Tura Satana

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This article is about dancer actress Tura Satana. For the band named after her, see Tura Satana (band).
Image:Fpckk.JPG
On the right, Tura Satana as Varla, in Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!.

Tura Satana, born Tura Luna Pascual Yamaguchi July 10, 1938 in Hokkaidō, Japan, is a Japanese-born American actress and former exotic dancer. She is mostly remembered for her role as "Varla" in Russ Meyer's 1965 cult film, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!.

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[edit] Early life

Satana's father was a silent movie actor of Japanese and Filipino descent, and her mother was a circus performer of American Indian (Cheyenne) and Scots-Irish background. After the end of World War II and a stint in the Manzanar internment camp in Lone Pine, California, she and her family moved to the Westside of Chicago. She developed breasts very early and, despite being an excellent student, was constantly harassed for her figure and Asian heritage. Walking home from school at the age of nine she was gang raped by five men. Her attackers were never prosecuted and it was rumored that the judge had been paid off. [1] This prompted her to learn martial arts, in particular karate (she would also study Aikido) and, over the next 15 years, tracked down each rapist and enacted revenge. [2] "I made a vow to myself that I would someday, somehow get even with all of them," she said years later. "They never knew who I was until I told them."[2]

As a teenager, she was sent to reform school and became the leader of a gang. In an interview with Psychotronic Video, she said, "We had leather motorcycle jackets, jeans and boots and we kicked butt." At 13, she was married in Hernandos, Mississippi, a short-lived union arranged by her parents and the family of her 17-year-old groom.

Satana then came to Los Angeles at age 15 with a fake ID and tried her hand at blues singing and B-girl work, eventually becoming a successful exotic dancer and traveling from city to city, working with the likes of Rose Le Rose, Maxine Martin The Skyscraper Girl, Tempest Storm, Candy Barr and Stunning Smith the Purple Lady. Satana credits silent film star and 3D photographer Harold Lloyd with giving her the confidence to pursue a career in show business.."I saw myself as an ugly child. Mr Lloyd said, 'You have such a symmetrical face, the camera loves your face...you should be seen.""[3]

At 19, Satana got pregnant - but still danced for the next eight months with a typical week of work earning her around $15,000.

[edit] Acting career

In her early career, Satana made a few television appearances on Hawaiian Eye, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., The Greatest Show On Earth, Burke's Law, and others. She also began appearing in movies, including Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed? where she played a dancer with Dean Martin and Elizabeth Montgomery. That same year, she had a cameo as a Paris prostitute in the musical Irma La Douce with Jack Lemmon and Shirley Maclaine.

After starring in Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, Satana worked mainly with cult film director Ted V. Mikels in such films as The Astro-Zombies (1968), The Doll Squad (1974) and Mark of the Astro-Zombies (2002). She has also appeared as herself in various documentaries and TV shows including The Incredibly Strange Film Show (1988), Strip de velours (2005) and Sugar Boxx (2007) which is currently in post production and co-stars fellow Russ Meyer alumnus Kitten Natividad.

[edit] Faster Pussycat! Kill Kill!

Satana's most noted screen role is Varla in the 1965 film Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! - a very aggressive and sexual female character for which she did all of her own stunts and fight scenes. [4] Renowned film critic Richard Corliss called her performance "...the most honest, maybe the one honest portrayal in the Meyer canon and certainly the scariest."[5]

Originally titled "The Leather Girls", the film is an ode to female violence, based on a concept created by Russ Meyer and screenwriter Jack Moran. Both felt at her first audition that Satana was "definitely Varla." "[5] The film was shot on location in the desert outside Los Angeles during days above 100 degrees and freezing nights, with Satana clashing regularly with both Meyer and teenage co-star Susan Bernard. Meyer said she "was extremely capable. She knew how to handle herself. Don't fuck with her! And if you fuck with her, do it well! She might turn on you!" "[5]

She was fully responsible for adding key elements to the visual style and energy of the production, including her costume, makeup, usage of martial arts, dialogue and the use of spinning tires in the death scene of the main male character.[6] Meyer cited the extreme tension on the set caused by Satana as the primary reasons for the film's lasting fame. "She and I made the movie," said Meyer."[7] Meyer came to greatly regret not using Satana in his subsequent productions.[8]

[edit] Later years

After making Ted V. Mikels' The Doll Squad in 1973, Satana was shot by a former lover. She later found employment in a hospital, a position she kept for four years. She was then briefly employed as a dispatcher for the Los Angeles Police Department. In 1981, her back was broken in a car accident. She spent the next two years in and out of hospitals, having two major operations and approximately 15 others.

She married a retired L.A. police officer. They have two daughters. Their older daughter had a cameo role in Mikels' Ten Violent Women.


[edit] Selected filmography

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ McDonough, Jimmy (2004). Big Bosoms and Square Jaws, pp 158-159. 
  2. ^ a b McDonough pg. 159
  3. ^ McDonough pp 160-161
  4. ^ Schwartz, Adolph (2004). A Clean Breast. 
  5. ^ a b c McDonough pg 167
  6. ^ McDonough, pg 173
  7. ^ McDonough, pg 178
  8. ^ McDonough, pp 176-179

[edit] Further reading

  • Frasier, David K. (1998). Russ Meyer : The Life and Films : A Biography and A Comprehensive, Illustrated, and Annotated Filmography and Bibliography. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co. ISBN 0-7864-0472-8. 
  • McDonough, Jimmy (2005). Big Bosoms and Square Jaws : The Biography of Russ Meyer, King of the Sex Film. London: Jonathan Cape. ISBN 0-224-07250-1. 
  • Meyer, Russ (2000). A Clean Breast : The Life and Loves of Russ Meyer (3 Volume Set). El Rio, TX: Hauck Pub Co. ISBN 0-9621797-2-8. 
  • Paul, Louis (2008). "Tura Satana", Tales From the Cult Film Trenches; Interviews with 36 Actors from Horror, Science Fiction and Exploitation Cinema. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, p.199-203. ISBN 978-0-7864-2994-3. 

[edit] External links

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