ZOE TAMERLIS LUND

Zoe Tamerlis Lund, born in New York City to a Swedish mother and a Russian father was an accomplished musician, model, actress, writer and political activist by the time she was twenty. Sadly, like many others who burn so brightly so early in life, she died tragically young at the age of forty-seven.

Most would likely recognize Lund from her small role in Bad Lieutenant (1992) or for starring in Ms. 45 (1981), a  tense vigilante tale inspired by Thriller: A Cruel Picture (1973) and Death Wish (1974) that offers something a little more complicated than the average rape and revenge film.

Thana (Lund), a meek garment worker is sexually assaulted twice in the same afternoon on her way home from work. After killing her second rapist with a clothes iron, she picks up the eponymous .45 caliber handgun he brought with him and embarks on what some critics have deemed a misandric killing spree and others a revenge quest against casual misogyny and rape culture. Thana's victims are not randomized passer-by but are all shown to be menacing, harassing or abusing women in the moments before she attacks them. The film demonstrates that casually chauvinistic behaviors and benevolent sexism are sometimes not so far away from overt misogyny.

Film historians remark on the negative press the film apparently received on its release, but a search of the archives of Screen, Sight and Sound  and the BFI Library at London's Southbank turned up little in the way of press period upon its release. However, the collection of clippings at ZoeLund.com suggests that the reaction of contemporary critics and cinephiles was overall positive, and in a cursory glance of the press highlights one can see almost unanimous critical praise for Lund and her portrayal of Thana. 

After starring in Ms. 45 Lund played a dual roles as Mary Jean and Elaine in the 1984 thriller Special Effects. Eric Bogosian is Chris Neville, a big budget director who makes dark and dirty home movies in his spare time. After murdering a would-be actress (Lund as Mary Jane), Neville decides to make a feature about the incident, casting a dead-ringer (Lund again as Elaine) to play the murdered woman.

Often categorized as an 'Underground' film, Tony Williams published a fascinating essay on its narrative and stylistic references to Hitchcock's films, and more than one critic has pointed out the film's similarities to Vertigo (1958). 

In between Special Effects and Bad Lieutenant, Zoe did some television work, appearing as a recurring minor character Chickie on Hothouse (1988) and playing Miranda in the 1985 episode of Miami Vice, "The Prodigal Son". In 1989 she starred in a short film The Houseguest and played the femme fatale Belinda Maloney in Exquisite Corpses.

Though IMDB lists four writers for Bad Lieutenant, Lund stated in a television interview with Media Funhouse that she wrote the script alone, and Ferra himself described their collaboration as "I'd tell her a bunch of shit and she'd make sense of it".The first draft was turned around very quickly, with Lund writing it in under two weeks.

According to the same interview with Media Funhouse, the famous Vampire Speech was written on set, just minutes before the scene was filmed. Lund says that she wrote the speech, memorized it, and did it in one take. Her scenes with Harvey Kietel have been described as "intense and riveting" and the film itself has garnered critical acclaim the world over and continues to be recognized as a "uncompromising work of art" with "an undeniable morality".

The following year Lund wrote, directed and starred in a short film of her own, Hot Ticket (1993). Though the film in its entirety is less than two minutes, it is a striking piece and Zoe's utterance of "that which is not yet, but ought to be, is more real than that which merely is" stays with the viewer long after the end. Lund continued to work in film in the mid and late '90s and the last feature-length pieces in which she appeared were Hand Gun (1994) and the German language film Dreamland (1997).

In 1999, she died in Paris from heart failure. While it's difficult not to brood on her death at such a tragically young age, Zoe Tamerlis Lund left behind an impressive body of work in her films, her writings, her musical compositions and social activism. Her bright light is missed in the film world, but the works she left are intensely, sometimes strangely illuminating for many of us. 

