Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! is a 1965 American action-comedy film about three go-go dancers holding a young girl hostage that come across a crippled old man living with his two sons in the desert.
Directed by Russ Meyer (Up!; Supervixens; Mudhoney; et al) from a screenplay by Jack Moran, based on Meyer’s storyline, the movie stars Tura Satana (The Astro-Zombies), Haji, Lori Williams and Ray Barlow.
Plot:
Sadistic go-go dancers Varla (Tura Satana), Rosie (Haji) and Billie (Lori Williams) as they break free from the nightclub where they perform and race out to the desert to stir up a little mayhem.
After karate expert Varla kills an innocent man, the voluptuous trio takes his girlfriend (Susan Bernard) hostage as they attempt to wheedle a hidden fortune from a misogynistic old man (Paul Trinka) and his muscle-bound, brain-damaged son (Dennis Busch).
Reviews:
“Every inch of the film entertains, from the wild desert drag racing sequences to the sexually charged fried chicken lunch that the characters stop fighting each other long enough to share. Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! has a deliciously ruthless rhythm that few films of such modest aspirations ever achieve — it could very well be the most finely crafted exploitation film ever made.” All Movie
“The director’s distinctive editing style, so commonplace today but so unusual for its time, is scarcely apparent in this movie. Also, Meyer’s films tend to share a ribald and genuinely funny sense of humor that here gets usurped by a mean and nasty impulse that tends to block out the humor and exaggeration.” Austin Chronicle, June 9, 1995, re-release
“It is surprisingly violent at points, but the sensual nature is quite timid in comparison to modern films. The movie’s powerful women give it a strange […] nature that is part of the appeal for fans. Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! is campy, goofy, and worth seeking out…” Basement Rejects
“Meyer directs the film like a live-action comic book, with characters shouting their larger-than-life dialogue so convincingly you expect to see word balloons pop up. More compelling than Meyer’s trademark attention-grabbing editing style is his cinematography. Every frame is carefully composed and resembles a comic book frame to the T…” DVD Drive-In
“How many ’60s films have you seen where women get to smoke, drink, drive and fight? How about where women outsmart and overpower men? Even more importantly, how about a film where women exist independently from men? It’s this that truly makes Faster, Pussycat! a feminist classic.” Little White Lies
“At its core, this is a movie about hot chicks in fast cars who beat people up and fight with each other in tight-fitting outfits that emphasize their giant breasts. Read more into it than that if you want, but for some of us, that’s enough.” Rock! Shock! Pop!
“Take away all the jokes, the elaborate camera angles, the violence, the action and the sex, and what remains is the quintessential Russ Meyer image: a towering woman with enormous breasts, who dominates all the men around her, demands sexual satisfaction and casts off men in the same way that, in mainstream sexual fantasies, men cast aside women.” Roger Ebert, March 24, 1995, re-release
” …it’s funniest when its dialogue and characters’ behaviour are at their most non sequitur. The twaddle some plot about the cover-up of a man’s murder by the (lesbian) leader of this girlie gang is helped enormously by a brooding music score which sounds as if it had walked in from a paranoid Cold War sci-fi film; and the weirdo desert farmhouse family the trio happen upon pre-dates The Texas Chain Saw Massacre by almost a decade.” Time Out London
Cast and characters:
Tura Satana … Varla
Haji … Rosie
Lori Williams … Billie
Ray Barlow … Tommy
Sue Bernard … Linda (as Susan Bernard)
Michael Finn … Gas Station Attendant (as Mickey Foxx)
Dennis Busch … The Vegetable
Stuart Lancaster … The Old Man
Paul Trinka … Kirk
Technical details:
1 hour 23 minutes
Audio: Mono
Black and white
Aspect Ratio: 1.37: 1
