Pulp International - Two vintage posters for Black Alley Cats circa 1973

Oct 11 2013

Not only do they bite—the movie does too.

We’re pretty brave when it comes old sexploitation movies, but this one was really, really, really, really bad. Four students from some sort of adult girls school are raped one night when they’re out on the town and afterward they decide to fight back. They take martial arts, learn to shoot, dress up in black leather jackets (but virtually nothing else), hit the streets and beat the living shit out of the guys that attacked them. Revenge whets their appetites and, naming themselves the Black Alley Cats after their leather gear, they become urban vigilantes. There’s more to it—for instance a subplot involving illicit porn movies—but really the production is such a mess it seems rudderless. In tone it’s like a Japanese pinku flick, but not cleverly scripted, choreographed, shot, or edited.

However, there are a couple of things of note here: first, this may be the earliest reference to MDA in a motion picture, and yes, they’re talking about ecstasy, or MDMA, which was synthesized in 1910, made illegal all over the planet around 1970, became a popular party drug in the late 1980s and remains so today. Second, there’s a lot of muff on display here, both male and female. We differ at Pulp Intl. about muff. With respect to the female variety, one of us loves it, and the other doesn’t. But since the one who loves it is actually writing this entry, I’ll just mention that pubic hair is natural, which makes waxed or lasered pubes a fetish, not the other way around. Just getting that out there.

Anyway, Black Alley Cats is grindhouse of the rawest variety. It was originally rated X, and presumably still bears that designation. In a rational 2013 it would be re-rated an R, but that’ll never happen because nothing terrifies the greyhairs at the various ratings agencies around the globe like a visible black penis, and a big one at that. So X it is, which

means you can probably forget about getting the movie in your Netflix queue. But maybe that’s just as well. Black Alley Cats has some enjoyable aspects—notably Sunshine Woods, a supporting cast of hilariously irredeemable male sleazeballs, and those spectacular bushes (did we mention Sunshine Woods?)—but otherwise this is not a great effort. We have some murky stills below with actual—not made up—lines of dialogue. The movie premiered in West Germany under the English title Black Cats today in 1973.