Batpussy, Hero for Our Troubled Times: An Appreciation

Today, to get this whole blogging thing started, I thought I'd share with you one of my favorite things and one of my personal heroes: Bat Pussy!

Bat Pussy makes her first and only film appearance in a mysterious pornograph of the same name, in which she is played by a gifted yet unknown actress. The set-up, in brief: Buddy and Sam, a married couple who, to put it kindly, spit in the face of porn’s rigid conception of beauty, are trying to have sex. Mostly, they insult each other, which doesn’t even seem to be a kink or anything since they’re both pretty visibly turned off.* None of this matters since it’s all just a set-up for Bat Pussy to burst onto the scene in all of her glory. We first meet her hanging out in what seems to be a small industrial building or something, labeled as Bat Pussy’s lair with a handmade sign. Very DIY, our Bat Pussy. Offended by, and I quote, the “dirty motherfuckers fucking in her holy Gotham City,” she hops on her Space Hopper (emphasis on the hopping) and storms to the rescue of chastity and the tender sensibilities of the pornograph’s audience.

Okay, let’s pause here to cut the crap. Bat Pussy is a very very very very very bad movie. Like, however bad you think a movie can be, think worse. It’s widely considered to be the worst pornograph of all time – and, considering the typically low bar of pornographs, this is no small feat. There are a lot of bad movies, and a lot of bad smut, but Bat Pussy is special because no one know who made Bat Pussy and why. Unlike other terrible movies, we’ll never be able to know what was going through this mad genius’ head***. While Manos: The Hands of Fate was made on a bet and both Plan 9 from Outer Space and The Room have infamous personalities behind them, giving at least some closure and context to the mess on screen, Bat Pussy is fated to forever remain a mystery. Discovered in the basement of a porn theater and subsequently gifted to the public by the good folks of Something Weird Video, it lacks any credits. Somehow, no one in the cast or crew has come forth to claim credit for this masterpiece. It’s been dated to some time in the early ‘70s and placed somewhere in the Mid-South, based on an issue of Screw Magazine read by a character and the almost-cartoonish accents respectively. And that’s all we know.

I should also make a confession: I haven’t seen Bat Pussy in its entirety. I honestly don’t feel like I need to. But I have seen this clip a number of times that approximately totals the runtime of Bat Pussy.**** Go ahead, watch the clip. It’s G rated, I promise. Watch it again. I know you want to. It’s still funny, isn’t it? So, uh, let’s talk this through.

To the erotic strains of Sewer Lady, a real track from the Adam West Batman TV series, Bat Pussy emerges from her Lair in full regalia. Then, for four extraordinary minutes, she journeys through the suspiciously vacant and Texas-colored Gotham City on what appears to be a bright red yoga ball. As one reviewer puts it, she hops over both hill and vale, with heroic verve and commitment, her homemade cape fluttering behind her, even though she’s moving at a slower speed than a person on foot. Throughout her journey, Bat Pussy proves herself as a true hero of the hour. She pauses to piss behind a bush, demonstrating a commitment to herself and her own needs despite the restrictions of societal norms. However, she takes great care to readjust her costume afterwards. Her image matters. Next, she comes to the rescue of a blurry silhouette (this is all filmed from a significant distance) by beating the attacker over the head with her yoga ball, er, Space Hopper. How useful, to have a mode of transportation that doubles as a weapon. Had she been driving a mere Batmobile, she could have run the guy over, sure, but that lacks the precision of just beating someone over the head with an inflatable ball. Finally, the piece de resistance, Bat Pussy, approaching Gotham City’s one highway, sets a model for responsible citizenship and signals her turn into traffic. Truly, Bat Pussy is a role model for us all.    

It’s this scene that really seals Bat Pussy’s insane legacy. This could have just a standard basement attempt at erotica, with typical goofs like a cameraman belching loudly and actors fudging their lines. It could have been an aggressively anti-sexy smut-piece, what with its unappealing stars who threaten to fuck each other in the nose. But instead, it’s something altogether more innocent and deranged. The protracted Space Hopper scene reminds me of a kid playing superheroes, putting on a dish-towel cape and hopping to the rescue on a rubber ball because it’s more interesting than walking. It’s genuinely impossible to figure out who thought this scene was a good idea – it’s beautiful in how baffling it is. And that inexplicability, that mystery which can never be answered, is what, in the expansive library of bad movies (and bat movies), makes Bat Pussy so special.

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* Especially Buddy, if you get my drift.**
** The drift is he’s impotent which, this being a pornograph, is less than ideal. Just wanted to make sure we’re all on the same page.
*** We might call our mystery director the Ed Wood of smut, but that would just be Ed Wood
**** A respectable 50 minutes, somehow

 This essay was originally published at micahosler.blogspot.com.