The unquestioned queen of trash cinema was born Tura Yamaguchi in 1935. At end of World War II she moved to Chicago and was raped by five men. This prompted her to learn martial arts and take up residency with a teenage girl-gang that might more properly belong in some twisted, delinquent B-movie.
Though she was persistently taunted about her heritage – her father is Japanese, but from the Philippines and her mother is part Native American and Irish – she quickly had the run of the place during her subsequent sojourn at reform school, where she developed a lifelong passion for knitting.
At 13 she got married, but soon divorced and drifted into exotic dancing. At 19 she was pregnant, but she kept dancing for eight of the nine months. Like many starlets of the era, she was fucking Elvis while clocking up decorative appearances in cult TV shows such as The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and movies like Who’s Been Sleeping in my Bed? and Irma La Douce. But she was to find her milieu in movies such as Ted V. Mikel’s dementedly cheap Astro Zombies (1969).
Her finest hour, however – unless you were particularly enamoured with her 2002 comeback in Mark of the Astro Zombies – remains her formidable ass-kicking, leather-gloved turn as Varla in Russ Meyer’s seminal ‘ode to the violence in women’ – Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1966). In Meyer, she had a director who appreciated her karate skills, her caustic wit and her mountainous cleavage, maybe even in that order.
“What’s weak about wanting?” she growls, “Everybody wants. That’s what makes things run… I want everything. Or as much as I can get.”
Unlike many of the auteur’s leading ladies, she and Meyer never did marry. (She’s currently hitched to a retired cop, and has two daughters). Shame, for under the terms of Meyer’s will, his innumerable F-cup breasted Amazonian ex-wives – including Pandora Peaks and virtually all the stars of the Supervixens series – must live together in order to avail of his fortune once he passes on. Now, there’d be a reality TV project worth watching!