The title of Metzger’s "second film" (second by his own reckoning; other sources list it as his fourth, after Dark Odyssey, The Dirty Girls, Dictionary of Sex, and Carmen, Baby) is misleading. Sold as an exploitation film with lesbian sequences, The Alley Cats (1966) is in fact a typically artful, sexy, sometimes ponderous, ultimately satisfying softcore effort that manages to amuse and engage more than three decades after its release.