Badassed Women: Tura Satana

Tura Satana was born Tura Luna Pascual Yamaguchi on July 10, 1938 in Hokkaido, Japan. Her father was a silent film actor of Japanese and Filipino descent, and her mother was a circus performer of

American Indian (Cheyenne) and Scots-Irish background. After World War II and a stint in Manzanar internment camp in Lone Pine, Ca., she and her family moved to Chicago. Walking home from school on her 10th birthday, she was reportedly gang-raped by five men. According to Satana, her attackers were never prosecuted, and it was rumored that the judge had been paid off.

 This prompted her to learn martial arts, such as Akido, and Karate. Over the next 15 years she tracked down each rapist and exacted revenge. "I made a vow to myself that I would someday, somehow get even with all of them." she said years later. "They never knew who I was until I told them." Around this time she formed a gang. "The Angels" with Italian, Jewish, and Polish girls from her neighborhood. In an interview with Psychotronic Video, she said, "We had leather motorcycle jackets, jeans, and boots.... and we kicked butt!" Because of frequent delinquency, she was sent to reform school. When she was 13, her parents arranged her marriage to 17 year old John Satana in Hernando, Mississippi, which lasted nine months.

Satana moved to Los Angeles and by 15, using a fake I.D. because she was a minor, began burlesque dancing. She was hired to perform at the Trocadero Nightclub on the Sunset Strip, and became a photographic model for, among others, silent screen comic Harold Lloyd, who's photos of her appear in Harold Lloyd's Kollywood Nudes in 3D. She returned to Chicago to live with her parents and began dancing a Club Rendevouz in Calmut City, Il. After Elvis Presley saw her perform at Chicago's Follies Theater the two began a romantic relationship that some reports say ended up in a marriage proposal that she declined. She eventually became a very successful exotic dancer, traveling from city to city. She credited Lloyd with giving her the confidence to pursue a career in show business. "I saw myself as an ugly child...Mr. Lloyd said 'you have such a symmetrical face, The camera loves your face, you should be seen'"

Satana's acting debut was a cameo as Suzette Wong, a Parisian prostitute in the film Irma Le Duce,  which starred Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLean. Her next role was as a dancer in Who's Been Sleeping in my Bed (1963) which starred Dean Martin and Elizabeth Montgomery; Soon after, Satana appeared in the television show Burkes Law (1964) and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (1964).

Satana then starred as "Varla" in the 1965 film Faster Pussycat... Kill! Kill! -- a very aggressive and sexual female character for which she did all her own stunts and fight scenes. Renown film critic Richard Corliss called her performance "...the most honest, maybe the one honest prtrayal in the Meyer cannon, and certaily the scariest". Originally titled "The Leather Girls", the film is an ode to female violence, based on a concept created by Russ Meyer and screenwriter Jack Moran. Both fely at her first audition that Satana was "definitely Varla." Shot on location in the desert outside of Los Angeles, during the days the temperature was well over 100 degrees, and the nights freezing cold, with Satana clashing regularly with teenage co-star Susan Bernard due to Bernard's mothers reportedly disruptive behavior on the set. Meyer said Satana was "extremely capable. She knew how to handle herself. Don't fuck with her, ..and if you have to fuck with her, do it well!! She might turn on you."

Satana was responsible for adding key elements to the visual style and energy of the production, including her costume (her own clothes), her makeup, and use of martial arts, dialogue, and the use of spinning tires in the death scene of the male character. She came up with many of the films best lines. At one point, the gas station attendant was ogling her extraordinary cleavage while confessing to a desire to see America. "You won't find it down there Columbus."  Meyer cited Satana as the primary reason for the films lasting fame.

After Faster Pussycat... Kill! Kill! she primarily worked with film director Ted V. Mikels in such films as The Astro Zombies (1968), and The Doll Squad (1973). After making  The Doll Squad,  in 1973 Satara was shot by a former lover. She later found employment in a hospital. A position she kept for four years. She studied nursing, and briefly worked as a dispatcher for the L.A.P.D.  In 1981, her back was broken in a car accident. She spent the next two years in and out of hospitals, having two major operations and fifteen others.

In 2002, she returned to acting, reprising her role as Malvina Satana  in Mark of the Astro Zombies (2002), a sequel to  The Astro Zombies.

Satana died on February 4th 2011 in Reno, Nevada. ans was survived by her daughters Kalani & Jade, and her sisters Pamela and Kim. Siouxsan Perry gave the cause of death as Heart Failure.