The Black Alley Cats (1973)

Just perfect...

A Masterpiece!

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Well well, this one was told to be lost and OOP. Until it came out on VHS in Greece. So I had to hunt down a copy and caught one, English spoken with Greece subtitles. But still it's a hard one to find. Used to be played in the grindhousecircuit. So you already know it is going to be sleazy. Call it even an exploitation, just not a sexploitation. The movie takes 81 minutes to watch and let's say 79 minutes of the movie a naked chick is walking around. It was advertised that it would be a revengemovie but no it isn't. It's all about having sex in all ways. Sometimes really getting funny. When the raped girls go for revenge they call them self the Black Alley Cats, walking around in some leather jackets and one girl just have panties on, nothing else underneath. Wouldn't you be surprised to have been robbed that way. There is no blood at all, even that one of the girls has been hit by a bullet. The acting is, in an exploitation way, but the filming and editing is really good, the sound is bad, you really have to listen very well to understood the Cats. There has been said a lot about this flick, watch it if you can catch it, you really will have a laugh sometime and you also will notice that it was made pre-AIDS. A typical flick of that era. And remember, be aware of the bushes...

No matter how you look at it, Black Alley Cats is junk. Even for this type of film; this is still below par in the quality department and not everything can be blamed on the low budget. The film is extremely obscure (apparently only seeing the light of the day in the form of a Something Weird VHS some years ago) and that's hardly surprising. The plot begins with a rape and leads into a group of girls taking kung fu lessons and buying some 'mean' jackets, and then going round robbing people as some sort of revenge tirade. The low budget gives way to a very unpolished look which helps the film in the sleaze department. There's plenty of sleazy goings on too and most of the film is made up of either the girls pushing people around or, more frequently, some rather rough sex scenes. This is what really sinks the film; it's all too samey and doesn't have enough about it to keeps itself interesting for the whole eighty minute duration. The acting is stunningly atrocious too; not that I would expect anything else, but the performances are so humdrum that it makes the film even more difficult to get into. Fans of this genre may want to track this film down and may even appreciate it but there are far better examples of films like this out there and that is reason enough to leave this one in obscurity.

A gang of rape victims take kung fu lessons and start wearing masks with leather jackets to take on those who prey on others. They steal from the rich (including a lesbian seductress and her rapist doctor husband) and give to the inner-city poor. It's all very cheap, crude and tasteless but the background music during the lengthy sex scenes should be of interest to fans of lounge/psych music.