Faster
Pussycat! Kill!… Kill!..
“Fugitive/chicks
on the Lam?” This movie is pure exploitation/sexploitation ecstasy:
and everything works well, the look of it, the cars, the
rockin’ music, the editing—creating a kind of mod '60s
time capsule.
Three restless strippers
take to the dessert, looking for trouble and drama.
“Belted, buckled and booted!” yowls the original film poster
tag (a reproduction of which is on my wall, of course).
“Russ Meyer’s Ode To the Violence in Women … filmed in glorious
Black and Blue!”
This movie occupies a delirious
universe all it’s own. And it seems to exist apart from any
movie before it. Like it sort of came out of nowhere. It’s
great fun since of course the gals in it don’t behave
“as ladies should.”
Tura Satana
offered an early model for my lead, Dolores, as
an active protagonist, one who brays and acts inappropriately
whenever possible. You may not dig her at first, but you can’t
stop being entertained and even admiring her nerve.
Is she supposed to be a villain, an anti-hero, or just a rebel? You don't know.
Like much of sexploitation, “Faster Pussycat”
offers an alternate reality, a dream-like dimension, where
female characters are allowed to be physically
dynamic in unlikely and fun ways. It's an intoxicating freedom for a writer—and
a challenge—to create a similar world.
Yeah, sexploitation/exploitation,
as I see it, is like a vacation from drab reality.
Finally, I need to mention
the lesbian overtones in Faster Pussycat, which for a film in
the mid-'60s was probably pretty daring and which makes for
some interesting interpersonal conflict between the characters. (Something I took note of, of course.)
Opening narration: “Ladies
and gentlemen, welcome to violence, the word and the act. While
violence cloaks itself in a plethora of disguises, its favorite
mantle still remains... sex. Violence devours all it touches,
its voracious appetite rarely fulfilled. Yet violence doesn't
only destroy, it creates and molds as well. Let's examine closely
then this dangerously evil creation, this new breed encased and
contained within the supple skin of woman. The softness is there,
the unmistakable smell of female, the surface shiny and silken,
the body yielding yet wanton. But a word of caution: handle with
care and don't drop your guard. This rapacious new breed prowls
both alone and in packs, operating at any level, any time, anywhere,
and with anybody. Who are they? One might be your secretary, your
doctor's receptionist... or a dancer in a go-go club!”
