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| Another perk of writing Anderson & Lembke's "B Movie Madness" web page was the chance to introduce folks to my guilty pleasures from the film world. This one is from March 1997. Click here for another example, or here to return to my homepage. |
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TURA! TURA! TURA! |
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Picture, if you will, a woman. |
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A woman of strange and preternatural origins�part Japanese, part Apache. With a smirking slash of a face like a kabuki mask. A body too voluptuous, overripe as a Hindu fertility goddess and straining to free itself from the bounds of clothing. |
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Now picture her in black. |
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Black boots. Black jeans. Black shirt, unbuttoned to the navel. Black leather gloves, balled into fists. |
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Oh�and by the way, she�s crazy. In her lust for kicks she�ll fight a man or love a woman. Or kill either with equal indifference. |
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Best of all? She is the subject of this week�s visit to the local video store, as we re-visit one of the staples of cult film�Russ Meyer�s 1966 strange-o, Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! |
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Tura Satana: original Riot Grrrl |
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A lot of folks have seen this movie since its 1994 re-release by Meyer, a pioneer in nudie flicks who cashed in on his Hefneresque obsession with huge-breasted women. If you haven�t seen it yourself, do so. It�s been called by John Waters the greatest film ever made, and is often cited as a precursor to mainstream fem flicks like Thelma and Louise and Set it Off. |
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Plus there�s cleavage like you won�t believe. |
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The amazing thing about Faster, Pussycat! is its star, Tura Satana�a real-life stripper and karate expert who basically plays herself (no trick makeup, no falsies, no stunt doubles) for 83 incredible minutes. |
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Wotta woman. |
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Imagine Mr. Spock�s head grafted onto Elvira�s body. Plus a little Bruce Lee, with some Kathleen Turner from Body Heat. Add it all up and encase it in black leather, and you�ve got the ultimate femme fatale. |
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The plot, if you can call it that, careens madly around three go-go dancers who strip for leering guys by night and drive souped-up hot rods by day. Varla is the bullying leader; Rosie is her equally well-upholstered lesbian lover (�Everything we a-do is a-hard, nothing is a-soft,� she says in her lilting Chico Marx accent, anticipating the lyrics of �Proud Mary�); and Billie (Playmate Lori Williams) is a kicks-crazy blond nympho who challenges Varla�s supremacy in the gang. |
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One day in the desert, the girls are minding their own business and playing high-speed chicken when they encounter Tommy and his cute little girlfriend, apparently lost on their way to a Beach Party movie. Seems Tommy is an avid hot rodder too, so the girls sucker him into a race and end up running him off the road. |
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Well, there are hard feelings. And the inevitable happens�Varla slugs Tommy with a karate chop, Tommy gut-punches Varla, and a no-holds-barred brawl ensues before Varla ends it with a nice surfboard-style backbreaker worthy of your better Mexican pro wrestlers (but that�s another column). So Tommy is dead, his girlfriend is hysterical, and the gang is in trouble. |
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They dope the girl to keep her quiet, dump her into Varla�s crummy Porsche and drive off into the desert. |
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Now on the lam, Varla broods and sucks on Tiparillos like a vacuum pump while the other girls jiggle the loose change in their blouses and toss off memorable lines like �What about the frail? C�mon, use your noodle!� Obviously, something has to give. |
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At home with the Nelsons |
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While stopping at a gas station, the girls learn that the local dysfunctional family is hoarding a lot of money on a ramshackle ranch in the desert. So off they go to get it. And in the process they meet their match for sheer creepiness: a wheelchair-bound degenerate and his two sons. |
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We�re not exactly talking about the cast of �Bachelor Father� here. Dad lost his legs saving a fallen girl on a railroad platform; when he�s not ranting like a lunatic, he�s using his retarded bodybuilder son (dubbed The Vegetable!) to kill wayward women travelers; and eldest son Kirk is a brooding loner who hates his old man. |
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But let�s not pick on personal foibles. Caught nosing around the property, the gang buys time to look for the money by making up a story about taking the traumatized girl back to her parents. Meanwhile, the old man is hatching his own plans for said girl, who resembles the one that cost him his legs. And everybody is pairing off for some pretty sordid make-out scenes, as desert temperatures get hormones in an uproar. |
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So why should we care? |
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Kirk, I think, says it best as Varla seduces him to find the money: �Because you�re a beautiful animal. And I�m weak. And I want you.� |
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They fall into each other�s arms. Twenty minutes later, they�re trying to kill each other in hand-to-hand combat as Faster, Pussycat! comes to a whirlwind finale with three corpses already in the ground. |
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One potato, two potato, three potato, four. |
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Now here�s a video for the whole family. You�ve got fast cars, fistfights and zaftig girls sashaying around in halters and short shorts (but no nudity) for the guys � plus a whole lotta female empowerment for the gals, since every male in the flick is showed up as a wimp, a degenerate or a moron who can be led around by his glands. (Liz Phair wishes she was Varla.) |
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Granted, the dialog is pretty corny and the action is a little slow in an age that has seen more gore on the 5:30 News. But I�m giving Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! four potatoes (****) out of a maximum five on my Spuds Scale for Couch Potatoes. |
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Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! is available at plenty of video stores these days, so check it out. You�ll see why my heart belongs to Tura. |
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Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! |
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1966 (black & white). Directed by Russ Meyer. Stars Tura Satana, Haji, Lori Williams, Susan Bernard, Stuart Lancaster. |
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STORY ARC: A thrill-crazy trio of hotrodding strippers abduct a bikinied teen after killing her boyfriend in the desert. Plotting to rob a crippled degenerate and his two twisted sons, they meet their match in an orgy of greed, lust and violence. |
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QUALITY KILLS: 3 (5 kills overall). |
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BLOOD: Just a couple of trickles. |
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NUDITY: None. But you could lose a boa constrictor in all the cleavage. |
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HIGHS: Tura Satana�s tour de force as Varla, the baddest woman in film history. Male-female fistfights, big boobs and hot rods, nymphos, lesbians, musclemen. Plus an incredible title song by The Bostweeds. |
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LOWS: Pretentious dialog, tame violence by today�s standards. |
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RATING: ****. Called the best movie ever made by no less an authority than John Waters, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! is required viewing for any film hipster. |
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