For Your Viewing Pleasure:
Zoe Tamerlis Lund on the Script of Bad Lieutenant (1992) - Interview with Media Funhouse
Special Effects (1984) - Film Trailer
Hot Ticket (1993) - Lund's Short Film (Low Fidelity)
Zoe Tamerlis Lund on Sex and Drugs in Bad Lieutenant (1992) - Interview with Media Funhouse

Further Reading:
ZoeLund.com - The official website of Zoe Tamerlis Lund, this is an impressive collection of interviews, press clippings, writings,  photographs, film and video clips, as well as others' essays analyzing Lund's works. Created and maintained by her former husband, Robert Lund.
Exploitation Retrospect Interview with Zoe Lund - Originally ran in ER #37
Paul Rachman Remembers Zoe Lund - Interview in Filmmaker Magazine. 

JULY 10TH, 1935

A heroine was born. Tura Luna Pascual Yamaguchi Satana was born on this day, in Hokkaido, Japan to a silent movie actor and a circus performer. She would go on to become a legendary burlesque dancer, exploitation super-star and an inspiration to tough chicks and BAMFs everywhere.

FYeah Tura Satana on Tumblr
Pintrest board devoted to Tura Satana from Madeline Smith
A delightful later in life interview with Sandra Bernhard on Reel Wild Cinema 

TIA CARRERE

In an acting career that spans from Cover-Up (1985) to Curb Your Enthusiasm (2007), Tia Carrere's been a zombie victim, an action villain, a lounge singer in Little Tokyo, a space marine, a Sorceress Queen of Acheron, and several dozen other things. One of those things is a multiple Grammy award-winning singer, with wins in 2009 and 2011 and nominations in 2008 and 2010. Working in her musical talents to her acting career, Carrere has also contributed vocal performances to at least six soundtracks to films in which she starred, and did all of her own vocal performances in Wayne's World (1992). Still well remembered as Wayne Campbell's foxy-lady love, it remains for many her signature role. In addition to being a "babia majora" Carrere has an under-recognized sense of comic timing and expression both of which are visible in her reoccurring appearances in Curb Your Enthusiasm, and her hilarious turn as Piper Bauman, Kelly Bundy's rival from modeling school in an early episode of Married with Children (1990).

Standing at 5'8" and stunning, Carrere worked as an actual model for some time during the early part of her acting career after moving from her native Hawaii to LA,California. Her first film role was Zombie Nightmare (1986), a low-budget independent horror film that featured Adam West and later appeared in an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (1994). She would appear in a few more films such as Aloha Summer (1988) and Fine Gold (1989) over the course of the decade and continued to work regularly in television. Her career really took off in the early '90s, and saw her racking up multiple screen credits nearly every year for the next ten years. Earlier on in the decade saw Carrere mixed up with the action-men; she played supporting roles in 80's-style genre pictures like Showdown in Little Tokyo (1991) and Harley Davidson and the Marlborough Man (1991), thrillers such as Treacherous (1992) and Rising Sun (1993) and big summer blockbusters like True Lies (1994).

Carrere's filmography has bounced all over the genre-map since the mid-90s, but additional highlights for cult fans include Kull the Conqueror (1997), a sort of sequel to the Conan films of the 1980s (originally planned to be called Conan the Conqueror, the script was re-written for "Kull" when Arnold Schwarzenegger declined to reprise his former role) that features Carrere as a vermilion-tressed witch-queen, and Relic Hunter (1999-2002) a Canadian fantasy-adventure series in which Carrere stars as a globe-trotting archaeologist. Her career shows no signs of waning or slowing down, and she's done everything from reality contest television [Dancing with the Stars, The Celebrity Apprentice] to television dramas [CSI: Miami (2009)] to video game and animation voice overs [Scooby-Doo Mystery Incorporated (2010), Saints Row (2006)].

Interestingly, while Carrere did not do her own topless shots in Showdown in Little Tokyo (a body double was used), she did appear nude in Playboy's January 2003 issue. It would have been easy for Tia Carrere to rest on her laurels as a total babe and focus her career strictly on playing "the hot chick", but made efforts early on to diversify beyond playing a gorgeous face and notoriously turned down a role on Baywatch (1989-1999) to audition for Wayne's World. In addition to her professional activity in the film and music businesses, Carrere is also an animal lover and charity supporter, and is an active member of Planned Parenthood. Though the press is currently pretty quiet about what projects the future holds for Tia, she's got lots of cunning and talent to protect her, whether she's working on a film, a television series, a record, or production company.



