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Released by: AGFA/Something Weird Video
Released on: November 14th, 2017.
Director: N/A
Cast: N/A
Year: N/A
Purchase From Diabolik DVD
The Movie:
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the bottom of the fucking barrel. If you thought Cindy Lou Sutters made bad porn, well, the artisan(s) behind Bat Pussy make Ray Dennis Steckler's pseudonymous smut films look like Henry Paris pictures. Really, Doris Wishman's XXX oddities seem positively accomplished when compared to this regional filmic fuck fest… but once you turn it on, in the grand car crash tradition it is truly impossible to look away.
You want a plot synopsis? Here you go - when the movie begins, a man named Buddy sits at a table enraptured by the latest issue of SCREW magazine. Here he reads all about the latest sexual happenings in the big city and wonders to himself if hey, maybe he can make a boatload of money by taking pictures of a woman's pussy like some of these guys have. Lucky for him, he's got his wife Sam nearby. Sure, she may have trouble annunciating things and sure, she might have a giant beehive hairdo but you do the best with what you've right, right?
At any rate, Buddy kinda-sorta suggests that they give this a shot but that gets tossed out the window when they climb into bed together and start insulting one another. See, according to Buddy, Sam's problem is she doesn't know how to suck a dick, even if Sam protests that she's never had any complaints. And according to Sam, Buddy doesn't know how to eat a pussy, even though she knows he has been practicing on his secretary. This pair has been a coupe for a while now - at one point we're told nine years, at another point we're told eleven years - long enough for Buddy to have sucked the freckles off of Sam's tits (his words, not mine). Maybe the spark is just gone? It's clear to anyone watching that Buddy can't get a hard-on to save his life, and you can't really blame him when you look at his wife (that's an in-joke for all you Canadian punk rock fans out there, because really, we love Sam). Regardless, Buddy's dong isn't doing much of anything despite Sam's half-assed attempts at oral sex. Buddy then mutters something about fucking her up the ass and fucking her up the nose (no, really, he does), but it's clear that this just isn't going to work.
Thankfully, nearby, a woman named Dora Dildo is startled from a nap on her couch. Her twat is tingling! Why? Because some dirty motherfuckers are fucking in her Gothum (not Gotham) City! She gets up, ignores the can of Lemon Pledge and the can of 7-Up on her desk, gets tangled in her thrift store nightie and puts on some pajamas that kinda-sorta resemble a Bat-Girl outfit and, after that, she gets on her… hippity-hop. She leaves her base of operations (which appears to be an outhouse in the middle of a field) and awkwardly gets going - stopping on the way to pee near a lake and stop a guy who is either robbing or raping a woman - and then eventually finds her way into Buddy and Sam's place. Buddy addresses her as Batwoman, Sam does her best to correct him, and they then engage in the world's worst three-way (just watch Sam's face when Bat Pussy's lady parts make their way towards her mouth - she's clearly not interested!). Buddy's sort of into it. He might not be hard but he waves his hands around and goes down on Bat Pussy with such vigor that they fall off the bed and he lands on her head. But then there's a twist… does Buddy love Bat Pussy? Or does Buddy love Sam?
This is fifty or so minutes of the most awkwardly ad-libbed vitriolic dialogue and the worst attempts at on-screen hardcore you're ever going to see, but let me tell you first hand that Bat Pussy fandom is real. Years ago on a site called DVD Maniacs, later called AV Maniacs (now long gone, the victim of multiple hacks and an indifferent webmaster), the film spread like a bad case of the crabs. An official Dirty Motherfuckers Club was started, membership cards were made, Bat Pussy masks were created and fridge magnets distributed. A comic book was started, but sadly never finished. The word spread like some sort of perverted gospel of the sick and eventually Something Weird Video got around to putting the movie out on DVD-R (paired with Baby Bubbles). Comic book artist Matt Allison, the guy behind Cankor, was responsible for the cards, the magnets, the mask and then the cover art for the DVD-R (which, I have to brag, I own and will someday hang, framed, over my own bed). Really, Matt did all the work on this, it was a true labor of love and something that, in all honesty, people still talk about to this day.
And for good reason.
It was a magical moment in time, a moment when cult movie fiends and vintage porn enthusiasts came together to acknowledge just how seriously God damn insane this movie really was (and still is). Now that the movie lives again on Blu-ray, it stands to reason that the film should be discovered by a new generation of fans and appreciated once again by those seasoned Bat Pussy veterans that made such a stink about it in the first place. Granted, it's shot like a high school play - the camera doesn't move, the boom mic is a frequent guest star and focus is frequently a problem, but there's something hypnotic about this. The dialogue was clearly made up on the spot, the locations were clearly just whatever the filmmaker(s) had on hand (what's with the weird stuff written on the cinder blocks in Bat Pussy's headquarters?) and Bat Pussy's costume is… well let's be charitable and call it amateur. But the movie has a strange, trance-inducing quality to it. You can't jerk off to it (well, you can try, we here at R!S!P! won't try to stop you) and it's hardly the type of adult film you're going to put on to try and get your significant other in the mood, but when viewed with a group of like-minded cult film fans and the right amount of mind-altering accompaniments, this is a five star film.
Really and truly, there is nothing else like this out there - Bat Pussy is a genuine one of a kind picture and the fact that it was simply found (more on that in the extras section) makes it all the more fascinating. No one knows anything about this movie and at this point in time, it stands to reason that no one will. In an age where you can find out almost anything you'd ever want to know by going online, the mystery behind this one is clearly part of the appeal. It's certainly not the film's erotic content, because despite the perpetual nudity there isn't any, and it's hardly the film's aesthetics, because there aren't any. But what there is, in spades I might add, is regional flavor, amazingly inept dialogue, mind blowing non-acting and the evidence that somewhere someone thought it would be a good idea to make an adult motion picture with this cast and no obvious talent behind the camera.
