Mountain FogRETROSPECT: FASTER, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL! (1965)
June 25th 2009 07:56
Tura Satana catches a sound tech looking down her top in Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
It was once suggested that Russ Meyer was America’s only truly auteurist filmmaker. Meyer would often write, produce, direct, shoot and edit his films, creating an outrageous catalogue of exploitation in the process, including such ridiculously entertaining B-efforts as Motor Psycho and Vixen!
In that regard it’s interesting to note that Meyer’s most famous film, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! proved to be one of his more collaborative efforts. Jack Moran contributed to the bare bones screenplay while Walter Schenk came to the party with some at times highly inventive photography. The result was a firecracker of an exploitation film, one that covered over a fast and loose plot with nutjob characters, ostentatious dialogue and flamboyant action.
Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! follows the exploits of three curvaceous and out of control go-go dancers as they take some rest and recreation in the back lands of California. But these girls’ idea of R & R doesn’t involve Palm Springs pools and cocktails at sunset. Rather, its sadism, sex, murder and kidnapping as the ridiculously bosomed Varla (Tura Satana) karate-chops to death an innocent all-American car nut and along with her equally va-va-voom sidekicks Billie (Lori Williams) and Rosie (Haji), takes prisoner the young man’s girlfriend (Sue Bernard).
The girls aren’t finished however, as they find their way to the property of a lecherous, disabled rancher (Stuart Lancaster) and using the young girl as bait, plot a way to relieve him of the generous compensation payment he received for his injuries.
Varla (Tura Satana), Rosie (Haji) and Billie (Lori Williams) talk tactics in Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
Plotwise, it’s pretty threadbare stuff, but Meyer seemed less concerned with creating a compelling story in Pussycat! and much more focused on shocking unsuspecting audiences with his larger than life characters and their salacious exploits. Every scene the girls appear in drips with over-powering sleaze and underhanded eroticism as they do anything to get their deliciously sadistic way.
And the three actresses rose to the occasion in superb style. Camping it up beyond the point of ludicrousness, Tura Satana spits venom as the shoot-first Varla while Lori Williams squeezes every last drop of lasciviousness from the seemingly insatiable Billie. Lancaster is great also as the lip-licking rancher, his eager designs on the dead man’s girlfriend being fantastically disturbing.
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It’s all captured with a technical expertise that belies the film’s meagre $44,000 budget. Schenk’s camerawork is excellent, often choosing low angles to make the girls seem like out of control monsters, careening across the landscape in search of fulfilment with their wanton destruction. The photography also links brilliantly with Meyer’s swiss-precision editing, which is perhaps the highlight of the entire film.
You could perhaps look at Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! in one of two ways: protofeminist fable or misogynistic exploitation. But the film gives the ultimate impression that Meyer never intended it to be taken that seriously. In a modern context it is an absolutely bizarre flick, but one that’s remarkably entertaining in its brazen balls-to-the-wall aggression – a fantastic time capsule from the mid sixties, hinting at the changes overtaking both cinema and American society as a whole.
Check out the most hyperbolic trailer ever for Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! below:
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Comment by MVD
That said, low budget exploitation films always garner my interest, and Meyer was one of the masters.
Finally, is it just me, or did Tura Satana resemble Anjelica Huston?
Comment by Matt Shea
20/20 Filmsight
Yep, the whole thing's certainly busteriffic, although I'm not sure if it would be pornographic enough to put your wife to sleep.