The film is known for its violence, provocative gender roles, and eminently quotable "dialogue to shame Raymond Chandler".

was a commercial and critical failure upon its initial release, but it has since become widely regarded as an important and influential film.

[6][7][8][9] Three wild, uninhibited go-go dancers—Varla, Rosie, and Billie—dance at a club before racing their sports cars across the California desert.

They play a high-speed game of chicken on the salt flats and encounter a young couple, Tommy and Linda, out to run a time trial.

In a small desert town, they stop at a gas station where they see a wheelchair-using old man and his muscular, dim-witted son.

The gas station attendant tells the women that the old man was disabled in a railway accident, "going nuts" as a result, and that he received a large settlement of money that is hidden somewhere around his decrepit house in the desert.

Intrigued, Varla hatches a scheme to rob the old man, and the three women follow him back to the ranch, with their captive in tow.

The group all have lunch together, and Billie taunts Rosie when Varla leaves with Kirk, hoping to seduce him into revealing the location of the money.

The younger son catches Linda and seems about to assault her, but he collapses in tears as Varla and Kirk arrive.

Varla drives back to the house and tells Billie and Rosie that they should kill the men and the girl to cover up Linda's kidnapping and the murder of her boyfriend.

Billie refuses, but as she walks away, Varla throws a knife into her back just as the old man and his younger son arrive.

Rosie and Varla hit the old man with their car, killing him and knocking over his wheelchair to reveal the money hidden inside.

The first draft was titled The Leather Girls and was written over a brief four-day period by Moran, who also collaborated with Meyer on Common Law Cabin and Good Morning and...

[11] The screenplay went through a second working title—The Mankillers—and had already begun production when the sound editor, Richard S. Brummer, came up with the now-immortal final title.

[4] Although neither Moran nor Meyer overtly cited any prior works as inspiration, the plot has been called a "loose remake of The Desperate Hours, or possibly The Virgin Spring" by one prominent film critic[5] and a "pop-art setting of Aeschylus's Eumenides" by one classical scholar.

"[22] Meyer's directorial style and the rules he imposed upon cast and crew caused clashes with his equally strong-willed star, Tura Satana.

Bernard has said in interviews that she was truly scared of Satana, and some have thought that this contributed to her performance as a frightened kidnapping victim.

[8] John L. Wasserman of the San Francisco Chronicle, for example, reviewed a double bill of Faster, Pussycat!

is undoubtedly shlock, but director Russ Meyer's infectious affection for camp gives this anarchic joyride exhilarating flair.

in the 1970s she "was absolutely outraged that [she had] been forced to watch this misogynist film that objectified women and that was really just short of soft-core porn.

"[31] Upon viewing it again in the early 1990s, however, she "just loved it" and wrote a piece in The Village Voice reappraising the film and discussing her change in opinion.