Death of a Tree Hugger

A Guilty Pleasure Played Out as an Obituary

A few months ago, in memory of the passing of Roger Ebert, the moviehouse celebrated the odd but marvelous relationship between the Pulitzer Prize-winning movie critic and filmmaker Russ Meyer, who transformed gritty 16mm stag flicks and nudist camp documentaries into a revolutionary genre of cheeky, softcore satire, cranking out films with titles like "Wild Girls of the Naked West," "Mudhoney," "Vixen," and "Cherry, Harry, and Raquel," pictures "inhabited by sexually driven buxom beauties," according to Cult Movies author Danny Peary, and "strong-jawed, no-nonsense heroes."

Odd couple: Roger Ebert and Russ Meyer wait for their next inspiration...

A mutual admiration led to Ebert lending his often twisted wit to the screenplays for Meyer’s "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls," "Up," and "Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens."

What brought all this back to mind was the August 10, 2013, death of an actress known simply as Haji, who was featured in five of Russ Meyer’s films (more than any other performer associated with the King of the Nudies). Her passing, at the age of 67, was first announced on the Facebook page of Francesca "Kitten" Natividad, who starred in the previously mentioned "Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens" and was Meyer’s girlfriend and later caretaker as his health declined before his death in 2004.

Haji came into this world as Barbarella Catton in Quebec, Canada. That much is true. "I was never born," she said in the 1992 book Invasion of the B-Girls, "I just came here. I’m not really an earthling." Claiming to be "only a visitor," she told one interviewer, "I came visiting here with my family from another galaxy, and we landed in Quebec." (She told her "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" costars she was from Uranus.)

Haji as the otherworldly Cat Woman poses with Z-Man
(John LaZar) in "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls."

"My mother was an earthling, but my father sort of wasn’t," Haji told Invasion of the B-Girls author Jewel Shepard (herself a veteran of several exploitation flicks, including "Hollywood Hot Tubs" and "Return of the Living Dead"). "I just, you know, ‘appeared.’ I’ve just been…trying to be an earthling, which hasn’t been very easy. I’m still trying to find the earthling style." She said, "Most people think it’s a Hollywood gag."

In a later interview, Haji insisted, "I never ate when I was a child. I lived off air." She added, "My first beginnings of life were very connected with nature. I didn’t know what earthlings were until I came out of the woods, and then I got scared and ran back in."

"Nature is my drug, I have this thing for trees," she said. "When I see branches of trees, the way  they bend, sort of wicked-like, I always want to take my clothes off and mold my body into the branches. I feel very comfortable doing that…Nature is so real, it’s magical."

"I was fourteen when I started stripping," Haji would recall. "I did Greek dancing and belly-dancing. I looked older because I was a little developed. I was always afraid I was going to get arrested," for being underage. "I was so relieved when I turned twenty-one."

She moved to California. "I didn’t run away from home," she remembered. "I was just wild with life…I came to California to be near the ocean. I have this love affair with Malibu," where she would start each day at six a.m. body-surfing naked.

In a 2005 interview, Haji recalled she was dancing at a topless nightclub when someone recommended her performance to Russ Meyer. Meyer told her "he was a director with a small part in a film, and would I read for it." She ended up landing the lead, in "Motor Psycho," which "terrified" her. "Before, I had never considered acting." When she came to California, Haji said, "It never entered my mind to be an actress."

"Motor Psycho" (1965) starred Alex Rocco, a veteran mainstream character actor
best known for his role as the ill-fated Moe Greene in "The Godfather."

Meyer put her mind at ease by saying, "Don’t worry, baby, just stick with me, I’ll teach you everything." Haji also worked behind the scenes as a casting director and production assistant, helping with hair, makeup, and wardrobe. She remembered it as "a great education on how to make movies with a five-man crew."

Vigilantes Cory (Alex Rocco) and Ruby (Haji) are pinned down
in their pursuit of a gang of vicious bikers in "Motor Psycho."

"Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" (1965), a fast and furious bad-girl flick about three go-go dancers - played by Tura Satana (an imposing exotic dancer of Japanese and Native American heritage), Haji, and Lori Williams (a Pittsburgh native whose only other screen appearances were in "Get Yourself a College Girl," "A Swingin’ Summer," and "It’s a Bikini World") - who go on a thrill-kill crime spree in the California desert, was praised by The Phantom of the Movies (Joe Kane of The New York Daily News) as "the definitive Meyer movie…an intensely crazed fable guaranteed to keep you on the edge of disbelief."

When Russ Meyer was casting "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" it was Haji who initially suggested Tura Satana to the director. According to Haji, she and Satana were both dancers at "a very plush, classy supper club called The Losers. You never took anything off there. I would do exotic dancing to song like ‘The Girl from Ipanema.’" Haji recalled, "Tura and I got along great, but a lot of the girls were afraid of her…nobody would dare use her makeup or hairbrush, or ever borrow anything from her."

Cast as Rosie, the girlfriend of Satana’s bisexual anti-heroine Varla, Haji later maintained she didn’t know her characters was supposed to be a lesbian and, regardless of explicit dialogue otherwise, played the role straight. "I might have played things a little differently," Haji said. "I thought (Varla) was just this tough chick that I didn’t argue with. I felt she was more like my ‘big sister.’"

