The South Shore Drive-In lay across the Blue Hills from my suburban development of split-level houses. My father would load my mother and his six children into our Ford station wagon during the summer for the short drive to the open-air theater. The twin screens featured family fare. We watched THE TEN COMMANDMENTS and Doris Day-Rock Hudson movies, while munching popcorn from the concession stand. Neither my older brother nor I ventured from the car in our youth, since my mother insisted that we wear our pajamas to the drive-in and while Davy Crockett PJs might have been the bee's knees at home, they were targets of ridicule to the cool teenagers taking a break from the 'submarine races' in their souped-up muscle cars.
The South Shore Drive-In was their second choice, for the # 1 destination was the Neponset Drive-In next to the Expressway into Boston. The management showed adult fare. No kiddie flicks. My parents ordered us to shut our eyes whenever we passed the single screen on our way home from my Nana's house in Wollaston and with good reason. Biker films were a regular feature and the second movie baring skin was guaranteed to earn the condemnation of our pastor during Sunday's sermon.
"These films are filth. They are sin. They are the work of the Devil." The pastor had been born in Ireland. His brogue rang with the tremor of decades-old celibacy. that of a virgin. No boy on the cusp of teenagerism wished to suffer the curse of lifelong virginity.
Not even his two favorite altar boys; my older brother and me.
Especially not in 1965. A year for go-go girls and outlaw. My brother was in 8th Grade. He had kissed a girl at the matinee of the Mattapan Oriental. She had let him go to 2nd base in the pitch-black balcony. My next-door neighbor, Chuckie Manzi, and I had found stroke books in the woods below Chickatawbut Hill. Our hands belonged to the Devil and our souls were lost to God. Worst we wanted more and and that Spring no movie preached sin more fervently than Russ Meyer's FASTER PUSSYCAT KILL KILL and only the Neponset Drive-In was playing the sex-drenched hit on the SouthShore.
FASTER PUSSYCAT KILL KILL ads were splashed across the local newspaper entertainment section. Lurid posters promoted wickedness on brick walls in small towns. Parish priest pleaded with Sunday worshipers to tear down these offensive placards and scores of us in my town alone obeyed his edict. I had two tattered posters of three buxom Amazons proudly standing before a foreign sports car. I kept mine under my bed. My brother stashed four in the attic. My mother would have killed us, if she found one. we treated them as unholy relics of our increasingly rebellious youth.
James Dean had died in a Porsche. The girls in FASTER PUSSYCAT KILL KILL drove a Porsche 383. The poster was black and white, but Chuckie guessed the color was red. Death and sex were the antithesis of our Catholic upbringing and my older brother, next-door neighbor, Chuckie Manzi, and I plotted an expedition to the Neponset Drive-In in order to broaden our pubescent awareness.
DOCTOR ZHIVAGO was playing at the local movie house. The film about Commies, illicit love, and poetry had won almost every Oscar the previous month. That Friday evening I asked my father for permission to see it with Chuckie and my older brother. My mother objected to my request, however my father overruled her decision. A rare occurrence earning my mother's silent wrath.
"It's only a movie."
She wasn't buying this rationale and stormed upstairs to slam the bedroom door.
"Boys, remember when you're teenagers that your father stood up for your rights." his vision of the 60s was more accurate than ours.
He drove us in the station wagon down to the local theater. The early show coincided with the sunset. FASTER PUSSYCAT KILL KILL screened 20 minutes later. DOCTOR ZHIVAGO ran three hours. The theater was two miles from the drive-in. A distance of forty-minute by walking or a ten-minute trot. Our scheme was planned to the last detail, even to hiding binoculars under Chuckie's coat, for we would watch the FAST PUSSYCAT KILL KILL for free from the other side of the river than the drive-in.
We were slightly surprised by the line of young boys snaked around the corner.
"Certainly a long line for a love story." My father had read the book in college. I had read Pastenak's novel that winter. To me the hero Yuri was a wimp.
"Julie Christie is beautiful." My brother had her picture under his mattress far from the posters of FASTER PUSSYCAT KILL KILL. He was a die-hard romantic and thought one day they would end up together, but it wouldn't be tonight.
