8. Mudhoney (1965)
In depression and prohibition era America, a man called Calif stops in a small town called Spooner en route to California. He picks up some work with a man called Lute, but becomes entangled in a nasty domestic situation. Lute has a daughter -Hannah - who is married to a ne'er do well called Sidney who frequents whorehouses, is perpetually drunk, beats his wife and is basically sitting around waiting for Lute to kick the bucket so he can get all of his money. Sidney takes a dislike to Calif and launches an all out smear campaign upon his name. There is a lot of violence and revelations at the end of the film, as Calif cannot keep his feelings for Hannah secret. Meyer ditches the comedy, the satire and the plentiful sex to bring us a relatively straight drama. It has certain elements of sleaziness but it is an absorbing drama. The lead women are very attractive but they are not given the usual humorous sexploitation treatment that the majority of RM's heroines are given. The (infrequent) nudity is tasteful and the performances from the cast are pretty good, making Mudhoney a nice little potboiler of the 'roughie' sub genre of exploitation movies.