Black Abductor: Rape-filled Premonition or Blueprint for the Patty Hearst Kidnapping?
Soon after Patty Hearst was kidnapped in February 1974, it was discovered that an obscure pulpy porno novel by author Harrison James ("Black Abductor". Regency Press) had appeared briefly in adult magazine stores a couple of years earlier. Various events in Black Abductor had an uncanny similarity to Patty's ordeal. It was so close that Special Agent Charles Bates, who conducted the FBI’s investigation into the Symbionese Liberation Army, deemed it necessary to buy a copy after the parallels were exposed in a New York Post story that ran on February 15, 1974.
The approximations were eerie and startling. In the 188 page porn novel (set in the aftermath of the student uprisings of the late 1960s) two men and a woman kidnap a girl named Patty, who is the lovely daughter of a prominent, well-to-do, politically conservative figure. The kidnappers show up at the apartment she shares with her fiancé, and beat up the hapless boyfriend, whom police initially deem to be the prime suspect. The villains drag the half-naked girl back to an abandoned house. They are a fully-armed left-wing paramilitary group led by an embittered black guy, and model themselves after Latin American terrorists who have been using kidnapping as a revolutionary technique. They announce in a press release to the media that they have Patty, and also use the mail to communicate with Patty's anguished parents.
Posted by Robin Bougie (www.cinemasewer.com) - 24/12/2012
After that, everyone proceeds to fuck “the political ingenue with fairly conventional sexual experiences”. They call this rigorous series of rapes her “re-education”, and it is a process that consists of a variety of sexual games “worthy of finely conditioned acrobats”. It is a sexual and political awakening, and with both her lubed up orifices and her mind totally fucked, Patty then falls for their well-hung leader (her “Black Abductor”), and decides to join the group of her own free will.
"Something happened," she says of her new outlook. "I found out it was fun to do things different.... I'll never be able to go back to where I was. People use the system to hide behind, so that they won't have to care."
Who was Harrison James, and how did he manage to so accurately predict the future? The only Harrison James writing porn novels at the time refused to admit that he was responsible for Black Abductor, and passed on the all the money being thrown at him, which didn't end up going to San Diego-based Regency Press either. Regency had since gone under, and clearly had no interest in exploiting or protecting their very valuable commodity, which didn't have copyright protection. Grove Press tried to get their permission to reprint the novel, but couldn’t find anyone involved. The only contact name they unearthed was a post office box leased to a rather obvious pseudonym -- Rita Loob. Grove press went on to republish it as “Abduction: Fiction before Fact”, anyway.
Was the SLA influenced by this trashy porn novel, did one of the SLA actually author it, or was it all just a loopy coincidence? To this day, no one knows for sure, although various online sources claim the writer was science fiction author James Rusk Jr.
Whoever he was, James Harrison's book was a boon for filmmakers. By optioning the rights from Dell (who bought them from Grove press), filmmakers could fashion a film that sailed through the same waters without worrying about libel charges from the powerful Hearst family. And that's exactly what Joseph Zito's 1975 film, Abduction, is. Filmed in 35 days on Long Island and upstate New York, the movie was made for 500,000 by 33 year old independent producer Kent E. Carroll, a former Grove Press employee.
“She is raped, attacked by lesbians and held for a strange ransom” reads the synopsis that ran in TV Guide. “The victim's father is ordered to dynamite a lavish high rise he has constructed for the opulent. (He) does exactly that in this low-budget production which was originally intended as a hardcore film but softened to an unbearable R."
“The movie is punctuated by grim interracial rape scenes”, wrote Bill Landis in Sleazoid Express. “Detailed down to the realistic sickening noises of the black aggressor's thighs smacking against his victim.”
Zito's movie is compelling viewing, and while it certainly didn't win any awards or get many favourable reviews from film critics, it did manage to clean up at the box office thanks to its subject matter, only a few months removed from the nation's newspapers. Check it out.
Robin Bougie is a comic book artist and publisher of the legendary cult film magazine Cinema Sewer. A 4th collected softcover book version of the magazine is set to be published by UK's FAB Press in 2013. Visit him at www.cinemasewer.com
