Wallflower Press’ Cultographies are to cult flicks what the
33 1/3 series is to classic albums: focused studies teeny enough to shove in
your breast pocket. So perhaps it is appropriate that the series’ first new
title to slink into print in a year and a half is devoted to Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! You know,
because Russ Meyer liked breasts. Hardy-har.
Actually, as open-minded cineastes have realized for quite
some time, Meyer’s masterpiece is more than an ogle-fest, packing themes that
have alternately been labeled feminist, patriarchal, parodic, pro and anti-erotic.
For the most part, writer Dean J. DeFino wisely steps back to allow these
themes to make their cases and exit stage left instead of forcing theories down
our throats, because to do so when dealing with the work of a filmmaker as apolitical
and instinctive as Russ Meyer would be kind of silly. Not that DeFino never
allows his academia to get out of hand. An extended comparison with satyr plays
brings the momentum to a labored halt for a chapter comprising a quarter of
this 100-page book. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the casting of Varla
and her gang of pussycats as Dionysian figures and the men they conquer as weak
and wanton satyrs. It’s just that the rest of Cultographies: Faster,
Pussycat! Kill! Kill! revs out so much good stuff about the film’s genesis,
production, position in sixties culture, reception, impact, and cult qualifications that I wanted to
bust out of the college classroom and back out on the road, Daddy-O!
I was also greatly appreciative of/frustrated by DeFino’s
detailing of how poorly served this film has been on home video. Faster, Pussycat! is the KA-BOOM! at the impact point between
exploitation and art house cinema. It’s too bad this boldly and beautifully
shot picture is not readily available in quality much better than a YouTube
stream. Is it too much to hope that DeFino’s book might raise some interest in
correcting that wrong?
