Friday, September 18, 2009

You go, girls!

TCM is bringing back one of the great cult movies for this week's TCM Underground: Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! It airs overnight tonight at 2:00 AM ET (that's early Saturday in the east, and 11:00 PM Friday out in California.

If you don't know the plot, it's not that difficult to follow. Three scantily clad and exceedingly buxom go-go dancers set off in their sports cars looking for some adventure in the Mojave Desert. Eventually, they wind up on a ranch owned by an old, wheelchair-bound man, who's got two sons looking after him. As the pretty young things spend some time there, they get the impression that the old guy has a substantial stash of money buried somewhere on the property. And dammit, these women want that money!

Faster, Pussycatt! Kill! Kill! is pure explotiation, through and through. The women are, as I mentioned, dressed in such a way as to highlight their "assets" -- but they aren't the only ones. One of the two sons is mentally deficient and referred to as "The Vegetable" (there's a nice value-neutral nickname), but is also musclebound, and costumed in tight shirts designed to show off some of his assets. The women are also delightfully violent, being perhaps the most assertive women you'll see on screen this side of Joan Crawford in Johnny Guitar. The plot is quite frankly secondary to the flesh and violence, but that doesn't lessen the appeal of the movie.

True, it's not the greatest movie ever made. But then, the truly great movies don't become cult movies. It is, however, a very fun movie, and one that everybody should see at least once.

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