BAT PUSSY

I SAVED BAT PUSSY

by Mike McCarthy

Lost films, Old comic Books, Rock and Roll, Underground Cinema, Historic Preservation, Neighborhood Movie Theaters, Memphis, and the “worst porno” of all time. These are a few of my favorite things.

In the early nineties, I played in a rock and roll band called THE ROCKROACHES with a bass player named Bill Eaker who got himself a job at a local porn palace called the PARIS ADULT THEATER. By 1993, the band had broken up and I turned my thoughts to drawing comics and making low-budget movies with a self-styled punk aesthetic. I was inspired by the Re:Search Volume on Incredibly Strange Films, Psychotronic Magazine, and the availability of vintage sexploitation films on the maverick label SOMETHING WEIRD VIDEO.

Following artist Dave Stevens suggestion, I reached out to Something Weird owner Mike Vraney and began illustrating VHS covers for his mesmerizing trailer compilations. By 1995 my Super 8 feature TEENAGE TUPELO was Something Weird’s first brand new release. My company was called Big Broad Films (later “Guerrilla Monster Films”). I was determined to make a personal statement by filming ‘starlets’ I’d met at the local Antenna Club who also shunned progression by embracing the vintage look and feel of post-war America. For me, the ‘90s was that final call, that last dance with the 20th century.

In the early summer of 1996, I was wrapping up the 16mm filming of THE SORE LOSERS (co-starring David F. Friedman as “God”) while Bill was promoted to general manager of the Paris Adult Theater. The Paris had originally opened in 1940 as The LUCIANN THEATER (named for owner Michael Cianciolo’s two daughters Luci and Ann). The neighborhood theater became a bowling alley in 1958 then a nightclub called “The Party” in 1966. I’ve read that nearby American Sound recording artists would hang out there. Eventually the club sold to the Paris Adult Group in the early ‘70’s to screen adult films.

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Bill gained access to all the dusty, forgotten areas that had been locked away for years ever since the theater had converted to VHS back in the 80’s. Bill stated, “I had seen boxes of old film reels when I ventured back there with previous managers to retrieve something or just have a look around. Of course the first person I thought of was Mike.”

Bill called me up, and soon we were walking through dark-lit chambers where black tangled masses of super 8 celluloid lay strewn about the room just shy of a garbage can. We arrived behind a makeshift movie screen, and my jaw just dropped. Before me were almost 25 or 30 boxes each containing five to eight reels of 16mm. I began to search for titles written in black marker on the lime green film liter that typically preceded each reel. Before I left the Paris that day, I had discovered a 600-foot reel of film called BAT PUSSY.

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Bill adds, “I took Mike McCarthy back to show him the reels. He was wowed and said he might know someone who'd be interested in purchasing them. I got permission from my immediate supervisor who named a price. Shortly thereafter, the deal was made.”

I immediately phoned Mike Vraney and told him I had found hundreds of (what appeared to be) late sixties/early seventies softcore and porn titles. Vraney was elated. I can still hear his voice over the phone. “Don’t compromise the integrity of the collection!” A deal was soon struck where Vraney paid the Paris Adult Theater owners (through the help of Bill Eaker) $1,000 for all the 16mm films.

I later returned to the Paris Adult Theater with the THE SORE LOSERS film crew (Darin Ipema, Emmy Collins, Nick Diablo, Wheat Buckley, and Mike Hunkele) and we rescued the films from the theater. I then went about cataloging each title and packaging them for UPS shipment to Seattle. Mike Vraney said it was the single largest film find at that point in the history of SWV.

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THREESOME XXX

Let’s skip ahead 14 years. Something Weird Video had released BAT PUSSY on volume 23 of its Dragon Arts Theater double feature compilation with another unrelated XXX film titled BABY BUBBLES. By this time, cult film fans knew of my affiliation with BAT PUSSY. When I was touring my CIGARETTE GIRL feature through Australia in 2010, I had coffee with a gentleman in Sydney who asked if I had any interest in making a sequel to BAT PUSSY. “Would I?” While BAT PUSSY 2 had a delirious ring to it, I was stymied to think of what the hell that film might be. No deal was ever struck, but it planted a mighty seed.

On the plane back home, I realized it would be better to tell a fictional story where resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, would be purely coincidental. It would be an unlikely yet plausible heist story called THREESOME XXX about how the worst porno of all time was made and the Pandora’s box that it opened. THREESOME XXX would involve a love triangle with a pimp and his two tricks escaping NYC with the only print of a porno they appeared in (in lieu of payment) while being pursued by the hippie director and 2 mafia henchmen who paid for the film and want it back at any cost - even if it means the eventual murder of everyone involved with a worthless movie that is ultimately lost in the recesses of an old movie theater.

Still seems like a sure-fire winner to me and one day might live as a graphic novel, but the idea behind THREESOME XXX was based on my theories as to how BAT PUSSY ever got made to begin with.

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PERFORMANCE ANXIETY

I grew up in rural Mississippi and I know southern accents. It’s my belief that the cast of BAT PUSSY came from the Mid-South area. That is to say, around Memphis, Tennessee (or nearby Arkansas, Alabama, or Mississippi). This theory also has a lot to do with the film being found in Memphis. That being said, I believe the film was shot in New York City, then brought back to Memphis for whatever reason, where it remained unclaimed at the Paris Adult Theater until 1996.

“I’m tired of you standing down there on the corner of Elm Street.” “A goddamn whore is what you are.” (“Buddy” speaking to his girl “Sam”).

