Bonnie's no pussy, she's a very "rare and deadly species" of PETS, on limited edition Blu-ray/DVD combo for Vinegar Syndrome's Halfway to Black Friday sale.

Bonnie (Candice Rialson, MOONSHINE COUNTY EXPRESS) escapes from her brother/pimp (Mike Cartel, RUNAWAY NIGHTMARE) onto the streets of Los Angeles when he runs afoul of a black pimp named Mother. She quickly makes friends with dog-hating hooker Pat (Teri Guzman, FIVE ANGRY WOMEN) and they both get picked up by middle-aged Dan (Brett Parker, THE TROUBLE WITH GIRLS) who takes for a ride in his flashy sports car. Pat whips out a pistol and she heads to Dan's house to rob him while Bonnie teases and torments him in the woods. Pat not only tosses Dan's poodle off a cliff when it bites her, she ditches Bonnie and takes off with eight-hundred dollars and the car. While trying to steal an apple, Pat meets lesbian artist Geraldine (Joan Blackman, SHIVERS) who uses her as a model in exchange for room and board. Geraldine's possessiveness and her hatred of men is a drag at first, but her supposed self-defense murder of a burglar (Matt Green) Bonnie has seduced sends the girl running into the arms of eccentric art collector Vincent (Ed Bishop, SATURN 3) who has become obsessed with her after buying a nude painted by Geraldine. Vincent, however, turns out to be not only a collector of art but a collector of females in all their species which he keeps caged in his basement zoo to pleasure and punish at his whim. Having tamed and caged Bonnie, he invites Geraldine over at the girl's urging for a special threesome. Geraldine may be a fierce lioness in response to Vincent's unwelcome advances, but Bonnie may not be as tame as she seems.

While not exactly PC with lines like "You're not a kitten, you're just a little pussy," PETS is not the male empowerment fantasy that it first appears to be either. However cliché the portrayal of lesbian Geraldine as icy and possessive – she tells Bonnie she prefers to make love to her in the dark because she can close her eyes and imagine Bonnie as she wants her to be – her response to Vincent's increasingly deranged diatribe about women needing to be put in their place as objects of pleasure is that of any sane person when confronted with his zoo and prized human specimen. Bonnie wants nothing more than to be free of those who would take advantage of her – even Dan who would use her as an escape from his unhappy marriage as figurative lapdog to his wealthy wife's actual lapdog – and the lyrics of the theme song "Searching" carry her along on her episodic journey in which animals seem to be the only innocent characters with which she can commune. The 100 minute running time allows for a leisurely 70's pace, exploitable nudity, some quotable dialogue, and a loose structure that keeps things unpredictable even though a shot from much later in the film tacked on to the start of the film spoils the reveal of the titular pets while adding a presentation card for distributor Mardi Rustam (EVILS OF THE NIGHT). The late Rialson made quite a name for herself in a handful of memorable but obscure exploitation pictures including entries into the New World nurse and teacher films, but PETS may be her ultimate showcase. German-born Jewish producer/director Raphael Nussbaum directed a handful of films in his native Germany like THE INVISIBLE TERROR and SINAI COMMANDOS before coming to the United States and dabbling in sexploitation by producing Al Adamson's THE FEMALE BUNCH and THE EROTIC ADVENTURES OF DON QUIXOTE.

Produced as ONE NIGHT STAND but released theatrically by Rustam's International Producers Corporation in 1974 as PETS – and in the UK as SUBMISSION and Germany as ANIMAL WOMAN – the film had an unauthorized release (possibly from the Australian VHS release) from Alpha Blue Archives in a double bill with MAMA'S DIRTY GIRLS (on Blu-ray now from Code Red) and an official DVD release from Code Red in 2009 from multiple damaged 35mm prints (with a "Battered Deleted Scene" as an extra) that was certainly watchable but now looks pale and grimy. Vinegar Syndrome also had to contend with multiple archival 35mm prints of varying quality for their 2K-mastered 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen transfer. The tacked on opening title card still looks the worst of the presentation, but the first reel looks cleaner and more colorful than the DVD (the PETS title card is repeated in the correct place after the pre-credits sequence) after the murky night scenes. Some reels are marked with vertical emulsion scratches and the reel changes are even scratchier, but the start of the final reel seems to been exposed to the elements only on one side of the reel leading to fading that loses all color but red for a moment with every revolution of the reel causing a sort of pulsing for the first minute or so. It is certainly an improvement over the DVD and more than watchable considering the state of the elements, but one can assume that the original negative no longer exists if Vinegar Syndrome was not able to spring it on us for this limited edition. The DTS-HD Master Audio 1.0 mono track occasionally reveals damage to the optical tracks but it appears to have been cleaned without excessive digital filtering. Optional English SDH subtitles are provided as well.