Sure, we just had a cat related movie on the website earlier this week with Cat Girls Gamblers, but cat tropes were popular with schlock film producers, so here we are again with a Japanese poster for the U.S. sexploitation flick The Black Alley Cats, about a group of abused women who fight back using fists, firearms, and generally fierce attitudes. It starred Sunshine Woods, Sandy Dempsey, Charlene Miles, and Johnnie Rhodes, and it was so bad it was the only film three of the four ever acted in. Dempsey had a cinema career already, lucky for her, so she survived what was an all-time stinker. But—and you knew there was a but—as bad as the the movie is, it’s also, totally by accident, very funny. After opening in the U.S. in 1973 it premiered in Japan today in 1974.
Edit: Uschi Digard, who has a bit role in the movie, stars on the poster in the karate gi. That’s another catch for regular Pulp reader Herman. What eyes that man has!
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.
“The third technique will be snatching the groin, destroying the groin, reaching in, ripping away. Ready? RIP!”
“No, don’t stop. Keep licking me.”
“Rub his body. You’ve always wanted to touch a black man.”
“Take your panties off. You’re not going to need them tonight.”
“What the fuck are them honky bitches doing here?”
“At least they don’t cheat food money from their own people.”
“That motherfuckin’ son of a bitch. What in the hell kind of doctor is he?”
A group of CIA financed and trained Cuban refugees lands at the Bay of Pigs in southern Cuba with the aim of ousting Fidel Castro. However, the invasion fails badly and the result is embarrassment for U.S. president John F. Kennedy and a major boost in popularity for Fidel Castro, and also has the effect of pushing him toward the Soviet Union for protection.
1943—First LSD Trip Takes Place
Swiss scientist Albert Hofmann, while working at Sandoz Laboratories in Basel, accidentally absorbs lysergic acid diethylamide, better known as LSD, and thus discovers its psychedelic properties. He had first synthesized the substance five years earlier but hadn’t been aware of its effects. He goes on to write scores of articles and books about his creation.
1912—The Titanic Sinks
Two and a half hours after striking an iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean on its maiden voyage, the British passenger liner RMS Titanic sinks, dragging 1,517 people to their deaths. The number of dead amount to more than fifty percent of the passengers, due mainly to the fact the liner was not equipped with enough lifeboats.
1947—Robinson Breaks Color Line
African-American baseball player Jackie Robinson officially breaks Major League Baseball’s color line when he debuts for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Several dark skinned men had played professional baseball around the beginning of the twentieth century, but Robinson was the first to overcome the official segregation policy called—ironically, in retrospect—the “gentleman’s agreement.”
1935—Dust Storm Strikes U.S.
Exacerbated by a long drought combined with poor conservation techniques that caused excessive soil erosion on farmlands, a huge dust storm known as Black Sunday rages across Texas, Oklahoma, and several other states, literally turning day to night and redistributing an estimated 300,000 tons of topsoil.
