SuperHaji, the exotic Asian hellcat featured in a flurry of B-movies filmed by Playboy photographer turned movie-maker Russ Meyer, died on August 9 (IMDB has the date as August 10). Russ Meyer cast her in her first movie, MOTORPSYCHO, when she was only 18 and stripping for a living.
Her most famous role was in the cult film, FASTER, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL! a movie that later became the icon for B-movie sexploitationers.
Born to Filipino and British parents, Haji (a nickname purportedly given to her by her uncle) grew up in Canada. She was living in Southern California when she passed away of apparent heart problems. Haji will be remembered best in her roles that cast her as a strong female in an era where this type of character was rare. Her voluptuous curves were always enough to appeal to male audiences.
Haji, an
Actress Featured in Cult Films by Russ Meyer, Dies at 67
By DANIEL E.
SLOTNIK (NY Times)
Haji, a
voluptuous actress who played one of three homicidal go-go dancers in Russ Meyer’s 1965 cult film “Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!,” died on Aug. 9 in Southern California.
She was 67.
Her death was confirmed
by the dancer and actress Kitten Natividad, a friend, who said she did not know
the cause. She said Haji had high blood pressure and heart problems in recent
years and was taken to a hospital after falling ill at a restaurant in Newport
Beach.
Haji, a brunette
of Filipino and British descent, met Meyer, the celebrated B-movie director, in
the mid-1960s while she worked in a strip club in California. He cast her as
the lead in his biker movie “Motorpsycho” (1965) even though she had no acting
experience
Later that year
Haji appeared in “Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!,” the tale of three dancers who beat a
young man to death, kidnap his girlfriend and flee into the desert. She played
the lesbian paramour of the lead character, Varla, played by Tura Satana. The film has acquired a devoted following and
has been embraced by the filmmakers John Waters and Quentin Tarantino and even
some feminists, including the film critic B. Ruby Rich, who praised it in The
Village Voice as a “female fantasy.”
“You just didn’t
see women taking over and beating up men in those days,” Haji said in an interview posted on Russ Meyer’s Ultravixens, a Web site devoted to Meyer, who died in 2004,
and his films. “Russ did something no one else had the imagination to do. And
he was smart to use three bodied-up women, so whether the picture’s good or
not, you still sort of stare at it.
Haji played a
scantily clad bartender in Meyer’s “Supervixens” in 1975 and appeared in
“Beyond the Valley of the Dolls,” the story of an all-woman rock band’s descent
into debauchery. It was the first of Meyer’s films produced by a mainstream
studio. She also acted in John Cassavetes’s gritty drama “The Killing of a
Chinese Bookie” in 1976.
Haji was born in
Quebec on Jan. 24, 1946. Ms. Natividad said that Haji’s last name at birth was
Catton, and that she thought her given name was Cerlette. (The name Haji, she
said, was a nickname given to her by an uncle.)
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