Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965)

Varla, Rosie and Billie are nightclub dancers with attitude. They go out to the desert looking for trouble. They meet Tommy who wants to drive the salt flats and his innocent girlfriend Linda. Varla kills Tommy and they kidnap Linda. They drive onto the property of an old cripple and his muscle-bound slow-minded son, the Vegetable. They supposedly is hiding a money stash. The old man is interested in Linda who manages to escape. She's picked up by Kirk but he turns out to be the old man's son. He brings her back despite her loud objections.This is super camp. There is real bad acting. The line delivery by the girls is horrendous. Russ Meyer picked them mostly for their giant double assets. The fake laugh is laughable. Sue Bernard never stops screaming. Paul Trinka is forced to be dumber than the Vegetable and he's horrible at it. The writing is a mix bag. At times, it's painfully bad. At other times, it is pure cheese heaven. Overall, it is surprisingly watchable and awkwardly hilarious.

Before picking up a boxset of his films in the Christmas sales last year,I had heard about 2 Russ Meyer movies,due to both of the titles later being used as the name for some bands,with Mudhoney being one of the earliest bands from the Grunge sub-genre,and Faster Pussycat being a Hard Rock band,whose music video for the single "Don't change that song" was directed by Russ Meyer!.With having found Mudhoney to be a great,southern-fried Drama,I decided to find out how wild Meyer's cats could be.The plot:Searching round for a place to do some test laps before a big race,Tommy and Linda are pleased to find a deserted desert area,that will give Tommy all the room he needs to run his test laps.Reaching the centre of the area,Tommy and Linda discover 3 parked up cars,that belong to a group of go-go dancers called Varla,Rosie and Billie.Attempting to politely introduce themselves,Tommy and Linda are instead pushed around by the gang,who tell Tommy that if he wants to prove the he is a "real man",then he must go against them in a race,right now.Aggreing to the challenge,Tommy is left dazed and confused after the gang reveal their less than "traditional" driving skills.Taking advantage of the situation,Varla,Rosie and Billie grab Linda,and tell her that they are going to kidnap her,so that they can put Linda up for ransom.Rushing to save his girlfriend from being kidnapped,Tommy inadvertently runs into Varla's deadly karate chops,which lead to Tommy being left for dead,face down in the desert.Filling Linda up with sleeping pills so that she keeps her mouth shut,the gang head to a peteral station,so that they can fill the cars up,and get of there with Linda as quickly as possible.Waiting for the peteral station guy to finish filling up the cars,the gang notice a fellow,wealthy-looking,wheel-chair bound customer being helped into a truck by the man's son.Keeping their interest under wraps,the girls ask the peteral station attendant if he knows anything at all about the man.Taken by the girls sudden interest in local knowledge,the attendant tells the gang that the man lives in an isolated farm house with his two sons,and that their have been rumours going around the town for years that the man is sitting on a suitcase full of cash.Excited over the opportunity of grabbing more cash then she originally expected,Varla tells Rosie and Billie,that before they run off with their bounty in Linda,that it might be a good idea,if they pay this kind,wealthy old man a surprise visit.View on the film:Reuniting with co- screenwriter Jack Moran, (who wrote one of the last titles from Russ Meyer's "Nudie-Cutie" era with Wild Girls of the Naked West)co-writer/co-producer/editor and directing auteur Russ Meyer shows in his eye-catching stylised directing a tremendous skill in combining the cartoon style aspects of his Nudie-Cutie movies,with the Film Noir path that he is currently on,so that Meyer can create an unforgettably wild,cartoon-bonkers,deranged Film Noir.Introducing each of the rough'n tumble amazonian women, (played by the splendid,and very easy on the eye's Haji,Lori Williams and Tura Satana) in a go-go dancing nightclub,Meyer bravely keeps away from building a "safe" centre-ground that the movie can relay on,to instead push everything contained within the film right to the edge of the sanity,with each of the actress's delivering their cracking dialogue with extremely over exaggerated pronunciation,which helps to create an irresistible animated atmosphere.Keeping away from making any of the stunning girls mere 2D characters,Meyer shows a surprising amount of subtly in the way that he reveals the "true" relationship that Varla,Rosie and Billie have with each other,with the relationship between Varla and Rosie being one the is filled with glances that last just that bit too long,which become much more noticeably on repeat viewings of the film. (In an interview on the DVD,Haji mentions that Meyer did not give her the full details of Rosie's relationship with Varla until the movie had finished shooting,due to Meyer wanting the "true" meaning of their relationship to be one that was hidden from the suffice of the film.)Along with the deadly kittens,Meyer and co-writer Jack Moran give the film a strong Horror element,with the old man,who the gang think they'll be able to steal a huge bundle of cash from,being revealed as not being a kind old man at all,but instead being one who is wicked,that also holds some pretty unsettling "family values" close to his heart,which lead to the gang having to risk everything that they have got,in the hopes that they end up becoming the cats who got all of the cream.

