Faster Pussycat

Today is Tura Satana's birthday - she played Varla in Russ Meyer's 1965 film, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!.

John Waters, director of Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, and Hairspray, has stated that this is his favorite film: "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! ... is, beyond a doubt, the best movie ever made."

I have to agree.

This movie has the essential elements - Plot, drama, dialogue, violence and fashion.

Three thrill-seeking go-go dancers — Billie (Lori Williams), Rosie (Haji), and their leader, Varla (Tura Satana) — encounter a young couple in the desert while drag racing. After killing the boyfriend (Ray Barlow) with her bare hands, Varla drugs, binds, gags and kidnaps his girlfriend, Linda (Susan Bernard). This fight scene inspired an amazing editorial in Italian Vogue's June 1999 issue ph: Steven Meisel. Faster Pussycat was shot was shot in black & white on location in the desert outside Los Angeles during days above 100 degrees and freezing nights. The color photography of the editorial vividly captures the heat & dust of the desert. The couple in the editorial are not strangers in a violent fight - they seem to be lovers in a struggle, that ends in an embrace.