p e n g u i n d e v i l

Sad how it’s taken me two years to get just a third of the way through my glorious 18 movie Russ Meyer boxed set, but, in what is hopefully the first step in proceeding in a more productive fashion, I have finally gotten around to watching another! I have set up a page to track my RM progress here :RM Project. And now, presented in non-glorious black and white, his most famous feature, Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill! is a family-friendly, tale of debauchery, sin and (as Russ might say) evil out under the hot California sun. With a cast of about a dozen and taking place over the course of one day in the desert entirely out of doors (except for a few scenes in a worn out house), this classic begins as usual with his always reliable gimmicky dramatic narration about sin (“Welcome to violence, the word and the act”) which again informs us that we are going to see a sordid tale of sin, sex, greed and violence all wound together tightly. We know what to expect before even the first scene appears on the screen.





When three hard-edged, hard-driving, car-racing, Go-Go dancers encounter a happy-go-lucky couple out racing in the desert, the tough automotive egos unfold under the hot sun and things start getting ugly. When the fella beats the gang at their racing game, then things get really ugly. Off the girls go: Varna (Tura Satana as the alpha gang leader), Rosie (Haji as the girl with a thing for Tura) and Billie (the rebel) across the desert… With the racing fella’s girlfriend in tow.





Of course, things are just starting. When Billie catches a glimpse of a muscle-bound hunk at the gas station and his crippled father, off the girls head in pursuit of some ill-gotten gains. But they don’t know what they are up against as they cross paths with this family of three men in the desert, especially the father (Stuart Lancaster in his second of many Meyer appearances) who is most certainly part of the mold for which the father in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre must have been taken.





Of course, the desert ends up littered with bodies as we are shown this fable of cars versus cars, cars versus will, cars versus wheel chair and cars versus human strength… Tura Satana and Stuart Lancaster put in classic roles as two foul souls who will stop at nothing to get what they want and everyone else suffers between them. Not one of my favorite Meyer movies, but certainly action-packed and a must see for anyone.