The cult of Russ Meyer had its heyday back in the late 70's and 80's when his work was embraced by people as different as John Waters and Roger Ebert, who championed his sex and violence epics as works of art with far greater depth and meaning than their sleazy appearance. It seemed that Meyer's trash was as profound as the serious work of Hollywood's best.But that was a long time ago and the culture has come a long way since then. As a kid, I remember VIXEN and HARRY, CHERRY, and RAQUEL playing at local theaters, but alas, I was far too young to see them. And as I have gotten older, I have learned that nothing ages faster than what was pushing the envelope yesterday.Only recently did I have an opportunity to finally see FASTER, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL! and I can say that while it shows its age, there is much about the film that still holds its own. What makes FASTER, PUSSYCAT! look like a senior citizen: the clothes for one thing; Billie's miniskirt, Tommy's plaid shorts and Linda's bikini all scream 1960's. But more to the point, it is Meyer's leering, dirty old man point of view that makes FASTER, PUSSYCAT feel not only dated, but absolutely ancient. The way he asks us to pant at the sight of these bad girls gone completely out of control reeks of an era when Hugh Hefner was the epitome of hip and daring. What makes FASTER, PUSSYCAT! still have punch: it's depiction of a world devoid of morality and goodness, where almost all the characters are murderous and lecherous; where the only innocent person, Linda, is constantly beaten and victimized by the three go-go dancing amazons or the old man and his mentally damaged son. In this way, FASTER, PUSSYCAT! beats NATURAL BORN KILLERS to the punch by a good thirty years.Meyer got terrific performances out of his actors and actresses that still hold up, especially six foot plus Tura Satana as Varla, the leader of the three bad ass women on a rampage in the desert. Varla, who karate chops Linda's boyfriend to death early in the film, is one of the cinema's all time great female villains, a character with no redeeming attributes beyond the obvious physical ones. She is matched all the way by Lori Williams's Billie, whether she's taking a shower outside under a water tank, getting drunk at lunch or throwing down with Haji's Rosie. And Stuart Lancaster perfectly captures the Old Man's pathetic situation as well as his vileness.And Meyer had a keen eye for the action that was as unique as his gander for the female form; just look at the scene where Varla tries to crush the muscle bound Vegetable with her car, there's nothing quite like in any other movie.To answer my question, yes, FASTER, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL! holds up pretty well, kind of like an old Ford Mustang whose paint is chipped and fender's dented, but whose motor still purrs like a pussycat.

Grindhouse At Its Best! I've only recently gotten into Russ Meyer films and I find him to be one of the most underrated screenwriters ever. His films are a lot more than just sex and violence. Sure there's plenty of it. But it's done within the context of original characters and gripping stories that keep you hanging on to every last scene.One forgotten aspect of the grindhouse genre is the lack of profanity. While 1965 standards didn't allow four letter words Russ Meyer out smarts the sensors by proving just how imaginative he can be with sexual innuendos and dirty insults. Much like Frank Miller comics. It's much more imaginative than just the same old, "F you mother effer." The plot: Three bad girl beauties Varla, Rosie, and Billie are on the hunt for trouble in the deserts of the South West.After drag racing a couple, Varla beats the boyfriend to death just for kicks, and the trio keep his innocent girlfriend as their new plaything.A gas station attendant tells the girls about an elderly man "The old Man" whom recently got a huge cash settlement from the railroad after an accident left him paralyzed. The girls drive out to his desert ranch looking for a big and easy score.What they don't know is The Old Man lives with his two slow witted sons the peaceful Kirk and the dumb ox Vegetable. Ever since being paralyzed the family has been picking up pretty girls to murder for fun.It's the bad girls versus the psycho guys! Each thinking they're smarter than the other by pretending to be something they're not.