THE FEMINISM OF FASTER PUSSYCAT! KILL KILL! AND BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS

by Sam Ellefson

Still from Criterion edition of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, https://www.criterion.com/films/28120-beyond-the-valley-of-the-dolls

Russ Meyer’s flicks are overtly distinguishable in style and tone. The sexploitation auteur who soared in the ‘60s and ‘70s is known for his cult classics and his ability to transcend independent filmmaking and enter in full-force into the studio landscape, all while retaining his personal flair. 

With three of his films under my viewing belt — Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, Vixen! and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls — I contend that Meyer was a master of creating an enamoring diegetic environment, which often rejected his time’s traditional norms of gender and sexuality by bolstering independent women characters. 

Although Meyer has rejected feminist interpretations of his films, there remains undeniable overtones of women empowerment and ownership of one’s own sexuality in his “nudies.” Meyer’s cinematic pursuit of lust and profit, as he put it, inadvertently resulted in undeniably feminist themes in his films. Additionally, his unique camera angles, quirky quips—which oftentimes came from actor improvisation—and kitschy violence help craft a cinematic world of its own, one where women have a firm grip on their own narrative and beat men to a pulp for the fun of it.

Meyer, the renowned, underground provocateur of ‘60s and ‘70s sleaze cinema, has a campy filmography that, at first glance, seems to be riddled with sexist depictions of women. His films tend to have a common quality: women with large breasts. 

The Meyer physical archetype is integral to many of the filmmaker’s works, but these women are not reduced to mere objects that would boost commercial consumption. Meyer’s films habitually center on a woman — or women — that weaponize their sexuality and employ violence to achieve what they want, a cinematic narrative still taboo at the time of many of his film’s releases. 

Cold War anxiety and lingering dogmatic notions of gender and sex from ‘50s conservatism make Meyer’s films subversive in this regard, with many movies in his extensive filmography exemplifying a feminist figure disregarding male patronization by navigating the world at her own will. However, some proponents of second-wave feminism also opposed the free-wheeling sexuality at the forefront of Meyer’s film, as they viewed it as pornographic exploitation, rather than individualized empowerment portrayed on the screen.

Born in Oakland, California in March of 1922 to a nurse mother and a cop father, Russell Albion Meyer began shooting amateUr films at the age of 14. He acted as a cameraman in World War II, making friendships that would last a lifetime. Upon returning to normal life, Meyer shot glamour photos, some of which ended up as Playboy spreads. 

After assisting on some films, Meyer began making his own features, establishing himself as the “King of the Nudies.” Meyer’s 1965 feature, Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, stands out from the rest; a commercial flop upon its release, the film has since been born again as a cult favorite for its hardy women characters, sexualized imagery and slick editing. The film was a followup to Meyer’s Motorpsycho, which follows a motorcycle crew of three men, released in the same year.

Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! follows three go-go dancers on a murder-kidnapping bender in the California desert. Driving fast cars in tight clothing, Billie, Rosie and Varla — all of whom fit into the aforementioned Meyer archetype—use and abuse men at their every whim. Meyer’s women outsmart men, drink and smoke and exert physical prowess over male antagonists until they meet their demise. 

Varla, played by Tura Satana, stands out as the leader of the pack, with high-arched brows and donning skin-tight pants and a black v-neck that dives down nearly to her belly button. Satana, who was a green belt in aikido and a blackbelt in karate, judo, and kendo, explained that she “had to stage the fight scenes because nobody else knew how to do them, and so literally when I did the fight scenes, I really had to pick up each and every one of those guys and carry them through in order for them to look realistic. Basically I had to lay one guy on the floor because he was afraid he was going to get hurt.”

B. Ruby Rich, the prolific feminist film critic who coined the term New Queer Cinema in 1992, wrote a scathing review of Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, denouncing the film as sexist hogwash that abjectly objectified women. However, upon rewatch of the film, she flipped her opinion 180º. She explained to IndieWire’s Emma Myers in 2014:

I watched it on video at the start of the New Queer Cinema moment — it must’ve been ’91 or ’92 when I saw it, and I just loved it. And I ended up programming it at the Pacific Film archive in a program they’d asked me to do for a special summer festival called “Scary Women” where I showed it with Basic Instinct. And what I talked about was how the audience writes the film; how this film, which seemed to be one thing when I saw it in the ’70s in the heyday of feminism, turned into something completely different when I saw it again 15 years later in the heyday of queer culture. So I wrote that piece for the Village Voice, talking about my first opinion, my radically changed opinion, and how films get edited by history. And that’s a really wonderful thing to be able to do.

Rich’s turnaround on Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! marks a broader shift in the consensus of whether Meyer’s films were feminist or exploitative; over five decades later, this film remains a cult classic showcasing badass women in full control.

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, a collaboration between Meyer and late film critic Roger Ebert, follows the Kelly Affair—soon to be The Carrie Nations—a three-girl rock band that, along with their manager, travels to Los Angeles to claim a stake in the protagonist’s inheritance. 

Campy chaos ensues upon the group’s arrival to the City of Sunshine as multiple side characters are introduced, bringing along with them an influx of free-wheeling sexuality and liberatory affect; decadent parties are abundant, relationships remain tense and fervid, and women own their own bodies on their own terms.
Indeed, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls remains a testament to Meyer’s devotion to subversive filmmaking, to the auteur’s commitment to challenging dogma and bestowing upon his characters—and actors—a sense of freedom, artistic, sexual and spiritual, that was unmatched for a director of his time. John Waters, the king of crud cinema, has called the film “a fine wine” and “one of the best movies ever made.”

The pseudo-sequel to Valley of the Dolls is a satirical take on fame and Hollywood’s tried-and-trued mechanical movie-making habits. What stands out is the film’s campy humor, superb soundtrack, queer subplot and feminist themes.

Camp is not, as Susan Sontag posited in her “Notes on Camp,” attempting to be serious in any regard, and thus must reacclimate its relation to the serious, which has, for too long, been utilized as a measure of quality in film criticism:

The whole point of Camp is to dethrone the serious. Camp is playful, anti-serious. More precisely, Camp involves a new, more complex relation to “the serious.” One can be serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious. One is drawn to Camp when one realizes that “sincerity” is not enough. Sincerity can be simple philistinism, intellectual narrowness. The traditional means for going beyond straight seriousness - irony, satire - seem feeble today, inadequate to the culturally oversaturated medium in which contemporary sensibility is schooled. Camp introduces a new standard: artifice as an ideal, theatricality. Camp proposes a comic vision of the world. But not a bitter or polemical comedy. If tragedy is an experience of hyper involvement, comedy is an experience of underinvolvement, of detachment.

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls lies within this notion of a comedic worldly outlook that Sontag highlights, as Ebert and Meyer both deconstruct the serious and double down on the absurd and comical. The film does not aim to portray life as it is, but rather as it could be. Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is thus utopian in its comedic, campy nature, and characters exist within a quasi-dreamscape where anything goes.

Dolly Read’s Kelly MacNamara weaponizes her sexuality for her own gain and appeasement. Cynthia Myers’ Casey Anderson navigates the world with a divine naivete, ultimately discovering a subverted queerness through Meyer’s lens. Marcia McBroom’s Pet Danforth cheats on her lover and stirs up chaos if only to amuse the viewer. All of these women are not afforded some form of cinematic benevolence from Meyer’s lens, but are rather depicted as real women, with flaws, goals, desires and needs.

Like Faster Pussycat, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls spotlights women in control of their own narratives; the two films both insist upon showcasing the multiplicity of femininity in a liberated 1960s.