Tura Satana, star of such films as Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, Astro Zombies and The Doll Squad, died this week at the age of 75. From a remembrance posted today at Screen Rush by filmmaker Shade Rupe:

Tura earned her most visible role while performing in Irma La Douce. She got a call from her agent to come read for Russ Meyer. She didn’t have time to change so she showed up in the wedding dress she was wearing for Irma La Douce. Russ handed her the script for “Leather Girls,” the original title of Faster, Pussycat! Kill Kill! and asked how she would play her. Tura replied, “I’d make her kind of feminine, but also a bitch on wheels.” After her cold reading Russ told her, “You are definitely Varla.”

Below is a great 2008 interview with Satana including Faster Pussycat! and Astro Zombies clips from Kevin Sean Michaels’ The Wild World of Ted V. Mikels.

And the opening of Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!