I believe that the characters of ‘Buddy’, ‘Sam’, and ‘Dora’ were simply playing themselves: A corn-pone pimp and his hayseed hookers who found themselves unable to turn a trick in Gotham City (home of The Batman) and were simply desperate to eat, even if it meant gnawing on each others nether-regions.

Again, this is only my theory, but for a few bucks, our threesome was asked to shoot a porno by some enterprising young man (or woman) with a camera and a warehouse location. The rural/highway locations outside the city were likely shot with a different BAT PUSSY actress all together, thereby explaining the inept faraway shots.

On camera, ‘Buddy’ and ‘Sam’ are dysfunctional when it comes to having sex and acting (in that order). However, their arguments seems natural if not ‘rote’ because they’ve likely said it all before standing on the street corner (on Elm?) while plying their trade (like Jon Voight’s greenhorn character with performance issues in MIDNIGHT COWBOY (released May 25, 1969, also rated X.

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All Luciann photos by Dan Ball © 2017

SCREW LOOSE

Perhaps more solid evidence for BAT PUSSY being shot in NYC is the persistent use of a brand new crisp copy of SCREW #80, a pornographic Manhattan tabloid published by Al Goldstein. Could this newspaper have been mailed somewhere in the south to be used on the BAT PUSSY set when any old dirty magazine would do? It’s possible, but unlikely. If this were a subscription copy, sent from New York, there would likely be a severe and visible crease resulting from being mailed. This copy of SCREW came straight from the corner newsstand in Manhattan.

At one point before an awkward edit, the camera zooms into the cover of SCREW #80 for no particular reason. Perhaps the makers of BAT PUSSY received money from SCREW publisher Al Goldstein with the promise that the latest issue would be featured as product placement.

The street date of the onscreen SCREW newspaper is September 14, 1970. I believe that BAT PUSSY was therefore shot around the same time. As Halloween approached, a Bat Cowl and Bat Cape could be easily purchased. This means that BAT PUSSY could have had a premiere as early as the Fall of 1970 (not 1973). Likewise, it would be interesting to research all the 1970 through 1972 issues of SCREW for any reference to BAT PUSSY. The cars seen on the interstate also offers clues to the correct year of the film.

If BAT PUSSY was shot in NYC, how did the print appear in Memphis at the Paris Adult Theater? The filmmaker could have delivered a print of the film to ‘Buddy’, ‘Sam’, or ‘Dora’ as payment. Another angle is that the title star ‘Dora’, before leaving for Memphis, received (or stole) the print, with the notion of screening, selling, or hiding the movie once she got to Memphis.

Regardless of who possessed it, the 600 foot reel of BAT PUSSY found it’s way to Memphis where it screened repeatedly at the newly opened Paris Adult Theater – then it was left there undiscovered for 25 years.

Over time, the 16mm projector at the Paris Adult Theater ate away the opening credits and any opening scene(s). As a fellow filmmaker, I could easily imagine a missing opener where the title character Dora as BAT PUSSY gets banged on her sofa (where she awakes later in the movie), but of course, this would have meant a FOURTH cast member. My guess for a fourth cast member would be the ‘rapist’, seen later (from a distance) when BAT PUSSY attacks him with her Hippity Hop.

WWBPD

What makes BAT PUSSY unique is that no one exactly knows when it was made, who made it, or who is in it. No one even knew it existed until I found it. In our breakneck pace to know everything, there is only so much we will ever know about BAT PUSSY. And yet, there’s something beautiful about a film so worthless that it’s left for dead behind the screen of the only movie theater that was willing to show it.

The makers of BAT PUSSY had no shame, no message, and no art. I wonder how many people saw the film and were dismayed to the point of asking for a refund. Odds are, the audience wasn’t there for just the movie. The Paris Adult Theatre guaranteed air-conditioning and little else. In Memphis, you want to beat the heat before you beat your meat.

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HISTORIC PORNOVATION

‘Don’t ask permission, shoot until they make you stop, and deny everything’.

That was my motto at Guerrilla Monster Films and my punk defense against any criticism from the uninitiated who would never dare make a film, play in a band, or draw a comic book - let alone understand making sexploitation as Art. Nothing made me angrier than being called a pornographer by people who did not understand the difference between sexploitation, nudie cutie, and all those cool sub-genres that lead up to (and were made extinct by) the dull thud of pornography.

Saving old film is a unique form of cultural anthropology. When any of us makes that effort to save an unknown film, we long for it to be LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT. Sometimes the film you save is BAT PUSSY.

At the time Bill Eaker took employment at the Paris, there were several adult theaters in Memphis. Now there is only one. The beautiful architecture featuring the original marquee, along with the name “LUCIANN” immaculately chiseled in concrete, still resides at 2432 Summer Avenue today.

The best use for pornography that I have experienced is the historic preservation of a neighborhood theater called The LUCIANN. The LUCIANN is still selling some form of entertainment 77 years after it’s opening.

Porn saved The LUCIANN, and for better or worse, The LUCIANN saved BAT PUSSY.

Invictus Hubba Hubba!
Mike McCarthy
Memphis
May 14, 2017

Mike McCarthy is currently illustrating "The Angry Rednecks (A Kid Anarchy Adventure)" for Fantagraphics Books, re-releasing his 1997 feature "The Sore Losers" on Guerrilla Monster Films, programming Time Warp Drive-in, and creating a Johnny Cash sculpture for the city of Memphis where McCarthy has lived since 1984.
www.guerrillamonsterfilms.com


copyright 2017 by Mike McCarthy