For that, Bat Pussy cast and crew, we owe you an eternal debt.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Amazingly enough, Bat Pussy is the recipient of a new 2k scan of the only existing 16mm elements and it looks… well, check out the screen caps. See, when dealing with movies like this, legitimate cinematic oddities, sometimes you can only do so much. This is one of those instances. There's print damage aplenty and those shots that were out of focus, well, they're still out of focus. But compared to the VHS and the DVD-R that Something Weird, probably sourced from that same master tape? Honestly, this is a revelation. Yeah fine, the print is beat up, but the detail is there underneath all the scratches. You can actually make out the cover art on the issue of SCREW that Buddy is reading and hey, you can even make out the tattoo on his ass if you try hard enough. This wasn't possible before, so clearly the good people at AGFA are on to something here.
Audio duties are handled by an English language DTS-HD Mono track. There are no alternate language or subtitle options, but you probably knew that already. Quality wise, this is about as good as the video transfer, which is to say it's as good as it is likely ever going to get. So yeah, fine, some of the dialogue is a bit muffled here and there and some of the hiss just can't be removed but for the most part you can understand the film's dialogue easily enough. There's certainly more clarity here than there was on the DVD-R - those 'plop plop plop' noises that are used when Bat Pussy gets on her hippity-hop sound better than ever!
Extras start off with a commentary track featuring Lis Petrucci, Tim Lewis, Joseph Ziemba, Sebastian del Castillo and Annie Choi. As virtually nothing is known about this movie the participants offer up mainly observational comments, but pay attention - despite a flub about the film's date based on the aforementioned SCREW magazine issue, pretty much all you could hope to learn about this movie is in here. Granted, that's not much, but they try. The track is actually a lot of fun. They point out interesting bits and pieces as the picture moves on, such as the items on Dora Dildo's desk, when and where the actor playing Buddy seems to be talking to the director off camera, the fact that it looks like the tattoo on Buddy's ass is an Arkansas Razorbacks logo (a clue!) and other quirks that occurs as the movie progresses.
Also included on the remarkably feature packed disc is a twelve minute educational film called Dating Do's And Don'ts. Made in 1949, this wonderfully dated black and white short film might not be so socially relevant these days, but that doesn't make it any less awesome. It is essentially what the title makes it out to be - tips on how to have successful dates and relationships with the opposite sex, but goodness gracious has the world changed a lot since 1949. From there, check out a twenty-minute short film called The Shoplifter, a training film of sorts that tells would-be security types what to look out for when on the job. It might sound dull, but once it starts demonstrating how sneaky shoplifters are constantly able to outsmart store security types, it becomes hilariously fascinating.
Also included on the disc is A Trip To The Storefront Theater, which is a quick two minute short in which a young man and his lady friend voyage into a grubby little makeshift porno palace to check out what's playing. If that weren't enough, we also get a selection of 'Crime-Smut Trailers from the Something Weird Vaults' which includes The Black Alley Cats, Dr. Carstairs' 1869 Love-Root Elixir, Street Of A Thousand Pleasures, Carny Girl (when you think sexy, you think carny, right?), Bunny And Clod, Whip's Women, The Twisted Sex and last but certainly not least, The Frigid Wife.
If that weren't enough, however, the disc also includes a second feature in the form of Robot Love Slaves (which is a re-titled version of 1971's Too Much Loving). Presented, for better or worse, in a softcore version running fifty-four minutes, the story tells the tale of a nerdy scientist named Clark who has a vacuum cleaner that has the ability to revive the deceased. As such, and not surprisingly, he finds some hot dead chicks, brings them to his basement laboratory, sticks the hose in their mouths, and brings them back to life. And come back to life they do, but they don't have much going on upstairs. This doesn't bother him much as he's able to find plenty of uses for them as his robot love slaves, just as the title implies. Elsewhere, Clark's scheming wife pretends to be paralyzed so that she can run off with the family lawyer and get Clark locked away so that she can get her hands on his inheritance.
Sandy Dempsey and Sandy Carey both pop up in this one as two of the robots, and hey, check it out, Candy Samples gets in on a three-way with Ms. Carey. For the most part though, this is low rent vintage smut. That's not to say that it isn't a fun way to kill an hour - put Dempsey and Carey in a movie and some of us will watch it, quality be damned - but keep your expectations in check. It does, however, look like a masterpiece compared to Bat Pussy!
On top of all that, we also get an insert booklet that contains an essay entitled 'I Saved Bat Pussy' in which Mike McCarthy talks about his experiences finding an archive of vintage porn that contained the titular feature attraction and how he got it into the hands of the late, great SWV captain Mike Vraney. Accompanying this is an essay from SWV boss lady Lisa Petrucci entitled 'Bat Pussy I Love You' that is essentially a heartfelt appreciation for all that the film has to offer. Credits for the release and some technical information are also found inside.
The Final Word:
Bat Pussy is terrible by anyone's standards, but that doesn't make it any less fascinating. Cinematic masochists, pay attention! The Blu-ray release still looks like a ragged print, but that's because that's all there is to use! We do get a seriously nice upgrade over the previous DVD-R release, however, not just in terms of quality but in terms of the extras as well.
Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!
