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Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
Queer cult classic at the IFC Center
Josie, she ain’t (Photo: deep-focus.com)
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The IFC Center is bringing Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! to the big screen as part of the QUEER/ART/FILM series. This sizzling “sexploitation” flick set deep in the desert offers a glimpse at an important moment in American sexual history. Three curvaceous weird sisters (who are not related by blood) exit their shifts as go-go dancers and set out in hotrods to prevail over the Southwest and gender norms. The movie is sex sandwiched between hardy slices of violence. “Welcome to violence,” narrates an urgent voice at the opening of the film. “Let’s examine closely, then, this dangerous and evil creation, this new breed, encased and contained within the supple skin of woman.” The opening narration cuts to the three heroes, breasts undulating, hips gyrating as a large man shouts, “Go! Go, baby, GO!”
It’s a non-stop thrill ride from this exhilarating opening onward. The three dancers—Billie (Lori Williams), Rosie (Haji) and Varla (Tura Satana)—race their two-door sports cars out to a desert oasis, where Billie displays her dance moves to the sneers and jeers of the Sapphic duo accompanying her. When “All-American boy” Tommy (Ray Barrow) shows up on the flats with girlfriend Linda (Sue Bernard) to test the speed of his MG, Varla can’t resist challenging him to a race.
Varla, the leader of the three and the most domineering, represents more than any other the violence the narrator warned us of. After forcing Tommy off the race track, she starts a fist fight with the pretty-boy that ends with a stripper boot breaking his back with a loud snap and killing him instantaneously. The homicide sends the three girls and lone witness, kidnapped Linda, on a road adventure that precursors almost all female dominated road films. Billie, Rosie and Varla take aim at the established patriarchy with an anarchic femininity of Amazonian proportion, stealing, seducing and stabbing their way through the men that cross their path.
To say the film is a cult classic is understatement. John Waters once wrote that Russ Meyer’s magnum opus is “the greatest film of all time.” The satirical campy dialogue and reconfiguring of gender norms exemplified by the characters of the Pussycats can be recognized in the styles of third-wave feminism, Quentin Tarantino, punk culture, pornography and even Roger Ebert, who, early in his career, penned the script to Meyer’s feature, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.
History aside, the showing at IFC is sure to envelop the viewer in dreamy fantasy filled with fast cars, violence and three 1960’s Playboy models that did a great deal to change the way we think about gender in our culture. The screening is one night only: Tonight, July 26, at 8 p.m. Head to ifccenter.com for more details.