If you’ve spent anytime on Tickld, I Waste So Much Time, or some similar site you might have seen this guy.
He and his message seem superficially empowering for about 35 seconds before you realize that he’s just telling women what to do via his privileged male position. This image smacks of an insincerity and fundamental failure to understand that women are people who do not exist for his benefit.
I guess what I’m saying is: I know what I’m doing, and I feel very sorry about it.
That said, 60s girls were the best looking and cutest in recent memory. I’m not going to attempt to rationalize this position any farther except to post a picture of my favorite actress of all time.
Oh, Anna. You’re so dreamy.
Enough Rand Paul-ing (I swear this was a topical reference when I started this article), let’s get to what this thing is actually supposed to be about. It stands to reason, for the reasons elaborated above, that I’d probably be a pretty big fan of Russ Meyer, the 60s trash auteur known for his love of campy dialogue, ridiculous plotting and most importantly, his love of beautiful women with giant boobs. So let’s put his two best known films up against each other. Will Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! win, being (in John Waters’ estimation) the greatest film of all time? Or will the Roger Ebert scripted sprawling in-name-only-sequel to a dumb showbiz melodrama Beyond the Valley of the Dolls kill kill it? Find out right now!
Best Opening
Few things make me more excited than a movie with a truly great opening. My favorite film, The Godfather has, of course, one of the greatest openings of all time. Two of my favorite “trashy” films, Crank and Streets of Fire have dynamite openings. Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! may join the my personal list of my favorite openings. The satirical beat poem about sex as the cause of violence is delivered in just the right way that it seems like a mockery of misogynist conservative impulses of the time, the energetic music, the beautiful women. Everything you could come to a Russ Meyer film to see. The opening sequence for Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is far less interesting, mostly consisting of title crawl with spoileriffic footage from the film you’re about to watch. Instead of a narration, we get something even cooler, LEGAL DISCLAIMERS! Yeah, Faster, Pussycat wins this round.
Best Music
Part of what I want to get across in this thing is that these movies are more than just soft-core porno with the minimum possible. This can really be seen in the music for the films. It would have been perfectly acceptable to use stock production music for the background music, but ol’ Russ isn’t going to be satisfied with anything less than mind-blowing experiences, so all the music is very good vintage soul and rock music made specifically for the film. I’m going to give this point to Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, because as much as I love that Faster Pussycat theme song, It can’t hold a candle to the awesomeness of The Carrie Nations.
Influence
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is certainly a movie full of power and amazing things, but it can’t really hold a candle to Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! when it comes to influencing future generations of trash culture. The main villain Varla (played by Tara Satana) is strong and bad ass that would pave the way for the appearance of the “strong action girl” that would be so prevalent, especially in the 90s and early 2000s. Furthermore, the plot of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! reflects the future archetypical slasher plot, drawn in equal measure from haunted house and crime films of the 50s. Plus, as I said before, John Waters thinks it is the greatest movie ever made, so it’s got that going for it.
Characters
Let’s not beat around the bush here, none of the characters in these movies are super well developed. At most, some of them are barely round characters. The characters in these kind of movies kind of have to be ranked by the memorability of the characters. Faster, Pussycat! Kill Kill has a great, scary character in Varla who is awesome and makes everyone her bitch. However, everyone else is totally interchangeable and are kind of boring. Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, on the other hand has a tonne of amazingly memorable characters from our heroines, The Carrie Nations to every character in the various party scenes are instantly recognizable and memorable. I don’t see how I couldn’t give this one to Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.
Best Story
This catagory is kind of a joke, after all, no one comes to this kind of movie for the story. That said, the great thing about both these movies is that their stories are both paradoxically good in their badness, but in different ways. The plot of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! is laughably simple, but that gives it time to focus on tiny details that emerge from the long, somewhat drawn out scenes. This is almost the definition of camp, and I’m not surprised that this is the one of the two films that got the gay following. On the other hand, the plot of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls has a byzantine plot, clearly inspired by the melodramatic histrionics of the 1967 hit The Valley of the Dolls, which was reviled by critics. This is used to mock both The Valley of the Dolls and melodrama in general by Meyer and Ebert. Each have silly line reads (TAKE YOUR MONEY…LOVAH!) and amazing tiny details (The tan line on Varla from her low cut top, visible when she takes a shower) and which one you like more basically comes down to personal preference. Which one will win?
Who is Victorious?!
It’s Beyond the Valley of the Dolls for me. It just comes down to personal taste really. I love the “More is More” writing, the clean visual composition and, of course, the beautiful 60’s chic aesthetics (and also the women because I’m not made of stone.) While massively fun in it’s own right, there’s something about the slipshod nature of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! that kept me at arms length from it. Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is a great piece of trash art, a silly romp rooted in film criticism.
Maybe you disagree. That’s okay, but it dosen’t matter. You know why?
Because this is my happening….
…and it freaks me out!
Peter Guilherme 