"Yes, she is. You boys be good and I'll pick you up in three hours."
We bought tickets and waited out front for several minutes. Several clusters of other pre-teen boys were also on the sidewalk. None of them had any intention on seeing DOCTOR ZHIVAGO. The eastern sky was already drenched in darkness. Stars clustered across the overhead sky. Chuckie nudged my ribs.
"Let's go."
The three of us looked at each other and then walked down the side street, fearful that my father had divined our purpose, but we were in the clear and our pace broke into an easy lop. Within minutes we were running over the hilly golf course overlooking the Neponset River.
"There it is." Chuckie declared from the summit.
The drive-in's was packed with cars. The big screen was showing 'Coming Attractions'. North-bound traffic on the expressway into Boston was slowing for the free show. We broke into a run and heard the hoop of the other boys behind us. Our prize was within reach. I recounted the plot of DOCTOR ZHIVAGO to my brother and Chuckie downhill to the river. My father and mother might quiz us later. They weren't fools.
We reached the river's edge to discover that the drive-in was not visible from this vantage point. Our hopes were momentarily crushed by the disappointment.
"We could swim to the other side." Chuckie suggested and unbuttoned his shirt.
"And how are we going to explain how our clothes are wet?" My brother was planning to attend law school after high school and college. His concern for his permanent record deterred his detours from the straight and narrow.
"We're not." I pointed to the highway. The other boys were filing across the bridge. Cars were beeping their horns. It was a good way to get killed and we joined their procession to the other side of the river. The next obstacle was a dump. The air was rank with the stench of burning trash, but we spotted the top of the screen and ran like hounds hunting a fox to the twenty-foot chain-link fence preventing our entering the drive-in.
None of us needed to go any farther. Our eyes were filled by the sight of big-breasted women in skimpy clothes. They were 40-feet high. Their words fell deaf on our ears. Our senses were stripped bare to focus on our vision. We had made the opening.
"Tura Satana, Haji, and Lori Williams." Chuckie said the names of the actresses aloud. He had memorized the poster. Nothing had prepared us for the female mayhem and violence. No man was safe from their terror. For the first time in my life I realized that women were not the weaker sex and walked away from THE END in a state of exhaustion. None of us spoke on the way back to the theater. In the back of the station wagon on the way home Chuckie whispered in my ear, "I'm in love with Tura Santana."
Chuckie had fallen for the raven-haired starlet. She looked a little like his sister. I was in love with her. Addy had been my babysitter. Her breast-size was a 36-B. Chuckie had once shown me her bra. It smelled on powder. I never got closer to her and Chuckie never met Tura Santana, although I did run into the director Russ Meyer at the Deauville film festival in 1984.
We had a couple of drinks at the Hotel Atlantique. I paid for them since my expenses were backed by a French magazine. The big man spoke about his enlisting in the Army at the age of 15 for the 166th Signal Photo Company.
"I filmed my way through France, but when I got back to LA I couldn't find any work, although I did some of the camera work on GIANT." That George Stevens film was being honored by the Deauville Film Festival.
"Can you remember which scenes?"
"I'm lucky to remember my name, but enough about me you're here as a journalist. You have to have some questions for me."
"Only one. What ever happened to Tura Santana?" I explained about all the trouble Chuckie, my older brother, and countless other boys had goen through to see FASTER PUSSYBAR KILL KILL.
"Ha, you're not the first kid to tell me that. 1965 was only 21 years ago. Now you can find porno everywhere. back then there was only me. I still don't know why they let me do what I did."
"Me neither, but we were glad they did. Now what about Tura?"
"I saw her a couple of years ago and you know what the worse thing about my movies is. Not that feminist think I was sexist, because they're wrong. All my women can beat up on men and do. they even kill them. No, I can live with that label. It's something people like to do. No the worst thing is seeing all those beautiful women lose their beauty. It makes me feel like crying. Same with Tura, but she hung onto it longer than most and if i close my eyes I can still see her on the set in the Mojave. What a woman."
And she still is even though Tura Santana passed away this week.
For me she will always be that big beautiful woman on the drive-in screen and I will always be a young boy.
It's a forever thing.
FASTER PUSSYCAT KILL KILL
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