Mudhoney was first released in 1965 under the title of Rope of Flesh. The initial advertising featured a silhouette of Sidney Brenshaw being hanged, but everyone agreed the image was very heavy handed.

Meyer then changed the title of the film to Mudhoney, which allegedly was inspired by Oscar Wilde.

Mudhoney was based on Raymond Friday Locke's novel Streets Paved With Gold.

Meyer claimed Mudhoney was his "homage to Grapes of Wrath".

Meyer apparently convinced his then estranged wife Eve into footing half the bill for Mudhoney and chose not to inform her that new girlfriend Rena Horten (Eula) was to have a prominent role.

Meyer himself makes a cameo in the film; he is part of the lynch mob at the end of the film.

Meyer often liked to cast crazy personalities in his films. Princess Livingston (Maggie Marie) was known as a wisecrack on the Mudhoney set and apparently told the "filthiest jokes imaginable". Actor John Furlong (Calif McKinney) claimed she was "funny as hell" and recalled a moment during a break in filming where "she was sitting on the porch and her skirt was kind of up. Sitting there with no underpants!"

Meyer met Rena Horten while he was in Germany filming Fanny Hill (1964). Meyer and Horten stayed together for about a year. Meyer claimed that the problems in his relationship with Rena Horten were based on the fact that she attempted to back out of doing the nude scene in Mudhoney, after she had already appeared nude in Fanny Hill. Meyer claimed, "It represented a down deep solid lack of trust" and he apparently never got over the incident.

Meyer cast Rena Horten as a deaf mute because she spoke no English.

Stuart Lancaster recalled in an interview for Psychotronic Magazine about working with Hal Hopper (who plays the evil Sidney Brenshaw in Mudhoney: "He used to call him Hal 'Hamper'. We all stayed in this motel. The maid came into the laundry room and found him in the dirty laundry hamper, stark naked and doing this (indicates jerking off) and shouting obscenities. But I think that story's probably exaggerated. He was a helluva good actor, though."

Sources:
www.brightlightsfilm.com
AFI
Big Bosoms and Square Jaws: The Biography of Russ Meyer, King of the Sex Films by Jimmy McDonough
Incredibly Strange Films (Re/Search)
Russ Meyer-The Life and Films by David K. Frasier
www.5minutesonline.com
rogerebert.suntimes.com
www.austinchronicle.com
www.popcultmag.com
www.time.com
Stuart Lancaster interview by John Donnelly in Psychotronic Magazine

Compiled by Millie de Chirico