***Update: Name corrected.
Russ Meyer’s 1965 drive-in classic “Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!”, is probably my favorite cult film, a true cult film that shouldn’t work on any level and somehow completely transcends its cheapie exploitation roots and transforms into something that makes you deliriously giddy and glad to be alive. Tura Satana playing the sexy, curvy and explosively violent Varla completely straight with that larger-than-life (literally) presence of hers is crucial to the film’s legendary and immortal status. Satana appeared in other films, most notably Billy Wilder’s “Irma la Douce,” and claims she once turned down a proposal of marriage from Elvis Presley, but “Pussycat” made her an immortal and vice versa. More from the New York Times:
Her breakthrough role came in “Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!”, a [Russ] Meyer exploitation film that, in stark opposition to the director’s later works, featured no nudity. In that film, Ms. Satana played Varla, the leader of a gang of go-go dancers who kidnap a couple, murder the boyfriend and force the girlfriend to follow them on further lawless adventures.
Ms. Satana’s portrayal of Varla as a brazenly violent but unapologetically feminine woman who frequently upbraids the men who dare to ogle her — when a gas-station attendant tells her he believes in “seeing America first,” Varla replies, “You won’t find it down there, Columbus!” — earned her a cult following that endured long after the drive-in era.
John Waters once said of “Faster, Pussycat”: It’s “the best movie ever made, and possibly better than any movie that will ever be made.”
If you catch me on the right day, I’ll agree with that wholeheartedly.
Rest in peace, Varla.
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