-Footage from Halloween 2009 of Tia Carrere performing Ballroom Blitz Live at the Chiller Theater in New Jersey
-Tia in Kelly Bounces Back , from Married With Children-Article on and interview with Tia Carrere by James Brady
-A great write-up of one of Tia's early films Showdown in Little Tokyo, via The Val Verde

SHORT TERM HIATUS

Tally Rose's Foxy Ladies is on hiatus this month; we'll be resuming regular updates next month in June. In the meantime, consider checking out The Swan Archives , a truly impressive archive dedicated to Brian De Palma's cult-classic Phantom of the Paradise (1974). Though De Palma's now a well established director with huge cinematic hits like Scarface (1983), Mission: Impossible (1996) and of course, Carrie (1976), his rock opera adaptation of Phantom of the Opera remains a polarizing horror-comedy that audiences seem to abhor or adore.

Highlights include the scene-by-scene exploration of the film, and the incredibly detailed notes on the production.

HAJI CAT

Very little is known for sure about the mysterious Haji, also occasionally credited as "Haji Cat" and "Haji Catton", we don't even know the story of how she got her famous moniker (when questioned, Haji says that story is a long one). One thing that is known for sure however, is that the notorious sexploitation king Russ Meyer thought enough of her to cast her in several of his films, --a noteworthy accolade from a director known for usually only working with an actress once or twice, and then never calling her again. How Haji got started in show business appears to be another one of her mysteries but she did spend some time working as an exotic dancer at a club called The Losers on La Cienega Boulevard in LA. While she was workin' it as a go-go dancer, she met Tura Satana, who Haji later introduced to Russ Meyer. The two would co-star in what is one, if not the most famous and acclaimed of all his films, 1965's Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!.

Before portraying the eclectically accented third of the hell-raising hell-cat gang, Haji starred in Motorpsycho! (1965), the third of Meyer's black and white gothic melodramas. Though the plot revolves around Corey, an ineffectual veterinarian attempting to avenge the rape of his wife, Haji's Ruby Bonner is easily the most compelling character in the narrative. A newly remarried Cajun widow, she falls out with her current schlub of a husband on the road, and decides to team up with our "hero" to seek vengeance on the gang-raping bikers that killed her previous husband. From the moment she appears, Ruby becomes the hardest driving force in the film. It is Ruby who sucks the poison out of Corey, it is Ruby who watches over Corey as he rests and recovers from the poisonous snake bite, and it is Ruby who defends herself and Corey from one of the bikers with a classic mantis move.

After Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, Haji continued to work with Meyer, appearing in Good Morning...and Goodbye! (1967), Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970), and Supervixens (1975). She often wrote her own dialog for her parts in Meyer's films, and contributed psychedelic elements, like body painting, adding extra atmosphere to his rural sex-romps.

More than just a staple of the Russ Meyer stable, Haji appeared in John Cassavetes's crime-drama The Killing of Chinese Bookie (1976). She had a supporting role in the outrageous "women-in-prison" sexploitation film Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks (1976) as a spy disguised as a dancing girl, and also made an appearance in the musical '70s soft-core take on Don Quixote, When Sex Was a Knightly Affair (1976).

Born in Quebec, Canada, Haji now lives in Malibu, California. Though more or less retired from acting these days, she still gives the occasional interview, and has contributed to several "making-of" documentaries over the last decade including Go, Pussycat, Go! (2005) a short documentary on the making of Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!. A long-time supporter of environmentalism, Haji has maintained a keen interest in nature and the outdoors throughout her life, reportedly starting her mornings by body-surfing in the buff at 6am.

From the Burlesque circuit to the Cult Cinema circuit, Haji's been there and back. However, she's given several interviews over the years and never sounds cynical. Instead she reveals herself to be smart and savvy, if perhaps a bit spacey. Whether she's living the glamorous life as an entertainer on La Cinega, or the quiet life near the coast, thinking about all the little creatures in the ocean, Haji remains one of the most mysterious and fascinating figures of exploitation cinema.

Further Reading:

Big Bosoms and Square Jaws: The Biography of Russ Meyer, King of the Sex Film; Jimmy McDonough,(2006)
Invasion of the B-Girls; Jewel Shepard, (1992)
Motorpsycho clip