The Horny Auteur: Abel Ferrara’s Pornographic Debut

This chapter examines 9 Lives of a Wet Pussy (1976), the pornographic debut of American director Abel Ferrara, arguing for its significance within both Ferrara’s oeuvre and the broader history of genre cinema. Situating the film in the tradition of post-war American hardcore and drawing parallels to European auteurs such as Godard and Pasolini, Joshua Heaps explores how Ferrara’s early blend of gritty neorealism, experimental narrative, and explicit sexuality anticipates his later work. The chapter discusses the film’s epistolary structure, feminist elements, and troubling moments of sexual violence, highlighting the ambivalent moral vision that typifies Ferrara’s cinema. By placing 9 Lives in dialogue with porn studies and auteur theory, Heaps challenges the academic marginalisation of pornography and asserts the critical relevance of ‘smutty’ beginnings to serious film analysis.