Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965)

Woo-hoo! For as long as I showed interest for eccentric cinema, I anticipated this film. It has the coolest sounding title ever and the posters couldn't look more ravishing. Unfortunately, the Russ Meyer collection is pretty hard to find where I'm from so it took me years to finally purchase it. I own it now and I can say it fully lives up to my expectations. It's a gorgeous film, and typically Meyer. That doesn't mean it's a masterpiece but he has the talent to make words like `trash' sound good. Faster Pussycat Kill kill handles aboutÂ…wellÂ…not all that much, but that's the beauty of it. Three beautiful exotic dancers (with the exact right measurements) revolt against the masculine lifestyle and go out on a rampage. Riding fast cars, provoke men and sweet similar stuff. Leader of the pack is the gorgeous Varla (portrayed by the more than impressive Tura Satana). She's one massive heap of estrogen who kills men with her bare hands and enjoys riding over people with her car. Her two accomplices have a tad bit more humanity in them. They're Lori Williams (a gorgeous looking blond girl) and Haji (her accent alone causes chemical reactions inside a man's body). The lovely threesome ends up among rednecks in a farmhouse, somewhere in the middle of a desert. Meyer's style is a joy for all senses! The film is filled with memorable quote material and the screenplay is very ingenious at times. The male weirdoes in the farmhouse actually pre-date Tobe Hooper's Sawyer family with almost a decade! Faster Pussycat! Kill Kill has pretty much in common with Motor Psycho, a film shot by Meyer in the same year. There's a main villain, ultra-insane and prepared to go all the way while his followers merely fear him, rather than support him. So basicallyÂ…this IS Motor PsychoÂ…but with boobs!! Hey, I'm all for feminism so let's hear it for FASTER PUSSYCAT! KILL KILL!

Fmovies: Expectations were very high when watching this, but its not Russ Meyers best. The superwoman are tough as nails or as a velvet glove dipped in iron as they say, almost all lines of the movie is memorable, Tura Satana and co shouts them out in the coolest fashion and this makes up for the strongest feat of the movie. I promise you'll laugh more than a few times by them..

Its cousin 'Motorpsycho' however was more accomplished than this was. The story doesn't have as much potency (no pun), the girls are good, but not all that and the absurdity reached in 'Supervixens' and 'Motorpsycho' is not reached here.

Its still a campy classic though.

The female characters each represent the different aspects of the female sexuality: innocence, female dominance, intellect, desire for other females, anger at power men have over them, etc. Same with the men. The old man was crippled by trying to save a girl from a train; raging male desire, and get emasculated by that pursuit. He has his new body: son, do his sexual work for him. The women are after his money, a familiar scenario. The other son is male rationality and emotional strength that women really want; a daddy. The film is packed with symbols of human sexuality. New ones emerge with each viewing and interpretation, Very sexy. The story is brilliant and reminiscent of Greek tragedies and Shakespearean lessons.

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! fmovies. The tendency to dismiss Russ Meyer's "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" (1965) as just a cult classic is probably due to the most memorable feature of the film, the girls. First there are the two quintessential Meyer women, Tura Satana and Haji, towering brunettes with enormous breasts who dominate all the men around them; or at least Satana does, Haji's character (with a strange Italian-Mexican accent?) is more focused on Satana than on men. They actually come across as a feminist empowerment fantasy, which is consistent with Meyer's almost exclusive career focus on situations in which women wreak their will upon men.

If they are too extreme for your tastes there is blonde free spirit Lori Williams and air-headed sweet young thing Susan Bernard. While arguably the two prettiest women to have ever graced a film, there is no argument that William's character is the sexiest of all time. Interestingly, it was the sweet-faced Bernard who became a Playboy centerfold just a few months after the movie (December 1966).

But "Pussycat's" greatness comes from the visceral power of Meyer's unusual images (can you say Fellini). Add to this abundant humor, inventive camera angles, fast pacing, clever editing, violence, and a generally amoral cast of characters.

The film gets even better with subsequent viewings, you connect better with the twisted dialogue and the wry humor.

I loved "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" from the beginning, together with its three great main actresses Haji, Lori Williams, but especially the outstanding Tura Satana. The film tells the story of three exotic dancers, who become outlaws, drive fast cars, wear provoking clothes and cheat and beat up men. The only not typical thing about this movie is, that none of the chicks has a nude scene, what is really a pity! On the first view, Russ Meyer´s flick is nothing else but a funny piece of trash from the swinging 60s. But on the second it´s a portrait about the power of female sexuality on men. The sex characteristics differ from the usual stereotypes: the male are the victims, the women are the offenders, who apply their "weapons" unscrupulous to reach their aims. Also they are physically stronger and more cunning than the naive guys in this film. Especially Varla becomes a sexy, but immense violent murder machine and that makes her being one of the most frightening women in the history of cinema! But "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" is more than that: it´s a piece of modern art, every lover of real cult movies or pop art should have seen it! (8/10)

While there are some who argue that it is a pro-feminist flick with lots of social significance, truth is FASTER PUSSYCAT KILL KILL is a very deliberately made bit of ultra-drive-in trash, a movie that glories in all things low-brow, low-rent, and low-neck lined. And it has a cast that makes up for their collective lack of talent with lots of attitude and lots of cleavage.

The story is as hooty as the cast. Tura Satana, she of the lethal chest, leads minions Haji and Lori Williams away from the grind of their jobs at the go-go joint and out into the desert. They race their cars. They wrestle in the water and then in the sand. They dance the watusi. They bump off this guy who shows up wearing plaid shorts. (Given his attire you might read this as a mercy killing.) Then they set their sights on an old lech and his dum-dum sons, hoping to make away with their money. Faster Pussycat indeed! The script is deliberately absurd, with an emphasis on memorable one liners that try to out-cliché all known clichés. But the real attraction here are the "pussycats." It isn't often that you see a 2D movie with 3D effects, but that's exactly what happens when Tura, Haji, Lori, and their six talents hit the screen. These are three big-busted, nip-waisted women with evil attitude, and they sneer, snarl, snap, and slither around the screen with all the aplomb of trailer park drag queens gone bad. It's more "tacky cool" than a 1965 plastic jewelry box explosion.

Now, how much you like this sort of thing really depends on how warped your sense of humor is. Cheap though it is, the thing is remarkably well done, and taken in the right way the combination of trailer-park chic, retro-hysteria, and ultra-attitude is a lot of fun... and when the pussycats hit the screen you may think you're about to get a black eye, and I don't mean from their fists! Breakout the popcorn and some protective glasses: Tura and the Pussycats are coming at ya! GFT, Amazon Reviewer