In Memoriam: Tura Satana

Tura Satana, the fastest of all the pussycats, was one hell of a woman. In the world of grindhouse cinema, she stands on a pedestal above Meiko Kaji, Christina Lindberg, Mamie Van Doren and even Pam Grier as the genre's reigning queen. Born in 1938, she spent a portion of her childhood in one of California's interment camps for Japanese Americans, and relocated with her family after WWII to the rough streets of the West Side of Chicago. She was the subject of frequent racial and sexual harassment due to her Asian heritage and early-blossoming figure, and while walking home from school one day at the age of nine, she was attacked and gang-raped by five men. Over the next fifteen years, she trained in aikido and karate in her time off from working as an exotic dancer, and subsequently tracked down and exacted revenge on all five of her assailants.

It sounds like the plot of a classical exploitation feature along the lines of I Spit On Your Grave, but it's her true life story. And there are even more incredible chapters - she turned down a marriage proposal from Elvis Presley (it seems that between her and the still-going-strong Wanda Jackson, the King had a thing for take-no-crap women) and photographed by former silent star Harold Lloyd, who encouraged her to try acting.

After various bit parts in Irma La Douce, Our Man Flint, "The Man from U.N.C.L.E.," "Burke's Law," and various other films and shows, she won the role of Varla, the leader of a gang of thrill-and-kill-crazed go-go dancers in Russ Meyer's seminal Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! Meyer, who specialized in sensational yet oddly progressive sexploitation programmers featuring big-bosomed Amazonians, found his ideal female personified in Satana. Varla is a leather-catsuited thundercloud who delights in humiliating men in drag races and then snapping them in half like twigs. It's largely down to her characterization (if one can call it that; Meyer and numerous others from the set have attested that Satana was merely being herself) that Faster, Pussycat! has achieved its universal cult status and is held up as one of the greatest "trash" films of all time.

She took on two more acting roles in The Astro-Zombies and The Doll Squad, both of which were directed by Ted V. Mikels, and subsequently went to work at a hospital while her legend steadily grew among cult film fans the world over. She came out of retirement in the early 2000s, making cameo appearances in many homages to drive-in cinema, and was said to have been gracious and kind to her numerous fans. On February 4th, 2011, at the age of 72, she was summoned to that great racing drag strip in the sky. They don't make movies like Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! anymore, nor do they make women like Tura Satana. She will be fondly remembered.

Posted by Jack