Exclamatory Movies!

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

Saved!

Greetings!!!!! Pardon my enthusiastic, exuberant, perhaps excessive punctuation, but this week I wanted to explore films that are bursting at the seams with so much respectively raucous energy that they had no choice but to include exclamation points in their titles. If you thought I couldn’t go deeper and niche-r with my movie themes, then you gravely underestimate my love for grammar and punctuation! You’re talkin’ to the gal who did an onomatopoeia double feature last year. As seriously as the realm of cinema is often treated, I love that there is still room for a bit of whimsy, a bit of exclamatory excess, and exclamation points appear in far more film titles than you might think. I’ve already seen the majority of the best that this hyper-specific category has to offer: Mamma Mia!, Mars Attacks!, That Thing You Do!, Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!, Airplane!, Moulin Rouge!, Oh, God!, Repo! The Genetic Opera, and most recently, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride! (which I’m not saying is good, per se, but it was memorable enough to warrant an exclamation point in its title!) And for this blog, I’ve covered Top Secret!, What a Way to Go!, and Safety Last!—all of which certainly exude exclamatory energy. I’m not sure if ¡The Three Amigos! necessarily deserves its two exclamation points, but that’s just me. As someone who feels a lot of emotions, none of which are ever expressed in a half-assed or concise manner, I feel seen by the almighty exclamation point, and I really appreciate the films that include this perfectly passionate piece of punctuation. Sometimes you just need your readers and consumers to understand the heightened degree of feeling that is associated with your art! And tonight’s two films certainly understood this.

I was very close to watching the 1968 movie musical Oliver! because it won Best Picture, my mom loves it, and Oliver Reed (a problematic fav of mine) is in it, but this week I ultimately opted for exclamatory movies that were shorter, but not necessarily sweeter, beginning with Russ Meyer’s legendary 1965 exploitation film: Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! Because I was familiar with Russ Meyer’s film Beyond the Valley of the Dolls—a film that exists solely because Roger Ebert wanted to write a version of Valley of the Dolls that was more “sex-positive”—I knew that this film would be a sexy and absurd spectacle. But like all of the salacious, scandalous exploitation films made by my fellow scrappy Jewish bros in the 60s and 70s, the levels of chaotic camp still took me by delightful surprise. Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! opens on ominous narration, which warns of a violent variety of women, “Let’s examine closely then this dangerously evil creation, this new breed encased and contained within the supple skin of woman. The softness is there, the unmistakable smell of female, the surface shiny and silken, the body yielding yet wanton. But a word of caution: handle with care and don’t drop your guard. This rapacious new breed prowls both alone and in packs, operating at any level, any time, anywhere, and with anybody. Who are they? One might be your secretary, your doctor’s receptionist... or a dancer in a go-go club!” We then cut to three beautiful and buxom go-go dancers, all giving a spectacular show as their patrons shout “Go, baby, go! Faster! Harder!” Our three protagonists(?), Rosie (Haji), Billie (Lori Williams), and their ringleader Varla (Tura Satana), all have gorgeous, hourglass figures and perfectly-winged eyeliner, and walk with their heads and titties held so high that I couldn’t help sitting up straighter as I watched them. After a long day of go-go dancing, this tempestuous trio decides to blow off some steam by racing each other across the vast California desert, but their fun is interrupted when a young couple speeds up in their own souped-up hot rod. These squares, Tommy and Linda (Ray Barlow and Susan Bernard), are no match for this girl gang, who immediately challenge Tommy to a race. Tommy, of course, loses, and within a matter of moments is caught up in a catfight with Varla, who effortlessly and casually snaps his neck. Linda naturally freaks out, so Varla instructs her colleagues to give the girl a pill that will calm her down while they figure this mess out. The gals dispose of Tommy’s body, then head to the nearest town to fill up on gas, and eventually they spot an older, decrepit, wheelchair-bound man and his two, strapping sons. The gas station attendant is just one of many men who ogle and objectify our heroines(?), but he does inform Varla that this old man is sitting on a large fortune. So the gals hatch a new plan—to infiltrate this old man’s desert junkyard and rob him of his cash—but this old man is wilier than Varla anticipates, and his silent, stoic, beefcake of a son (simply billed as ‘The Vegetable’) is a force to be reckoned with. Both the seedy old man and the scandalous young women think they’ve got it all figured out, but when these groups clash, this wild ride gets even wilder. Though it is obviously campy, schlocky, and oozing with stylized sex appeal, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! is far more self-aware and sharply-written than you’d ever guess. Every moment that didn’t revolve around sexy-girl fighting or sexy-boy fighting or just violence, in general, was chock-full of innuendos, supremely clever and evolved Mae-West-esque syntax, and, to quote Dean DeFino, “dialogue to shame Raymond Chandler.” I could hardly type quickly enough to capture all of my favorite quotes, like: “the point is: of no return!”, “they make the mafia look like brownies”, “I like men with big appetites, just never met a man who had one as big as mine”, “I can turn myself on a dozen different ways but you’ve only got one channel.” It’s a bodacious, bikini blitzkrieg of bizarre events, set to a score that I can only describe as 1960s Batman, but it was surprisingly not as bombastic as you might think. Iconic sex symbol and lead actress Tura Satana said in a 2004 interview that, regardless of the nudity and sexual themes of his films and female characters, she always felt that director Russ Meyer was a feminist at heart, “He loved to make women look good. I have never seen any of the gals in his films look bad. And the men in his movies were always incapacitated in some way. They were either in a wheelchair or on crutches or short of a full deck. He liked to make women strong, make them feel that they were empowered.” Though it was a commercial and critical failure (even by exploitation standards) upon its release, this film has reached cult-status in recent years. People like John Waters and Ru Paul have cited this film as one of their favs, and it served as the inspiration for Tarantino’s Death Proof , Janet Jackson’s “You Want This” music video, and The Spice Girls’ “Say You’ll Be There” music video. I love watching movies about complex women and the messes they get into, so of course I loved this movie!!!

