How Faster, Pussy­cat! Kill! Kill! became an unlike­ly fem­i­nist classic

Karate! Boda­cious racks! Badass babes! Faster, Pussy­cat, Kill! Kill! has every­thing you could ever want from a B‑movie, right down to the fran­tic jazz sound­track. Its lega­cy endures today, but the film was not well received on its release in 1965.

Back then, sex­u­al atti­tudes were becom­ing more lib­er­al, but many sec­ond wave fem­i­nists protest­ed against pornog­ra­phy and free love. Any film by self-con­fessed ​‘breast man’ and skin flick auteur Russ Mey­er was nev­er going to find many fans among this audi­ence. But 50 years lat­er, atti­tudes have changed and his films are enjoy­ing some­thing of a reap­praisal among feminists.

In an arti­cle for Vil­lage Voice, queer-fem­i­nist film crit­ic B Ruby Rich spoke about her ini­tial hat­ed the film, dis­miss­ing it as exploita­tive, trashy, objec­ti­fy­ing soft-core porn, a piece of work steeped in misog­y­ny. Thir­ty years lat­er, she famous­ly revis­it­ed it, re-eval­u­at­ed it and changed her opin­ion. Her polar­is­ing expe­ri­ence is symp­to­matic of the shift in atti­tudes towards sex­u­al­i­ty – a lot hap­pened between 1965 and 1991, includ­ing the fem­i­nist sex wars of 1970s, and the result­ing sex­u­al­ly pro­gres­sive views of third-wave feminists.

Faster, Pussy­cat! is now con­sid­ered a sem­i­nal fem­i­nist work, part­ly due to its smoul­der­ing star, the icon­ic Var­la (Tura Satana). She cuts an impos­ing fig­ure both in terms of her looks and atti­tude, with her tow­er­ing stature and slick kabu­ki eye­brows, all-black cat suit, leather gloves and boots. She can dri­ve bet­ter than any man, she can fight, and she looks like she could take you down. The fury of her per­for­mance, Satana has said, was drawn from the real-life abuse she expe­ri­enced – her past is as colour­ful as any movie character’s, and her rage through­out Faster, Pussy­cat! feels pow­er­ful, hon­est and cathartic.

How many ​’60s films have you seen where women get to smoke, drink, dri­ve and fight? How about where women out­smart and over­pow­er men? Even more impor­tant­ly, how about a film where women exist inde­pen­dent­ly from men? It’s this that tru­ly makes Faster, Pussy­cat! a fem­i­nist clas­sic. It’s not real­ly about the man-crush­ing vio­lence (although that adds to the fun) – it’s the excit­ing, exag­ger­at­ed hero­ines, led by Var­la, tak­ing charge of their own destiny.

But the ques­tion remains: can a film be con­sid­ered tru­ly fem­i­nist if it wasn’t ini­tial­ly intend­ed to be so? Russ Mey­er claims to have nev­er had a fem­i­nist agen­da – the direc­tor famous­ly cit­ed his two main rea­sons for cre­at­ing films as ​“lust and prof­it”, and his lust just so hap­pens to involve pow­er­ful women humil­i­at­ing men. But that doesn’t real­ly mat­ter. It’s okay to gloss over author­i­tar­i­an intent. Art is always val­ued through the eyes of the behold­er, and great art becomes more than the author intends because it only exists in the viewer’s inter­pre­ta­tions. Yes, Faster, Pussy­cat! is an artic­u­la­tion of Meyer’s lust. But who cares? It’s Satana’s film, anyway.