Tuesday, 7 February 2017

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965)

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965)

Director: Russ Meyer
Starring: Tura Sutana, Haji, Lori Williams
Superwomen! Belted, buckled and booted!

It was a day like any other for Tommy and Linda, a young all-American couple like any other, as they drove out the desert without a care in the world, but unbeknownst to them await a trio of murderous go-go girls. Who will survive and what will be left of them?

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to violence! While violence cloaks itself it a plethora of disguises its favourite mantle still remains sex” claims the movie’s opening narrator, over a black screen. The narrator proceeds to teach us that there is a new form of violence, one encased in the supple skin of a woman, and warns the viewer to be on their guard. For these harbingers of destruction, this new breed of violent women, prowl both alone and in packs. “They operate at anytime, anywhere and with anybody. Who are they? One might be your secretary, your doctor’s receptionist or a dancer at a go-go club.” There is then a sudden jarring cut to our three ‘heroines’ dancing at a bar while the films amazingly catchy theme music plays. We then see the girls driving lovely vintage sports cars and the main character Varla (Sutana) laughs to herself as the second chorus of The Bostweeds title track kicks in and the title card appears on the screen over Sutana’s face. I really can’t do the opening of this movie justice, but I absolutely loved it, and have watched the start to the film a good twenty times in the last two days. The cut from the narration to the go-go club and the title song instantly playing is just such a sudden jolt of pure trashy excitement. It is honestly one of my favourite starts to a film I have ever seen.

Then the movie begins. Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! is unique so far in my anthology of action movies as it is the first film reviewed that I had not previously seen before. I knew nothing about the film at all aside from the fact there are three women who kick arse in it. I was hoping and expecting a mixture of the Planet Terror/Death Proof Grindhouse films that were inspired by this and other exploitation movies, and wanting a story where our heroes encounter chauvinistic male pigs and righteously beat them to a bloody pulp. Instead what we got was our supposed heroes killing a man for no reason at all and then kidnapping his girlfriend before they pass her like a dutchie to a lecherous rapist old man in order to distract him whilst they look to find and steal his money. My opening paragraph with its borrowing of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre tagline was a tongue-in-cheek attempt to turn this movie into a horror film as it’s the only way to look at Faster Pussycat to really to make sense of it all.

So-called ‘King of the nudies’ director Russ Meyer made a lot of exploitation movies, all with big chested women and a lot of them with nudity, yet here is a movie which to a lot of people is a feminist classic. Yes none of the women in Faster Pussycat show their breasts in this film but how did one of cinemas most prolific producer of exploitation skin-flicks manage to direct a movie that so many women love? In my opinion it is completely by accident. Russ Meyer, if you take his words at face value, was a disgusting misogynistic dinosaur, having been quoted as having said that a woman’s place is in the kitchen or in the bedroom and that sex is only for men to enjoy. So it seems incredibly unlikely to me that he would make a movie that empowers women on purpose. More likely he just found the idea of buxom women in miniskirts and knee-high boots, driving fast sports cars and going on a killing spree to be sexy and just wrote a quick script, hired the first three gorgeous ladies he found and made a movie. Now that is what you call a passion project. It’s commendable in a way.

Oh yeah, the murders. See that’s what I find strange about the way the ladies of this picture are so beloved. Yeah, they have great dialogue, really great in fact, but they are all freaking psychos. Okay so Billie (Williams) is the lesser of three evils and I have to say that I did love her character. After seeing the first three Bond movies, and to a lesser extent North by Northwest, where the main females were basically a prize for our hero to bed, here we have Billie being the one to pursue the guys- “want to look under my hood?” Of course the main guy she’s hitting on is a mentally handicapped man called ‘Vegetable’ (yes, really), but if we try and ignore that a film showing a woman be this forward and independent “I do whatever feels good” in a movie in 1964 was quite excellent. Also Williams brought a really fun, bubbly personality to this role and at risk of sounding as creepy as the director she is one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen put on film. Then there’s Rosie (Haji) who like Billie is guilty of being an accessory to murder, but also of the crime of having an awful Italian accent. Not going to lie, I loved it and laughed every time she spoke.

That brings us to our main character Varla, the hero villain of the film. Donning a black catsuit that shows off as much cleavage as humanly possible this woman is a furious wrecking ball of contempt and pure id. All her lines of dialogue are almost spat out as if the very idea of having to talk to people displeased her. If she is indeed the dangerous, violent, personification of sex the opening introduction warned us about then you should be very afraid indeed. Everyone it seems is scared of her, including friend and possible lover Rosie, and those that aren’t scared by her wind up becoming her victims. Heck, even Varla’s eyebrows look terrified of her and seem to be trying to escape from her face. They are ludicrous. We are never given a reason as to why she’s so angry or why she kills Tommy at the start, but it is notable that she twice gives Tommy a chance to get back into his car and twice he continues to fight her instead. Perhaps he underestimated her in the same way that the old, creepy, lecherous disabled man (played by Russ Meyer, sorry I mean Stuart Lancaster) did and his pride was wounded because she was a female and it was that which cost him his life.

But perhaps Varla doesn’t needs a motive for all of her pent-up rage I guess? To quote Scream’s Billy Loomis “Did Norman Bates have a motive? Did Hannibal Lecter have a motive?” But the lyrics of the theme tune might give a bit of a clue- “It’s sad she doesn’t see what’s wrong from right/She’s running fast and free child of the night/in her life will be no time for love/You’ll never take her make up your mind/You will find Pussycat is living reckless/Pussycat is riding high/If you think you can take her well just you try/Yeah just you try.” Yeah, there’s no taming this reckless pussycat. I do get why women like her character in way thanks her wild devil-may-care spunky attitude, but I actually think the real one they should look to is Linda. Played by sixteen year old future Playmate Susan Bernard Linda is the helpless victim for almost the entire film and risks either being murdered, raped, or both the whole movie but is actually her that kills Varla in the end by running her over with a car. Kirk (Paul Trinka), son of the old man and brother to Vegetable and the only other good person in the film aside from Linda and her late boyfriend, thanks Linda for saving his life, but as Linda more accurately puts it that she didn’t save his life, she saved her own. They then drive off to the excellent theme tune as the credits roll.

So after all that, was the film actually any good? From a technical standpoint no. No it’s not. When I was watching I reacted just like Crusty the Clown when he sees Worker & Parasite, the Eastern European replacement for The Itchy and Scratchy Show, “What the hell was that?” However that being said I have not been able to get this movie, or the theme tune, out of my head since I first watched it and immediately wanted to see it again. I loved the end of the movie and adored the start and I like the middle the more I think about it. So yeah, I am going to surprise myself and give this a decent score.

7/10- As Billie would say- It was a gas.

Best quote: “Well you won’t find it down there Colombus!” says Varla to a gas attendant is talking to her about finding America while unabashedly starring directly at her tits. Yeah, she is pretty cool.

Best scene: Linda finally killing Varla and her and Kirk driving off to the sweet Bostweeds song.

Kick-ass moment: The opening narration with the sudden cut to the go-go dancing and the title song. Just so darn awesome.


Next time on A Bloody Tomorrow The Man with no Name has a fistful of dollars, but he now wants A Few Dollars More.

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