“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to violence!” a narrator bellows while his voice is replicated on screen in the form of several oscillating vertical lines. “Let’s examine closely then this dangerously evil creation, this new breed encased and contained in the supple skin of woman. The softness is there, the unmistakable smell of female. But a word of caution: handle with care, and don’t drop your guard!” Then we cut to a go-go bar, where three extremely ample women dance before an enclave of sweaty men screaming at them to “Go baby! Harder! Faster!” The intro, both outlandish and intense, sets the tone: sexual energy unseparably entwined with violence, both shoved in the faces of an unsuspecting audience.

Later, the dancers, Varla (Tura Satana), Rosie (Haji), and Billie (Lori Williams) take their three hot rods out to the desert for some speed racing. The trio strike an odd group; like a team of super-heroines with powers centered around their incredible physical dimensions. Varla, in a black jumpuit with racing gloves shows off an unbelievable amount of cleavage. Rosie’s attire emphasize the sheer size of her chest, while Billie’s tends to accentuate her bare midriff and almost inhuman hourglass figure. If their features are a pubescent boy’s dream, their attitudes are anything but. While Billie loves to flirt it up, Varla uses her sexuality like a weapon, and when a couple of naive teenagers stumble on the Pussycats in the desert, Varla bullies them into a race, then grabs the girl (Susan Bernard) and provokes her boyfriend into a fight. She beats the holy hell out of him with some sweet karate moves then kills him with an impressive looking chicken wing maneuver. The rest of PUSSYCAT! follows the girls, with the captive and a corpse in toe, as they follow a lead on a pile of money to an abandoned ranch owned by an old man named, appropriately, Old Man (the delightfully grizzled Stuart Lancaster).

If the plot, the title and the buxom leads make the film sound like a B-grade exploitation picture, then I have accurately described the film. But FASTER PUSSYCAT!, unlike most films of the genre, is blessed with an almost poetic script and superb direction by Russ Meyer. What one might casually mistake as a blatant jiggle flick, is, in fact, a smart feminist empowerment film. Yes, the heroines dress as if they were clothed by a 14-year-old boy, but they are also far tougher, smarter, and stronger than any of the men they meet. These are like female versions of Jules and Vincent from Quentin Tarantino’s PULP FICTION, tough-as-nails murderers whose intelligence and tenacity ingratiate themselves to their audience. We don’t necessarily like their actions, but we like the way they do them.