Voluptuous Vixens Are Violently Violated by Varla!

"I never try anything. I just do it. And that includes beating people, dig? Want to try me?" Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! is a 1965 sexploitation gem directed by Russ Meyer, who was celebrated in a song by Indianapolis punk rock legends Sloppy Seconds on their 1994 album Knock Yer Block Off! where B.A. croons wistfully that "all I want, is a Meyer girl..." If so, he might find the whole lot of them "more trouble than they're worth."

Pussycat's girls are wild go-go queens, who begin the film (after the stupid opening narration), by shimmy-shammying around while drunken roughnecks and old fat man slobber and drool over drinks, shouting stuff like "Go! Baby! Go!," and generally making asses of themselves. Everything is shot at turn-the-camera-sideways comic book angles. But the four-color fun doesn't end there. (The film is black-and-white, but it's a reference to comic strips, which is essentially what this film is the cinematic equivalent of. Or maybe a bad, low-rent pulp novel from 1965.)

So the chicks pull out onto the hot desert sands and Tura "Varla" Satana establishes herself, right from the get-go, as the undisputed Femme Bitch Top, and the other two, the busty, curvy blonde (Lori Williams) and the swinging Italian Rosie, played by "Haji" (you know she's such "because-a the way she-a talk-a," all the while flicking her fingers backward across her chin). All of these gals are straight Hot Rod Dames, curvier than a mountain pass, and all of them are spitfires, dig?

They pop off at a stop and get into a water fight in a desert hole, and then they drag race some poor shmuck (Ray Barlow) and his jailbait girlfriend (Susan Bernard, who I imagine was in reality eighteen or thereabouts, Mr. District Attorney), and he gets killed, and the three of them kidnap the princess, whose chief role in this film seems to be running around crying and yelling and wearing nothing but a swimsuit.

They go out to the desert shack of an old man in a wheelchair (Stuart Lancaster) who has a muscle-bound son. (One is reminded of Patrick McGee and David Prowse in A Clockwork Orange, six years later. Making one wonder: was Kubrick a fan of this film? Perish the thought.) They make out that the old man has a stash of loot hidden, and he gets chummy with the princess, whom everybody wants to kidnap and keep hostage, and then his other son tries to escape with her and gets creamed.

Tura/Varla kills the blonde by throwing a knife. I'm not sure what the plot here was, but it all ends in tragedy. Or triumph, depending upon your perspective. The visual candy of Tura and the gals (but the black-clad Miss Satana will catch your eye the most, we assure you) is enough to recommend this picture (everyone exposing huge double-barreled talents out under the hot California sun). But there is a teensy bit of PLOT (boo hiss!) to get in the way. Dialog is (as has been previously noted) cringe-worthy and laughable ("My motor never runs down, baby!") but Tura, Satan rest her soul (hey, it is her name, dig?), is such a predatory cold-hearted, high-octane dragon lady bee-otch that whatever shortcomings the film has pale in comparison to the high camp entertainment value. And, well, hooters. Huge, huge, huge...eh, forgive us. We forgot ourselves.

On the whole, the Pussycat's purr is heard loud and clear here, until the bitter end. There's a reason such films become cult classics. On the one hand, their campy, quirky, think-outside-the-box story and aesthetics appeal to the most jaded of cinematic tastes. On the other, they never seem quite "up to snuff" when compared to the more run-of-the-mill cinematic offal.

Wikipedia, that august cyber institute of unimpeachable and completely unbiased TRUTH, states that Faster, Pussycat was a "flop" when released in 1965. I ask you: What the hell did those gazoonies know back then, huh?

Sixty years later, this pussy tastes better than ever. Er, pussycat. Okay? Don't go getting all True Grit on my ass.

As Rosie might say, "Ciao!"

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965) ORIGINAL TRAILER [HD 1080p]