Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! - A look into exploitation's finest

There's nothing like a good ol' retro exploitation flick. Overplayed melodrama, luscious babes, fast cars, and an absolutely jazzy soundtrack, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! is such a staple of the genre. 

The cool thing about Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! is that it is SUCH inspiration to Tarantino's Deathproof. It always makes me super sad when people trash talk Deathproof, it's always seen as his complete and utter failure. What people don't really notice is that it's his ultimate homage to all things b movie related and cheap slashers. And the soundtrack? Probably his best soundtrack to date. To make matters even worse, upon watching the initial release, people thought there was something wrong with the tape, as nobody realized all the blunt edits and scratches on the film were intentional. Good grief.

Anyways, I digress, and I'll get back into Deathproof later. I'd much rather rant and rave about how absolutely awesome Faster, Pussycat is. And how absolutely dear to me it is. It was made in the 60s, and the amount of girl power in this is absolutely wicked. 

The three main protagonists (or actually pretty much antagonists, in particular Tura Satana who sneers and yells throughout the whole thing) are go-go dancers that race cars in their spare time in the desert. After a lil' incident with a drag racer goes down, the three decide to continue wrecking havoc, this time at a barn, with an old man and his sons. The three girls are honestly divine. Unapologetic females with overtly sexual outfits (Tura's breasts and how they didn't pop out of her top....how is that even possible*) lying and cheating men, what a treat! They totally beat stereotypes too, from driving fast cars, to being more aggressive and cunning than their male counterparts, they're even physically stronger than them!

Russ Meyer is an exploitation master. His films are all about babes, violence, sex, and nudity. The cool thing about Faster Pussycat is that it's his least overtly sexual flick. Yeah, for sure, some scenes are insanely sexy, but there's never any direct nudity. That's pretty awesome in my opinion in a time when cheap exploitation was all skin, skin, skin. It's awesome that after watching some of his other films as well, he does have a distinct style to his work, and that makes him extremely recognizable. That recognizability, and what he's done for exploitation, makes him an influential player, and an important one at that! I really want to take the time and watch The Immoral Mr. Teas, Meyer's first debut at the end of the 50s that started the whole softcore "nudie cutie" craze. Perhaps a review on that next? Eeeeeep, the whole genre gets me excited. I love this sort of thing! 

Honestly, Faster Pussycat is such a gem. I really recommend it to anyone looking for something fun that'll have you smiling throughout. The dialogue is total camp, and the chemestry between the three girls is a treat to watch. Any Tarantino fan should especially watch it, as it's nutty how influenced by this he is. Even at the end of Deathproof, Tarantino leaves us with a little thank you to Meyer.

It's a movie that's completely celebrated, and spawned a cult following on American campuses when it came out. It was so uniquely original for the 60s, and what's not to love about babely babes, fast cars, and trouble around every corner!

*I legit spent the whole film wondering how many times scenes needed to be re-shot because of Tura's buxom upper half. There's absolutely no way they can be so big and stay in place. What's her secret? How does one accomplish this?