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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