In 1966, Faster—Pussycat! Kill! Kill! Opened at theaters across America. The film was a gender reversal of director Russ Meyer’s previous movie, Motor Psycho, about a trio of hoods on motorcycles. Meyer had hit on a novel idea—have the next film focus on three bad-ass women in sports cars. It turned out to be too novel an idea; decades before Xena: Warrior Princess, audiences weren’t receptive to watching Amazonian women tossing men, no matter how well-endowed those women might be.

The Cramps aren’t the only ones who’ve picked up on the rock ’n’ roll attitude in Meyer’s work, from L.A. hair metal band Faster Pussycat, to Frightwig’s 1986 album Faster, Frightwig!, Kill! Kill!, to Seattle’s Mudhoney, which took its name from another Meyer film. Meyer’s 1970 classic Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, one of the best rock films of all time, has also been mined for inspiration—the usual album title twists (the Murderdolls’ 2002 album Beyond the Valley of the Murderdolls), Mike Myers appropriating the signature line “This is my happening and it freaks me out!” for Austin Powers, and Maria McKee covering “In the Long Run,” performed by Dolls’ all-female band the Carrie Nations, on last year’s Acoustic Tour 2006 album.

But while Russ Meyer (who died in 2004) was the man with the vision, it was his female stars that helped make his work iconic. “Russ wouldn’t have been anything without the women,” says Siouxzan Perry, who manages a number of the “Meyer Women,” including the Pussycat and Dolls stars. “The women are such larger than life creatures. They’re almost cartoon-like exaggerations. They became the characters.” With the publication of Jimmy McDonough’s excellent 2005 Meyer bio Big Bosoms and Square Jaws, Pussycat still drawing packed houses at midnight screenings, and Dolls now available on DVD, the “Meyer Women” are finally getting more of the credit they deserve for bringing Meyer’s creations to such vibrant life.

Pussycat’s failure didn’t dampen Meyer’s career, and following the commercial success of 1968’s Vixen!—the first film given an X-rating—Meyer was tapped by 20th Century Fox to pull them out of their financial doldrums with a sequel to Valley of the Dolls, a film based on the hit novel by Jacqueline Susann. But Susann took exception to Meyer’s involvement and filed suit, meaning Meyer and his co-screenwriter, film critic Roger Ebert, had to come up with a new storyline.

The two concocted a wildly over-the-top rags-to-riches tale about an all-female band, the Carrie Nations, who come to L.A. and are immediately enveloped in a high-octane cocktail of sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. With a hyperkinetic visual style that barely allows you to catch your breath, and a clutch of catchy, West Coast-flavored rock songs (co-written by Stu Phillips and Lynn Carey, who also provided vocals), Dolls also had some innovative touches overlooked at the time. The Carrie Nations are (still) a rare example of a female band, as opposed to a “girl group” of singers, in a film. The band was also racially integrated; Marcia McBroom, the band’s drummer, was especially pleased that the main African-American roles (including her own) were not caricatured stereotypes.

McBroom was a model and dancer, and the other Carrie Nations were Playboy Playmates: Bristol-born Dolly Read, the first British Playmate, and Cynthia Myers, billed as “Holy Toledo” in her pictorial in reference to her hometown of Toledo, Ohio. All were thrilled to portray a rock band, Read describing the job as “a fantasy come true,” and Myers concurring, “It’s everybody’s guilty pleasure to be a rock star.” So convincing was their miming, says McBroom, the women were often asked to sit in with bands when visiting nightclubs after the film opened. And aside from some dated flower-power material like “Come With the Gentle People,” the songs hold their own as well-crafted pop rock.

And it’s this joy of rediscovery that’s made both movies perennial favorites in the Cult Movie Hall of Fame, where they continue to delight because they pull off the tricky balancing act of being both of their time—and timeless.

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