“When her tw*t begins to twitch…” - The wretched birth of porn parody
Needless to say, this article is not safe for work.
Reader, I have found it. After years of searching, I have uncovered the worst movie ever made. Is it The Room? Troll 2? Birdemic? Showgirls? Neil Breen’s Twisted Pair? These are all legendary, of course, but they pale in comparison to this discovery. Those films have plots, actors, music, credits, scripts, and crews that don’t audibly burp off-screen.
I thought I'd seen the bottom of the barrel. The 2008 passion project of pop music Svengali and British television personality-turned-child sex offender Jonathan King, Vile Pervert: The Musical, in which he dresses as Oscar Wilde while delivering straw dog arguments about statutory rape laws and calypso-backed defences of serial killer Harold Shipman, all read direct to a camera he set up himself on a tripod, should have been an unassailable nadir.
Then I saw Bat Pussy.
Most of the budget appeared to be spent on this - the one and only costume in the film.
In the year of our lord 2023, I stumbled upon this gem unearthed by the champions at the American Genre Film Archive, billed as cinema’s first ever porn parody (circa 197-something). It is a film that appears to have been made without a complete script, titles, credits, talent, or plot. It is incredible, in every sense of the word.
It is a film that Warner Bros. Discovery and DC Comics do not want you to see.
Our titular heroine - a woman in a discounted Batman costume - uses her sexual organs to detect crime. She bounces across town on a space hopper, stopping only to piss, and fight rapists. This is about 5% of the film - specifically, the parody element. 85%, filmed in an over-lit, puke-green bedroom, consists of a naked couple from one of the Southern states of The Greatest Nation On Earth, arguing about sex - the man insists that he is very good at it; the woman suggests otherwise. The three meet at the end of the film, and fuck. That, dear reader, is your final 10%.
After an excruciating hour of improvised whinging, Bat Pussy finally puts the porn into porn parody.
A lack of any kind of production credits or copyright notices means we cannot blame anybody for this. Were humans even responsible for its production? Is it a postmodern AI-generated prank? We may never know.
There are no titles. There are no credits. There are no explanations. There is only Bat Pussy.
There are so many reasons to avoid this film. For a start, it gave birth to the worst kind of movie - the porn parody - which should make the thing irredeemable from the outset. It looks like shit - lighting, staging, editing, and photography are all inexcusably half-arsed. I’d say it sounds fine, were it not for the fact that the one microphone they used for the shoot managed to capture the sound of one of the crew regurgitating their breakfast. The acting is roughly at the level of couples therapy role-play, if the couple couldn’t remember each other’s names. All of which would be forgivable, perhaps, were the film - a porno, let me remind you - in any way erotic. However, watching this is about as erotic as a paper cut. It looks like a snuff version of Pink Flamingos. Maybe that gets you going. I won’t judge you. Much.
And yet. I love it.
I laughed more at this film than many alleged comedies. Call it schadenfreude if you will (because it’s nicer than saying “laughing at roadkill”), but the sheer ineptitude of the piece couldn’t help but charm me, in spite of the misogyny inherent in the piece. It’s the worst film ever made, and I want everyone to see it. It’s like Sideshow Bob stepping on a rake - the longer this thing goes on, the more the same argument about sexual prowess repeats over and over, the longer you are forced to stare at these anonymous pornographic heroes and heroines, the more sips you take of the Kool-Aid (or, in my case, wine), the funnier it becomes, and more you grow to love it. And reader, I love it.
Shortly after penning this tome, I will be screening Howard The Duck to a public audience. If I had any balls whatsoever, I would be showing them Bat Pussy instead. Perhaps, one day, I will.
She still did a better job than George Clooney.
P.S. I have no idea if the late, great, Victor Lewis-Smith ever saw Bat Pussy, but consider this mid-80s local telly appearance as his unofficial sequel.