Speaking of complex women and the messes they get into, up next I watched a film I’ve been recommended for years due to my affinity for twisted teen cinema, this is Brian Dannelly’s 2004 dark comedy Saved! The film opens on the heavenly sky above—fluffy white clouds ascending as the unmistakably dreamy vocals of Mandy Moore sings “God Only Knows” by the Beach Boys. Saved!, like many films of the time, implements an incredible font, and this title’s exclamation point is technically in the shape of a cross. Saved! introduces us to high school almost-senior Mary Cummings (Jena Malone), who explains that she’s been “born again” her whole life. She finds comfort in the fact that god gives her a reason for everything, even her dad going to the angels. Her mom (Mary-Louise Parker) is the top Christian interior designer for the whole region, her Christian boyfriend is perfect, and she attends an elite evangelical high school called American Eagle Christian High. Mary does normal teen things like homework, pool parties, and protesting outside abortion clinics with her bestie Hilary Faye Stockard (Mandy Moore.) But everything changes the Summer before senior year, when Mary’s boyfriend, Dean (Chad Faust), confesses to her by the pool that he think he might be gay. Mary then sees a vision, that appears to be Jesus, but might just be the tan, long-haired pool boy, who tells her that she must do all she can to help Dean. So Mary spends the rest of the Summer trying “help” him, resulting in the two losing their virginities together—which, Mary figures, is a sin that will ultimately be a blessing. But when Dean’s parents find his gay porn, he’s shipped off to conversion therapy, and Mary is left to start senior year more confused and concerned and conflicted than ever. Mary starts to question everything she holds sacred and true, especially when she develops a new friendship with the only Jew (and proud sinner) in the school, Cassandra (Eva Amurri), and develops a crush on the pastor-principal’s son, Patrick (Patrick Fugit.) And as if a crisis of faith, sexuality, and identity weren’t enough for Mary to deal with, she learns—after watching a horrific Valerie Bertinelli Lifetime movie—that she’s pregnant. How do you hide your teen pregnancy from your mom and your peers? Well, as Mary says, “Luckily for me, teenage pregnancy is so common at my school that no one caught on but Cassandra”, and thankfully, she has Cassandra and Hilary Faye’s brother, Roland (Macaulay Culkin), for moral and maternal support. Saved! was overall hilarious, and surprisingly heartfelt for a film that seemed so cynical on the surface. It perfectly captured the wacky American teen Christianity subculture that affected my own American public high school, but it could’ve been even more cutting with its satire, if you ask me. For the time in which it was made, Saved! certainly wasn’t as wholesome as I viewed it to be in 2026, but maybe I only feel this way because I was the Jewish gal also offending my Christian peers at times. The entire cast—which also includes Martin Donovan, Heather Matarazzo, Elizabeth Thai, and Valerie Bertinelli as herself—was superb, but Mandy Moore was particularly incredible, and I really believed she was a soldier on the front lines of Jesus’ army. Writer-director Brian Dannelly, once a closeted gay kid in an uber-Christian community, based the story off of his own experiences, saying, “Everything in the movie comes from either something I experienced, or something I witnessed, or something I researched.” Given the fact that the cast and crew faced so much backlash, and the script experienced several rewrites—including one such version where Hilary Faye eventually shoots up the school (…)—I’m even more impressed by Saved! Well, that’s about all the time I have for exclaiming this week, but thank you for reading along and indulging me in my liberal use of exclamation points!!! I promise to turn the volume down next week. Ciao!!