The best title in movie history is only a small part of why this is an all-time classic. To a score of swaggering guitar riffs and sleazy saxophone blasts, Russ Meyer’s most famous film plays today like an encyclopedia of vintage pulp Cool.
Its lead characters are cinema’s definitive Bad Girls, a trio of vicious and voluptuous lady crooks whose every jiggle and wiggle across the screen turns most male viewers into Bad Boys merely from looking at them. The script is a master class in trash, with a breathless stream of purple prose patter and where any nonsense can happen at any time as long as it leads to violence or sex. The low-budget production lends an authentic stench to the whole affair. Meanwhile, Meyer’s camera plays the part of a leering and submissive male.
He often takes a low angle, looking up at his stars, as if humbled by Tura Satana’s miles of proud cleavage, and part of the effect is that Meyer frames these women as icons. Their sexuality is power. Stare at their parts all you like. They’re not diminished by it; YOU ARE, you ridiculous man. Tell any of these women here that they’re being exploited and they will beat you half to death.
Let’s talk about the girls. I love ’em all.
The leader of the gang is Tura Satana, an exotic Japanese/Native-American blend blessed with natural dominance and a chest that looks like a whole new world for one to explore. 95% of her performance is delicious over-acting. She also gives us the film’s most bounce-per-minute in a top cut so low that it barely qualifies as a top.
Next is Haji, a part-British/part-Filipino razor edge who speaks in such a ridiculous Italian accent that you can’t help but see her as a Chico Marx parody. In fact, the more you think about it, she turns the whole trio into Meyer’s perverted Marx Brothers. All of the nonsense and wisecracks, plus death, plus boobs. Sounds like a winning formula to me.
Then comes my personal favorite, blonde headcase Lori Williams. She wears tiny white hotpants, dances for no reason (her hip shakes are pure hypnotism) and speaks almost exclusively in lines that sound ripped from Gold Medal paperback covers. Tura is angry, Haji is practical, but Lori is COMPLETELY out of her mind (like, oh, yeah, come to think of it, Harpo Marx). I’m a fan.
Lastly comes Susan Bernard, the busty, bikini-clad hostage who got lost on her way to one of Frankie and Annette’s beach parties and winded up in the clutches of these creeps. She’s the straight woman to the three crazies (much like Zeppo Marx).
As for the men, you almost don’t care, but they turn out to be oddballs in their own right because Russ Meyer can’t stand a boring moment in his movies. At first you think the girls are out to rob some poor wheelchair-bound senior citizen of his hidden fortune, but this old bastard turns out to be just as sordid as them. Let’s also mention his musclebound, mentally disabled son.
So, it’s villain vs. villain in this movie. For whom do you root? Me, I’m siding with the ones who look best naked in the desert sun taking a shower in water from the small town reservoir.