Review
Exploitation pioneer Russ Meyer helms this sweaty, swampy, hillbilly melodrama which bursts with bulging bustlines and black emotions. Though the director is famously obsessed with large-breasted women, with Mudhoney he most clearly displays his gift for choosing unique character actors with unforgettable faces. Craggy jowls and pop-eyed countenances abound, most memorably Princess Livingston as local madam Maggie Marie and tree-dwelling village idiot Mickey Fox. Mudhoney also boasts the first Meyer-related appearance of Stuart Lancaster, who would go on to figure in many of the director's best pictures in the decades to come. But it's Hal Hopper who runs away with the film, squeezing every last drop from the juicy villain role of Sidney. Despite his advancing age and thin frame, Hopper's menace is palpable and uncomfortably real, and his slow descent from belligerent drunk to violent lunatic is amazing to watch. There's a smattering of pneumatic blonde nudity thanks to a brassy prostitute and her beautiful deaf-and-dumb sister (Lorna Maitland and Rena Horten respectively), though in the end it will be the eccentricities of Spooner's bizarre citizenry and the sheer madness of Sidney Brenshaw that viewers of Mudhoney will remember. ~ Fred Beldin, All Movie Guide
Synopsis
California McKinney (John Furlong) is hitchhiking to the state he was named for after serving a five-year sentence for manslaughter. He runs out of money in Spooner, MO, and finds work at a farm run by Lute Wade (Stuart Lancaster) and his niece, Hannah Brenshaw (Antoinette Christiani). All Calif wants is to do is work quietly until he can save enough money to keep on moving, but Hannah's drunken husband, Sidney (Hal Hopper), takes it upon himself to verbally and physically abuse him, as he does his own wife and any one else who crosses his path. Sidney spends most of his time drinking corn liquor at the local whorehouse and bragging about his plans to sell the farm after the sickly Uncle Lute dies. However, the goodhearted Calif and the long-suffering Hannah are falling in love, and Lute arranges his will so that Sidney can't lay claim to the estate after his death. The desperate Sidney plots with the local preacher (Franklin Bolger) to exploit the small town's gossipy nature with lies about Hannah's virtue, though his conniving is undone when he commits an insane, jealous crime and finds himself the target of a bloodthirsty vigilante group. ~ Fred Beldin, All Movie Guide
