Thank You, Tura Satana
Tura Satana as Varla in Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill! (1965)
Iconic cult actress and femme fatale Tura Satana passed away last week, at the age of 72. The death was announced by her longtime manager, Siouxzan Perry, who said the cause of death was believed to be heart failure.
Born Tura Luna Pascual Yamaguchi in Hokkaido, Japan, to a father of Japanese and Filipino descent and a mother who was Cheyenne Indian and Scots-Irish, Ms. Satana had been a gang member, martial artist, burlesque dancer, actress, stunt woman, nurse, police radio operator, bodyguard, wife and mother – but it was her breakout role as the “brazenly violent but unapologetically feminine” Varla in Russ Meyer’s 1965 exploitative girl gang saga Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill! that earned her an enduring cult following.
Tura Satana, by Molly Crabapple (2008)
Renowned film critic Richard Corliss called her performance “…the most honest, maybe the one honest portrayal in the Meyer canon and certainly the scariest.”
“A woman, like my character, was able to show the male species that we’re not helpless and not entirely dependent on them,” Satana said of Varla, in 2008. “People picked up on the fact that women could be gorgeous and sexy and still kick ass.”
February 6th, 2011 at 3:09 pm
What a loss. I was not acutely aware of her until reading this. All her films are now a must see, what an inspirational sounding woman. Thank you for sharing this, bless her soul.
February 6th, 2011 at 4:59 pm
Great little tribute, thanks.
February 7th, 2011 at 8:18 am
My hero! And love Molly Crabapple’s portrait of her.
February 8th, 2011 at 1:41 am
She seems like a woman I would have gotten on with swimmingly. At least she lived a pretty long life!