Tura Satana, best known for her role as Varla in Russ Meyer's classic Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, died on Friday of heart failure (maybe...?). It's always weird to hear about the death of someone who had been mostly inactive careerwise for years and years (had she died five years ago, I would have seen just as much of her as I actually did in the five years since). Death has a way of breathing life into the relevance of the person it befalls, but Tura's bio has always been worth another look. What a life it was! The role that won her the respect of aspiring boss broads and the men (and women!) who love them, was just a scene in the exploitation film that was her life. In her autobiography (as related by Jimmy McDonough's indispensable Big Bosoms and Square Jaws: The Biography of Russ Meyer, King of the Sex Film), she talks about being gang raped at 9, learning a variety of martial arts (green belt in aikido, black belt in karate) and then, over the course of the next 15 years, exacting revenge on each of her assailants. "They never knew who I was till I told them," she wrote in her as-yet-unpublished manuscript, The Kick-Ass Life of Tura Satana. Maybe now it'll be released and given the Tarantino treatment it's calling out for.
Whether that tale is tall or true is beside the point -- her biography couldn't be anything but larger than life, if she was, as her Faster Pussycat! co-star Lori Williams described her, "a force of nature." Without a question, she was something to be reckoned with on screen (all shrieking, chopping, throwing-her-head-back-cackling) and off -- on record, she's the only actress who successfully broke Meyer's no-sex rule. (He required his actors to be abstinent while filming so that their aggression and passion came out on screen.) She talks about that in the video above (from a bonus feature on the UK rerelease of Faster Pussycat!), as well as bullying Susan Bernard just as much when the cameras were off as she did when they were on. Tura was such a bad ass that if you weren't a method actress, she'd make you one anyway.
The life of a B-movie actress is a sad thing to survey -- they aren't even given the decency of being chewed up and spit out. It's more like half-chewed. Because she contributed so much to the character of Varla (for a control freak, Meyer was oddly open to suggestion), it's not hard to imagine that her goals aligned with her character's -- when she's asked what she wants, Varla breathes, "Everything...or as much as I can get." In the scheme of Hollywood, that didn't turn to be much. But maybe that doesn't matter -- she said that Russ and the film helped her realize her "own true worth." I think that goes for all of us.
Amazing woman. Watched Faster Pussycat for the first time last summer and dressed up as Varla for Halloween. Nobody got it.
There will never be another Tura Satana. I've no doubt she's already got herself a legion of followers in the afterlife.
Posted by: Sarah | February 07, 2011 at 12:36 PM
She was such an incredible woman. We need more women like her.
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Posted by: injury lawyer phoenix az | March 04, 2011 at 02:15 AM
Wow...I had no idea until I stumbled onto this. As tragic as being attacked so early in her life was...it's seriously bad ass learning a couple styles of martial arts and then returning the favor to your assailants. I'm going to have to dig up Faster Pussycat from my closet in her honor.
Posted by: Christoph Gervane | March 29, 2011 at 10:11 AM
I must say she is an extremely amazing woman. Too bad the world wasn't that kind to her.
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Whether that tale is tall or true is beside the point -- her biography couldn't be anything but larger than life, if she was, as her Faster Pussycat! co-star Lori Williams described her.haha
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