A trio of trashy go-go dancers raise hell in the California desert, popping pills, abusing sports cars and starting fights. The blonde is only there to have a good time, steadily downing gulps of liquor and breaking into spontaneous dance, but the others are bonafide black widows, hungry for their next gullible mate. Worst of all is the ringleader, Varla, a spicy vixen whose morals hang lower than her cleavage. Under her direction, the gang murders an unfortunate motor enthusiast and kidnaps his infantile girlfriend before happening across an old, disabled man who sits on a hidden fortune. He and his two grown sons welcome the unexpected visitors, but their hands are hardly clean, either, and a race soon commences to the grimy bottom of the barrel.

It’s sex and drink and violence, then more sex and violence, from the self-anointed king of the smutty ‘60s exploitation bomb, Russ Meyer. The writer/director/producer got his start shooting centerfolds for _Playboy_ before moving into low-budget feature films like this one, which often shouted from the marquees using ample exclamation and titillated from the poster rows using ample bosom. Meyer pulled his starlets from familiar talent pools - Susan Bernard, who plays the abductee in this picture, would go on to be Miss December ’66 - and constructed most shots as if he were framing his next two-page spread. The name of the day was shock value, and whether it took blood or skin to get there, Meyer was always game.

He also leaned on his girls to bring a little piece of themselves to the production. And while that was certainly the case for star Tura Satana, who plays the conniving Varla (her Wikipedia bio is quite the ride), that cocky, self-assured toughness feels forced and fake on the screen. All three women spit their lines like testy cats and strut across the sand like they own it. I’m not sure what seems more artificially inflated: their attitudes or their outrageously pushed-up chests. At the time, there was probably a shred of empowerment in these roles - after all, they more than hold their own in the action scenes - but in a modern light they look downright comical.

_Faster, Pussycat_ works as soft erotica, and as a relic of campy shock cinema, but not much else. I’d love to hear what Joel, Crow and Tom Servo had to say about this one. It seems tailor-made for their brand of comedy.