TURA!

I was walking home

when I noticed a car following me.

But I'd seen it in our neighborhood before,

so I didn't think anything of it.

The car caught up to me. There were five men inside.

They asked me a question.

As I started to answer, hands were suddenly grabbing

and pulling at me.

They dragged me into the back seat and the car took off.

They shoved a rag in my mouth

and pushed me to the floor under their feet.

I tried to fight back by kicking them.

That's when the first fist hit me.

I was seeing stars

when one of them put his hand up my shirt.

"Hey, these tits are real," he yelled out.

Another one told him to "Shut up."

They'd "all get a chance soon enough."

My blood went cold because I knew what was about to happen

and no way would I make it out of this alive.

I prayed to God, "Please let me die now,"

so I wouldn't feel anything.

But I don't think he was listening,

because I felt it all.

Those men wanted to hear this Japanese girl beg for mercy

but that's the one thing they weren't gonna get from me.

In fact, and little did they know,

they'd just created Varla.

- When I think about her, calculating out

as a 10-year-old little girl about what she was gonna do

to get her revenge, it's like such an incredible story

and a great story about how to turn things around.

- There were so many things that were against me

when I first started out

that I either had to be a fighter

and work on getting everybody's respect

or I would've gone down under

and I wasn't gonna let that happen to me.

I got even... with all of them.

- Superwomen, belted, buckled and booted.

For your own safety, see "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!"

- In the histories of film and burlesque,

few women have been as iconic, controversial,

or impactful as Tura Satana.

- I think women like her, men are scared of her,

but they think she's hot.

She kicked ass, she was a leader

and she was sexy and she was in control.

- She could stare right through you, you know.

She had a personality that was overpowering

to a lot of people.

- She and I had a contest going all the time,

who was the strongest.

And she always felt she was the strongest,

but I respected her.

- She combines everything that's great about

that propulsive fifties rock and roll rebel thing

with a female element, and she's bodacious on top of it.

- She was a fantastic feminist role model.

See, 'cause those early feminists pretended

they didn't have tits

so she was kind of the opposite of that.

- The idea of the femme fatale character,

like look at Sharon Stone in "Basic Instinct."

Tura set the stage for characters like that.

- But you don't just snap your fingers

and become Tura Satana.

- I think there was a lot you

didn't know about her.

- Yeah, she did go like get her revenge

on these guys, right,

which is amazing.

- You know, I wanted to think

that Tura Satana was out there killing men

when they pissed her off.

You know, I wanted to believe in that.

- A mass majority of the people, they only know her

from the movie.

We who knew her, we had the opportunity

to see the other Tura.

- If something that happened to her,

something she lived through,

something that she suffered through,

could help someone else,

she felt that would validate her existence,

why she was who she was.

- She had this amazing, colorful,

and dangerous and tumultuous life,

and there's a lot of people

that don't have the courage to have that.

- Tura may have started down

the road to revenge,

but ended up somewhere more powerful

than she could have ever imagined.

Tura Satana!

She was a good actress

and she was good at being a cult movie star,

and those two things, that's why she'll last.

Good. Let's get started.

- Filmmaker Russ Meyer was ready

to try something new.

He was fresh off a string of big box office hits

and not the kind you see at the Oscars.

Meyer was king of the "nudie-cutie,"

movies with simple plot lines

and a ridiculous amount of frolicking, naked,

big breasted women.

- Those movies were sexploitation movies

that were incredibly successful.

That's what they were.

- Now, Meyer was shifting gears

from sex to violence.

His latest project, "The Leather Girls," featured a trio

of gorgeous go-go dancers who race, seduce

and murder their way through the Mojave Desert.

- This was proudly lesbian with punk way before punk though.

This was a burlesque star killer lesbian.

- Tura Satana was cast as Varla,

the karate-wielding Asian gang leader.

An actress and exotic dancer,

Tura seemed to be more than the perfect fit.

- She was definitely exotic for her time.

You never saw a leading woman who looked like her.

- It was certainly "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'"

and all that kind of stuff was suddenly new and sexy.

Tura came up with a look that became a classic.

- She was just so larger than life and over the top.

Wow. Look at her.

So tall, statuesque with that black outfit she wore.

The tiny waist, the long black hair, the bangs.

Those bangs.

She had the Bettie Page bangs.

Those eyebrows.

The Kabuki

- Oh, what a woman. And then she wore the black gloves,

I loved it.

She didn't reference anything.

She came up with something completely new

and that's why it still lasts.

- The idea of Tura Satana was, there was one girl

that could play the role.

I mean, it was tailor-made.

I mean, she had this monumental figure,

she was Oriental, and she knew karate.

- (film projector sound) - (clapperboard claps)

- Filming began, and the movie's title changed.

to "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!"

You're all that's left, lover,

and you ain't gonna be around for long.

I don't believe it.

You better believe it.

- I was in high school when I saw it

and I saw it at the drive-in,

and I went back the next day and took Divine

and we went every night and saw it.

For like a week, we went every single night

and smoked pot and got high and watched the movie

and I became obsessed by it.

And that's how I first knew about Tura.

Tura was scary and people thought, whoa, who is this?

- That film, I could never get tired of watching it.

The way that it's filmed in black and white

and her look as it translates into black and white is

so intense, such a powerful and enduring image.

- She was probably a bad influence on me

because her shouting of every line, we imitated.

So in my early movies,

it's like, god, these people have to shout all the time.

Well, we have it, good, it's like sensurround, basically.

What the hell happened?

- She damn near killed me, that's how.

Me, a cripple.

- And what caused that? Her pushing you outta your chair

or nothing you did, of course.

- I am tied to this chair for life.

- Better you should be nailed to it.

- She just let stuff pour out of her.

I mean, she was different.

I mean, she was really different.

- When the cameras started to roll,

even Meyer was caught a little off guard.

- I don't think it was a conscious thing,

I think it just exploded out of her.

- No longer just a character in a script,

Varla tore from the page

with a vengeance no one saw coming.

What the others didn't know, Tura wasn't just playing Varla,

and this wasn't just acting for her.