Bat Pussy (1973)

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Director: Anonymous

Cast: Buddy; Dora Dildo; Sam

Obscurities, Oddities and One-Offs

This'll be an awkward review. Porn, whilst we are in a more open minded world, still has a stigma especially in the United Kingdom, where on one hand four mothers within the recent year have shot a porn film (Mums Make Porn (2019), a Channel 4 series) to promote a healthy interpretive, but we still have the laws dictating our porn is sold in sporadically located sex shops alongside the whole farce of the government trying to crack down on the online equivalent. Also there's the reason that John Water famously has never liked pornography, describing it as "gynaecologic", a vulnerability and messiness to the human body which is vastly different from the fantasy of erotica and, once you go beyond the glamour of large budgeted porn, is found in anything else, something we are yet to struggle with and is as much to even be found in society's issue of body objectification, as frankly the idealised images (especially forced onto women) goes against the reality of the body itself. Also, and let's be honest, even if that wasn't an issue, aesthetics are an important part, be it literal and emotionally, to sensuality, and today's subject isn't slightly in this ballpark...

...all because this is all a ridiculous over-the-top prologue to Bat Pussy, a work which doesn't deserve it. But it's also perversely a film the American Genre Film Archive have proudly released on Blu Ray, one that a) had its only surviving film celluloid found in the back room of the Paris adult movie theatre in Memphis, Tennessee by musician and filmmaker Mike McCarthy, and b) got a released through Something Weird Video beforehand in the VHS era to create its infamy.  In knowledge that c) it is restricted for them to where the AGFA can sell it, as it notoriously got pulled off Amazon US, and d) by their own work, they have also released a theatrical matinee film which culls non-porn scenes from porn horror films, deliberately for psychotronic reasons but possibly due to how trying to get people to watch porn is not appealing still for many, this is a pretty ballsy release even for a company who has also released SOV video cinema on DVD only format. It's more so as, whilst those SOV horrors have a fun factor to them, Bat Pussy is a truly misanthropic car crash of American paraphernalia where a group of people, three actors and the film maker(s), tried to cash in on making a porn film, only for it to go horribly wrong.

No one knows who made the film, but whilst it's no way near as feel-bad as I thought it'd be, its reputation for killing passion is truth in advertising, laced with a curious farce that leaves sympathetic for the cast. What transpires is that a man and a woman were hired to star in this film, set mainly in one bedroom. They may be a couple, and they are completely removed from a stereotypical image of porn stars. She is a full figured woman with hair nearly approved for a B-52s cover band (which is a compliment to say the least), he an older guy whose figure is both pudgy yet paradoxically thin, who notable can talk his way being a sexual tyrannosaurus but cannot back it up, which immediately sabotages the shoot whilst he just shows an oral fixation instead.

The notoriety of this film really comes from the fact that, as they cannot have sex, the pair bicker a lot and, for all the times the couple shows affection, it also gets nasty at moments too. The question about being an actual couple having a spat is felt as the forth wall is broke at numerous times. The actors have to coordinate themselves out of character, and where the titular Bat Pussy falls off the central bed in an attempted threesome, and may have bumped the back of her head, the male actor checks she is okay. Sound is turned down whenever the conversation clearly isn't meant to be on film, but some of it directly to the film crew is heard.

Bat Pussy, played by "Dora Dildo" (sic), is introduced in an outhouse feeling her bat-sense tingling that someone is making porn in her environment she is not involved in. The actress' looks like a woman across the street you might bump into on a regular day, trying her best and with the sense that she's got the most charisma out of the trio. Her character also travels to crimes on a Space Hooper, which is shown to be as cumbersome over long distances as it sounds. You have to see it to believe it, as it gives us rural footage to break up the film and can also be used as a weapon to batter a guy when he tries to harass a female bystander.

The result altogether is shambolic - the closest thing to hardcore is Dora's titular surname being involved, but the film is still grimy and seedy, more potentially embarrassing to be caught watching than most other porn. It's not inherently the sex either, which isn't even really there, but returning to that issue that porn also brings up the potential vulnerability of the human body, its growth in interest jarring against the innate embarrassment (especially in the United Kingdom) over the naked body too let alone any of its functions. When this film, which is halfway through before the titular star gets on the Space Hopper, takes it further by just having awkward, uncomfortable dry spots, it's even more likely to exhibit the vulnerability. Plus this is a film that, for all the affection shown between the main couple, is a bitter one which the male actor walking off the set never to be seen again whilst the actresses have to salvage a climax. (Forgive the crass pun).

Is Bat Pussy any good? No, this is entirely to be watched as a sociological item, or you'll be sorely disappointed or/and incredibly put off. It says a lot that I never had a sense of shame, shock or felt my libido had been permanently damaged watching Bat Pussy, thus undercutting the advertising. It's still to be approached with caution or as a sideshow curiosity to bemuse punters - a failure that still got a film print to try to salvage some money, and has inexplicably become a cult item since it was first released by Something Weird Video and then the AGFA. If anyone who made this film ever found out about this, if they are alive, who knows what'd they think but it'd be a baffled one in likelihood.

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