Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

Awesome 60's go-go women, music and thrills, but childish script and melodramatics

Released in 1965 and conceived & directed by Russ Meyer, "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" is a campy melodrama/crime thriller starring Tura Satana as a sneering vixen who, along with her two go-go dancing pals (Haji & Lori Williams), entertain themselves in their spare time by hot rodding in the desert. After a mishap wherein the trio apprehend a winsome bikini girl (Susan Bernard) they smell easy money at a remote ranch in the desert, inhabited by a rich old man (Stuart Lancaster) and his two sons (Dennis Busch & Paul Trinka). Ray Barlow plays a "nice boy" desert racer while Michael Finn is on hand as a gabby gas station attendant.

The movie has a big reputation as a cult flick and Meyer's definitive film, along with 1970's "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls," so I was very interested in finally viewing it. The first 20 minutes or so are fun and entertaining in a swingin' 60s kind of way, highlighted by the voluptuous female cast in which Meyer takes full advantage in illustrating their beauty (no nudity). The music, cars, apparel and thrills are additional highpoints.

Unfortunately, once the women happen upon the ranch with the mad "Ben Cartwright" and "Hoss" & "Adam" (sorry, no "Little Joe") the lousy writing and corresponding eye-rolling histrionics manifest. It's as if Meyer and fellow writer Jackie Moran were attempting to make a mid-60s desert version of one of Tennessee Williams melodramas, but didn't have the writing expertise or professional cast to pull it off. As such, the story loses the viewer's interest and you're left to laughing at the exaggerated antics and trying to enjoy the attractions noted above. Being shot in B&W doesn't help matters.

For a better movie that treads similar terrain (albeit with a wholly different plot) I suggest the contemporaneous "Village of the Giants," which was released a mere 2½ months after "Faster" and is in glorious color. The women are just as good, if not better, and the music is superior, not to mention it lacks an utterly scornful one-dimensional she-devil (don't get me wrong, Tura's great, but her character is so one-note disdainful it gets old after 25 minutes and you just want someone, ANYONE, male or female, to knock her silly). "Village" also doesn't pretentiously try to be a serious 60's tragedy à la "A Streetcar Named Desire" in the desert.

The movie runs 83 minutes and was shot in the Mojave Desert (Lake Isabella, Lake Cunniback, Johannesburg, Randsburg & Ollie Pesch's Musical Wells Ranch) and Van Nuys (The Pussycat Club), California.

GRADE: C+