Good Morning...And Goodbye!

Our final Russ Meyer girl was the former Miss Muscle Beach, Alaina Capri. Capri starred in two Russ vehicles, Common Law Cabin and Good Morning...and Goodbye!, whose plots are best described as the kind of lurid partner swapping amidst the hardboiled dialogue with an occasional killing. Capri excels at playing the bosomy vamp, using her sharp tongue like a flick knife. Sadly, these would be her only two outings, but then again, she came up a little too late to have been trading these kind of barbs in a Howard Hawks movie.

The Fastest Pussycat

Yesterday, I posted my review of Russ Meyer's Common Law Cabin, which kicked this week's series off.

Today's quickie sketch is of one of Russ's most iconic creations, Varla, played by the fantastic Tura Satana in the uproariously titled Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965). The movie spins the far out yarn about a trio of homicidal go-go dancers who end up chasing a disabled old man's fortune in the southwest desert. In many ways it was a retelling with a gender swap of Russ's Motorpsycho, but Tura scene-stealing turn as the conniving Varla far outshone the previous film.  Though Tura had a number of roles in movies and several TV shows, she's probably most identified with this film...and well, her high-ranking status as one of the best burlesque acts of all time.

A Dolly Beyond the Valley

For my other blog, I've written a review of a Russ Meyer film I hadn't seen in years...and thanks to the wholesomeness of the season, I thought I'd post a few quickies of some of Russ's buxotics.

We kick off with a sketch of Dolly Read, English pin-up model and actress, who starred as head of the Kelly Affair in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. It was one of Russ's two bids at studio backing, as Hollywood was looking to try and lure in the counter-culture audience. Dolls was not a sequel the Jacqueline Susann work, but it's own special bizarre creation. And why not? After all, it was co-written with Roger Ebert.