Tura Satana, the Japanese-born actress best known for her role as the scary-sexy Varla in Russ Meyer’s Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, died on Friday of what’s been reported as heart failure. She was 72.
Satana spent part of her childhood in the Manzanar internment camp, with her family moving to Chicago after their release. Her buxom frame developed early, leading to frequent harassment. At the age of nine, Satana was gang-raped, and after the case was dismissed, Satana claimed to have exacted her own revenge by learning aikido and karate, then spending the next 15 years tracking each rapist down personally. Before long her burgeoning tough-girl attitude landed her in reform school, where she soon became the leader of a leather-clad gang—an experience that would come to inform her most famous role.
After spending many years working as an exotic dancer and erotic model—even posing nude for silent comedian Harold Lloyd, who encouraged her to try acting—Satana landed a handful of small parts in shows like Burke’s Law and The Man From U.N.C.L.E., and played a Parisian prostitute in Billy Wilder’s Irma La Douce. During this time she also dated admirers like Elvis and Frank Sinatra (“Elvis kissed like a fish. Frank was built like a studhorse and he knew what he was doing,” she told Time Out Chicago in 2008.) Reportedly Elvis even proposed to her, but she turned him down.
When Russ Meyer needed a strong, ball-busting woman who could play the leader of a group of violent, thrill-seeking go-go dancers in Faster Pussycat, Satana immediately won him over at the audition, and ended up contributing many of the elements that have made the film one of Meyer’s most lasting works, including some of the dialogue, her iconic costume, and doing all of her own stunts. In the ensuing years, Satana’s cult status as the consummate female badass was reinforced by the film’s influence on groups like The Cramps and White Zombie; for a brief run in the ’90s, there was even an L.A. metal band named after her.