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|  Suvaki Yamaguchi aka Tura Satana was born in 1938 in Hokkaido, Japan. Her father was a movie actor and her mother a circus contortionist. Having emigrated to the USA part of her childhood was spent in a Japanese internment camp during World War 2. It was in Chicago aged only 9 that Suvaki was attacked and raped by a gang of five men. Her father taught her martial arts as a means of self-defence and she went on to become a black belt in karate. Later she alleged that her skills were put to another use when, in the years following the attack, she tracked down each of the men she held responsible. By age 13 Suvaki was working as a singer in Los Angeles. By age 15 she was dancing nude. Tura Satana was truly born on stage and she quickly became a burlesque sensation; one minute she’d be twirling her tassels at 100 rpm the next she’d be breaking some joker’s jaw for disrespectful heckling. After appearing in a handful of TV shows (including The Man From U.N.C.L.E), and having turned down a marriage proposal from Elvis Presley, in 1966 Tura landed the lead in one of the greatest exploitation films of all time, Russ Meyer’s Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!. As sociopathic thrill-seeker Varla she dominates every scene she is in whether chugging frenetically at a go-go bar, putting the pedal to the metal in a desert drag race or snapping some puny goon’s spine with her bare hands. All the while letting rip with some of the most wickedly cool dialogue ever committed to celluloid. Russ & Tura were birds of a feather: Meyer was used to dominating his cast and crew with maniacal military bluster, Satana was her own boss and god help any fool who pissed her off and the two famously clashed over Meyer’s strict policy of no sexual...MORE
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