Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

[StevePulaski]

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965)
Directed by: Russ Meyer

Lori Williams (background) and Tura Satana in Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!.

Rating: ★★½

I believe you only need a few ingredients to make a movie: three female leads, a sports car, and a wide-open desert. The rest can practically be made up as you go. It's not guaranteed to be good, but it is fairly certain it'll be interesting.

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! is the Russ Meyer film with which most people are familiar. A box office bomb initially despite its paltry five-figure budget, it's basically retained a cult status since its initial release and has gone on to inspire the likes of veteran filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino (whose film Death Proof is essentially one long homage to Meyer), John Waters, and Rick Jacobson, whose film Bitch Slap could feasibly be considered a remake. It's not hard to understand why, especially given the era where buxom female leads weren't treated to being the dominant, empowering figures they are here, or in later films.

The trick to understanding and appreciating Meyer's filmography isn't worlds different from analyzing the work of John Waters. In Meyer's films, everyone is objectified, but subverted is the male gaze insofar that women are the controlling forces in most of his motion pictures. They're not passive airheads. Even if his camera finds new, titillating ways to capture the female body, the women in his world tend to use men the same way men use women in mainstream media. Male characters seem to fall into the dichotomous archetypes of shirtless hunks or gutter-brained neanderthals, and with some semblance of a threadbare plot in motion, there's ordinarily enough excitement generated on the basis of chicanery alone. For all the initial hubbub that Meyer was a peddler of skin-flicks and that his work was sexist, you realize — perhaps with the added benefit of hindsight and contemporary film theory — that his movies were in some regard the inverse of what big studio conglomerates were peddling at the time. To boot, we got personalities that rightfully should've enjoyed half the buzz and recognition as the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Clint Eastwood, or Sylvester Stallone.

The film follows three go-go dancers — Varla (Tura Satana), a black-clad, cleavage-bearing dominatrix-esque anti-hero, Rosie (Haji), her lover with a similar sense of style. and Billie (Lori Williams), a blonde bombshell — who are hauling ass across the California desert in Varla's Porsche when they happen upon a young couple. Their impulses compel them to harass the two, murder the boyfriend, and kidnap the young girl named Linda (Susan Bernard). Stopping for gas, they encounter an ogling attendant (Mickey Foxx), who informs them there is an old man with two sons and a stash of cash hidden on his property. The estate in question is owned by a wheelchair-bound codger (Stuart Lancaster), whose sons "The Vegetable" (Dennis Busch), known for his bulky frame yet dim-witted nature, and Kirk (Paul Trinka), the more straight-laced of the three help safeguard his riches. With Linda in tow, the three dancers plan on finding the money while schmoozing up to the three by breaking out their string-bikinis and halter tops culminating in a memorable dinner scene where all the energy in the room is controlled by Varla and only overtaken by Rosie the more she raises her elbow to help herself to more Cutty Sark.

Typical of a Meyer film to have crackling dialog, Faster, Pussycat! doesn't skimp in that department. A great deal of the lines belong to the old man, who asks the gals upon their arrival, "You girls a bunch of nudists or just short of clothes?" During dinner, he remarks at the cavalier attitudes of Varla and Billie by exclaiming, "Women! They let 'em vote, smoke, and drive; even put 'em in pants! And what happens? A Democrat for president!"

Varla, to boot, has a dominating energy that suggests she could never play second fiddle to anyone. Her soul-piercing stare, down-turned brows, popping eyeliner, and shapely figure all suggest she needs to be in control wherever she goes. What a multi-layered showcase this is for Tura Satana, both in beauty and in brawn. After seeing Vixen!, which accentuated all that was alluring about Erica Gavin, Pandora Peaks, a later film from Meyer, who gave the titular model a showcase only he could direct, and Satana, it's no question his coaching and plot-devising brings out the best in his performers.

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! isn't Meyer at his most entertaining (I strongly prefer Vixen!, its characters, and its brazenness to be political and socially relevant), but it's him at his most kinetic and liberated. With hardly any money, three charismatic women, some sultry outfits, and a hot-rod, he does more than many filmmakers have done with excess, and his economy on top of his subversion of gender roles shouldn't be dismissed as flaccid pornography.

Starring: Tura Satana, Haji, Lori Williams, Susan Bernard, Stuart Lancaster, Paul Trinka, Dennis Busch, and Mickey Foxx. Directed by: Russ Meyer.