting his libido. Following this is the most insane and absurd montage (can I use Russtage again?) of sexual innuendo through objects that man has ever created. A tea kettle screams, rockets blast off, train cars connect, instruments are blown and stroked close up, a junkyard crane...cranes. While not as subversive as North by Northwest's Greatest Fuck-Cut in History, it makes up for this in sheer exuberance. The final voice-over leaves us with "The biggest catch in life is a happy ending."
Holy shit, Russ.