John Waters, the dementedly impish filmmaker responsible for such cult favorites as "Pink Flamingos," "Female Trouble," "Polyester," and "Hairspray" (the original 1988 film), called "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" "beyond a doubt, the best movie ever made. It is possibly better than any film that will be made in the future." Waters gushed, "Russ Meyer is the Einstein of sex films.He is single-handedly responsible for more hard-ons in movie audiences than any other director, despite the fact that he has refused to make a hardcore feature."

In his Chicago Sun-Times remembrance of Meyer, Roger Ebert noted, "Russ Meyer made X-rated movies, but he was not a dirty old man. He didn’t use the casting couch, prohibited sex on his sets (‘save it for the camera’), and was a serial monogamist."

Indeed, Haji called Meyer "a professional. You’re hired as an actress. You don’t have to worry about getting a knock at your door in the middle of the night." She said, "Russ never put sexual pressure on anyone, no uncomfortable feelings, not even a little."

On the other hand, Haji called Meyer "a bull on the set. He doesn’t like wimpy women or whiners." She said, "Russ was tough to work with…He yelled, was very demanding, long hours, and no one could leave the set, even if your scene was over. Even though we were miles from any town, he would keep an eye on us, even at night. No one could even go for a drive. We would live…on-location with rattlesnakes, tarantulas and lots of scorpions."

Years afterward, bad-ass girls Tura Satana and Haji rough up an unidentified fan.
(Satana succumbed to heart failure, age 72, in Reno, Nevada, February 4, 2011.)

Several years after "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" Haji summed up the cult film’s enduring popularity thus: "Well, because we all have large breasts! And there are lots of fast cars, female domination, lots of fantasies for men…without the women being taken advantage of, so it was for women also."

Haji knuckles under interrogation by surrogate-Nazi dominatrix Dyanne Thorne
in "Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks." (Years after mutilating prisoners as Ilsa
in a number of bottom-of-the-barrel sexploitation pictures, Thorne became an
ordained minister who conducts alternative, outdoor weddings in Las Vegas.)

Haji’s screen appearances apart from the oeuvre of Russ Meyer included roles in such 1970s drive-in and straight-to-video pulp as "Bigfoot," "Wham! Bam! Thank You, Spaceman!", "Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks," "The Amorous Adventures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza," and "Demonoid: Messenger of Death," as well as a small role in director John Cassevetes’ "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie," starring Ben Gazzara, prompting her to recall Cassavetes as her "favorite director." She remembered him as "always a gentleman," who "made me very comfortable with improvisation. He was ready to use me again, and then he died. That was a very sad day for me." She grumped about "Chinese Bookie," "Wouldn’t you know it, but that turned out to be his worst movie."

One of Haji's last screen roles was as Hydra Heffer (left) in the goofy homage
to Russ Meyer, 2001's "Double-D Avenger," which featured comeback roles
for a pair of other Meyer starlets, Kitten Natividad ("Up," "Beyond the Valley
of the Ultra-Vixens") and Raven De La Crois" ("Up").

Not surprisingly, Haji was, in her words, "offered all sorts of hardcore, but I turned it all down. The only thing I did was a little topless thing for Japan, at least that’s all I remember." Although she said, "I have nothing against natural nudity," she would declare, "I stay away from (nudity in films). Showing a little bit as you’re taking something off or putting something on is fine."

"Showing a little bit" as SuperHaji in Russ Meyer's "Supervixens" (1975)

"I didn’t want to do nude stuff," she said, adding with a laugh, "I wanted to hold out for the big time!" During her film career, she "kept up" her dancing, "but even there, I never danced totally nude." She stopped dancing "when everyone went bottomless." Asked at one time what would be her ideal screen role, she replied, "I want to do a western. I’d like to be a female Clint Eastwood and blow the bad guys away!"

Haji played a woodland sorceress in
Russ Meyer's "Good Morning...
and Goodbye!" (1967).

Offscreen, Haji was, by most accounts, surprisingly shy and private, preferring the natural landscapes of Malibu and the seclusion of her house over city facades and the uncomfortable company of strangers. Equally surprisingly, she remained largely unaware of her own popularity and cult status until later in life. She had developed an interest in landscaping and interior design.

Kelsey Grammer embraces Haji's earthling daughter, Cerlette Lamme.

Haji never married, but she had one "earthling" daughter, Cerlette Lamme, who became a professional ice skater and dated "Frasier" star Kelsey Grammer for a few years.

Haji never lost her passion as an environmentalist and an activist for animal rights. "I’ve always lived in the woods," she said, "growing up in  the mountains or by water. I’m awed by it…The power of life to me is so fascinating."

In 1992, she noted, "One thing I’d like to is start selling nude photos of myself. I’d like to take pictures of endangered species…then superimpose a picture of me nude, covered in leaves, over the animal. That way it looks like I’m the guardian spirit…I’d like to sell those to fans and donate the money to saving endangered animals."

Steve Sullivan’s book Glamorous Girls of the Century included Haji as one of the 1000 most beautiful women of the 20th century.

Remembering Haji in LA Weekly, Nicholas Pell wrote that "you can catch her spiritual children shimmying and shaking their tail feathers at burlesque clubs, bikini bars and drag nights from West Hollywood to Echo Park. Try as they might to channel her raw female sexuality, they’ll never be her equal. When Haji created herself, she broke the mold as soon as she was done."