User Reviews

With having found Russ Meyer's debut film Mr Teas and His Playthings to be a disappointingly plodding affair,I began to hope,that with the then Mrs Meyers-Eve Meyer, (who after divorcing Russ in 1969,tragically died in a plane crash in 1977, age 48) being one of the main stars of the film,that Eve would give his second feature the much needed extra spark that his debut lacked.

The plot:

Making sure to stay hidden and keep a good distance so as not to be seen,Eve begins to spy on a handyman.Keeping up with the handyman as he visits various work sites,Eve keeps a detailed note on each of the occasions that a woman gets anywhere near the handyman.Relising that the handyman is about to finish his days work,Eve decides to make her "big move"

View on the film:

Expanding on themes in his debut, (deep breath!) editor/cinematography/producer/writer/director Russ Meyer uses the involvement of his wife Eve as a way to have one of the main characters be the narrator of the movie,instead of the disembodied voice featured in Meyer's debut.

Leaving behind the riffing of Public Information Films from his first movie,Meyer creates a brash & colourful live action cartoon movie,which looks to have been pulled from a Looney Tunes short.

Just about keeping the movie on tracks from never becoming dull (although,in what is perhaps a sign of being slightly restrained,Mrs Meyer's does not appear fully naked in the movie-boo!)Russ Meyer brilliantly fills the soundtrack with scrambled classical music and over exaggerated sounds that perfectly compliment the brash colours in giving the movie a cheerful cartoon feel.

The movie also features a number of eye (s)-catchingly beautiful woman that characters like Pepe Le Pew would fall head over heels for,with a particular highlight of the movie being a scene where the un-named handy man climbs up a pole,sees the words "red paint" at the top and lets go,but stays in the air until he sees Meyer's cartoon world underneath him.

Russ Meyer is a director with a distinctive style, a characteristic of course shared with many other directors such as Alfred Hitchcock and David Cronenberg. Most filmgoers who have seen several films from any of these directors come to feel that it is easy to identify their work from its characteristic features, even when watching quite short clips. In Russ Meyer's case they would probably be looking for scenes of very bloody and generally totally gratuitous violence as well as for unusually well endowed young women who bare their breasts at every opportunity (when critics complained about this, Russ's response was to produce the film Mondo Topless which features many of the strippers who were best known in the San Francisco area at the time - he is reputed to have said that he did this because men fantasize about such women and he has a role to play in fulfilling these fantasies). However even directors with highly stereotyped styles are capable of producing occasional surprises. For example, although the use of rather flamboyant colours is typical of much of Russ's work, at least two of his best known works are in monochrome and one of these (Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill!) steers completely clear of any nudity. Eve and the Handyman is however perhaps his most surprising work. It is a short and, in my view, delightful lightweight comedy based on the surveillance of a very conscientious handyman (who is also a keen amateur artist) during a number of his daily activities, by an attractive woman private eye. To indicate the reason for this intense scrutiny would be a real spoiler - it is probably much less easy to guess in advance than the key joke forming the basis of most comedies. However there is also a great deal of quiet but very effective humour in the individual episodes - for example where our hero is called in to enable a tree to give birth to a sapling by caesarian section.

Russ was an army photographer (Perhaps the male fantasies with which he seems obsessed are not universal but are particularly prevalent when groups of men work together away from any female companionship for prolonged periods - as when serving in the army), and whilst serving he became a master of effective camera work. His films are all characterised by many very telling shots, and are seldom ruined by the bad camera work which has spoiled so many intended epics. Often these shots are very simple with no superfluous detail - for example in this film there is a delightful shot where our handyman is mesmerised by a simple plate containing two round cakes each topped by a cherry. This feature, combined with its short running time, mean that "Eve and the Handyman" does not need a DVD to enjoy fully - it fits comfortably onto a single VCD and is in fact ideal for home viewing in this form - whilst the extra detail which a DVD could provide is really not required. It features neither the violence nor the topless beauties characteristic of most of Russ's work, and the dialogue is minimal. (much of it is almost a silent movie); but it is one of my treasures which I find that I can enjoy again and again - particularly when I am watching it with someone who has not seen it before. It is very simple and has no message to convey, but in my opinion it is certainly Meyer's most enjoyable work.