by Erin Free
Worth: $18.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Tura Satana, Kitten Natividad, Dita Von Teese, John Waters, Ted V. Mikels, Tara Moss, Pamela Des Barres
Intro:
A fitting tribute to a cult goddess who desperately needed one, Tura! is a total blast.
The image of the late Tura Satana remains one of the most indelible in 1960s cult cinema, as enduring as that of Jane Fonda’s sexy space adventurer in Barbarella or Raquel Welch’s fur bikini-clad cavegirl in One Million Years BC. With her black leather gloves, skin-tight pants, voluminous cleavage, extreme bangs, and aggressive Asian-American severity, the star of Russ Meyer’s 1965 sex-and-violence classic Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! was near sui generis, ground zero for hyper-feminine badassery. Tura Satana only made a few major notable film appearances outside of Meyer’s lurid opus (including 1968’s wondrous The Astro Zombies), but her cult cache is undeniable.
Tura Satana – who passed away in 2011 at the age of 72 – also led quite the life, and director Cody Jarrett (Sugar Boxx) captures it with punchy, kitschy aplomb in his blazingly entertaining documentary Tura! A victim of gruesome bigotry, truly vile childhood sexual assault, and familial neglect, Tura Satana rose above it all by turning herself into a queen: she learned martial arts, expressed herself as a burlesque performer, had sexual relationships guilt-free with whoever she wanted, and basically did things on her own terms. In short, Tura Satana is a true sex-positive feminist icon.
Through fun and candid interviews with various fans and friends (including Russ Meyer star Kitten Natividad, burlesque icon Dita Von Teese, trash aficionado John Waters, The Astro Zombies director Ted V. Mikels, famed groupie Pamela Des Barres, and Canadian-Aussie author and Satana tragic Tara Moss), and moving, emotional input from Satana’s daughters, a vivid, exciting and highly distinct portrait quickly emerges. With ample archival film footage, engagingly stylised recreations, and vintage TV interviews with Tura Satana herself (check out Reel Wild Cinema with Sandra Bernhard!), Jarrett never lets things slow down, almost echoing the frantic style and non-stop pace of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! itself.
Jammed with fascinating, often amusingly leery revelations (Elvis Presley loved Tura; Forrest Tucker and Billy Wilder were both prodigiously hung; Russ Meyer’s bedroom was decorated with naked pictures of himself), Tura! is a rollicking affair tinged with genuine sadness. Tura Satana’s life was tough and brutal, and she was no saint (as her daughters duly attest), and a full and lovingly crafted picture is the result. While some fact-checking may have been in order with regards to the self-mythologising nature of the film’s subject (did Satana’s actual life really become the equivalent of a rape-revenge flick?), the old adage that you should never let the truth get in the way of a good story likely comes into play here. A fitting tribute to a cult goddess who desperately needed one, Tura! is a total blast.
Tura! is the opening night film of The Sydney Underground Film Festival on Thursday September 10. Click here for all ticketing venue information.
