As a tour guide for three years at the famous Sun Studio, filmmaker Mike McCarthy was often called upon to tell people where to go, so to speak, when they were looking for juke joint blues, hole-in-the-wall barbecue and other authentic expressions of local culture.

As it turned out, visitors didn't always appreciate being led off the beaten path.

"One of my pet peeves is when people come to Memphis, they want to see 'real' things, but then they don't want to go to the 'bad' side of town," McCarthy said. "But it's not necessarily the bad side of town, it's the poor side of town. You have two things there -- you have a stigma and a mystique, and one's bad and one's good, but they're the same place. That's what you have in Memphis."

That tension also haunts and energizes the work of McCarthy, a trailblazer in Memphis independent cinema whose career predates the emergence of Craig Brewer, the founding of the city's main film festivals and even the introduction of DVD.

With his new and most ambitious feature, "Cigarette Girl," which has its "U.S. premiere" Thursday at Malco's Studio on the Square, McCarthy is eager to affirm his value as a filmmaker whose passion for punk rock, comic books, monster movies, pinup girls and Elvis is the stuff of art as well as exploitation -- or, in this case, "smokesploitation."

For the first time in his career, he has shed the "JMM" moniker he often assigns to his work and even dropped the full John Michael McCarthy credit to bill himself as, simply, Mike McCarthy -- an unpretentious name for a 46-year-old, Tupelo, Miss.-born, longtime Memphis artist with responsibilities to not just his muse but to his wife of 20 years, Kim, and to his children, 10-year-old Hanna Mildred and 5-year-old John Marvel (named for the 1940s superhero Captain Marvel Jr.).

Produced on a modest budget that McCarthy wishfully describes as "under a million," "Cigarette Girl" is a dystopian fantasy that name-drops Fritz Lang's 1927 classic "Metropolis" and evokes the artsy anomie of Francois Truffaut's 1966 Ray Bradbury adaptation, "Fahrenheit 451," to tell the tale of a young cigarette dealer (newcomer Cori Dials) in the year 2035, when tobacco is banned except in the increasingly ghettoized and crime-ridden "smoking sections" of cities.

After her grandmother (Helen Bowman) is hospitalized with emphysema, the Cigarette Girl attempts to break her addiction to nicotine while also escaping the clutches of her employers, the mob-associated operators of the smoker hangout, the Vice Club. Soon, she's packing a pistol next to her packs of cigarettes. The movie's tagline: "She'd Kill for a Smoke."

"It's metaphorical," McCarthy said. "I use sex and violence as a metaphor for life and death."

Both sex and violence are embodied in the fishnet film-noir presence of the striking Dials, 27, a McCarthy 5-foot-9 "starlet" who works as an intern mortician in a Virginia funeral home when she's not stalking through McCarthy's eccentric scenes or singing lead vocals in his rock group, Fingers Like Saturn.

Dials may be the most impressive visual element in a movie that also features beautifully and subtly rendered digital effects by Memphian H.G. Ray, who transforms the Crosstown Sears building into an Anton Grot-esque monument surmounted by a giant, glowing iron cigarette, which creaks in the wind like an infernal weather vane.

"When I met Cori, who looks like a million bucks, suddenly I realized I don't need a million bucks to make my movie, 'cause it's standing right in front of me," said the director, whose work typically features a strong female lead character, whether on film or on the page. (McCarthy's comic-book creations include "Cadavera," a female Frankenstein monster created from the body parts of movie stars.)

In "Cigarette Girl," Dials' sidekick by default -- the Robin to her Batman -- is a punk-rock teen runaway played by Ivy McLemore, 19, whom McCarthy discovered at a Midtown video store. ("Black Lodge is the new Schwab's," said McCarthy. "It's where all the Lana Turners hang out.")

The movie's Thursday night premiere -- the first collaboration between the city's chief film festival organizations, On Location and Indie Memphis -- kicks off a couple of weeks of "Cigarette Girl" screenings and parties.

"I think this is the movie that introduces Mike McCarthy to the rest of the world," said Jay Carl Nelson, 36, a Nashville real estate developer who is the executive producer of "Cigarette Girl."

The movie already is doing just that (although McCarthy is a veteran world traveler, having been feted with a career retrospective at the 2001 Sitges International Film Festival in Spain). McCarthy's first feature in a decade, "Cigarette Girl" made its debut in July at the Revelation Perth International Film Festival in Australia, which explains why the Memphis screening isn't the world premiere.

Said McCarthy: "After years of being underground or independent or whatever you call it, I think it's important that more people see this film than any of my other movies."

Nelson said he never had any interest in investing in movies until he met McCarthy at the 2007 On Location: Memphis International Film Fest.

"Mike McCarthy is one of the most deserving, passionate and hardworking people I've ever come across," he said. "He goes at it with blind faith, just believing in this wacky, crazy, fantasy vision that he has, so I drank the Kool-Aid and said, 'You know, I don't know what I'm getting into, but let's rock and roll.'"

Other key producers include Memphians Brett Magdovitz, Les Edwards, Adam Hohenberg and Rick O'Brien, all of whom are extremely active in the local film community, so their investment in "Cigarette Girl" testifies to their respect for the McCarthy mystique (he's a tireless and resourceful artist, committed to a distinctive vision) and to their tolerance for the McCarthy stigma (he likes a lot of cheesecake in his movies).

McCarthy's first homemade feature, the unforgettably titled "Damselvis, Daughter of Helvis," made its debut in 1994. The movie and its increasingly accomplished follow-ups -- "Teenage Tupelo" (1995), "The Sore Losers" (1997) and "SUPERSTARLET A.D." (2000) -- showcased McCarthy's pop, cultural and personal obsessions, even as the wealth of ideas competed with the impoverished production values.

These movies were Herculean (even Herculoidean) labors of love that more often were screened in rock clubs than theaters, but they were influential, at least locally. McCarthy functioned as a sort of mentor-by-example for Brewer, who produced McCarthy's most poetic short film, the surreal "Elvis Meets the Beatles," and has worked with McCarthy on various, mostly unrealized projects ever since. As a result of this association, McCarthy has been able to trade a steady paycheck for the unsteady financial rewards of filmmaking, working on such productions as Brewer's "$5 Cover" and the MTV horror series, "Savage County."

Such collaboration is the key to Memphis filmmaking, McCarthy said, citing the numerous artists who contributed to "Cigarette Girl."

"All of us who are doing this tragic thing called filmmaking, whether it's in Memphis or wherever, we're taking a huge gamble," he said. "But it seems like only in Memphis can you bring such talented people together with such an incredible work ethic."

Memphis has other attractions, too. "I can go around the corner and shoot some building that's falling over, that's perfect for some movie, and then I realize, I live here. This is my dreamscape."

Premiere: 7 and 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Studio on the Square, 2105 Court. The shorts "Smokesploitation" and "World of Mike McCarthy" will screen before the movie. Star Cori Dials and others will attend. Tickets: $12, which includes admission to the after-party at Nocturnal, 1588 Madison, with music by Impala and "cigarette girls" with food and memorabilia.

Meet-and-greet with Mike McCarthy, Cori Dials, actor Emmy Collins and others at Shangri-La Records, 1916 Madison, at 5 p.m. Friday. Live music by the Dough Rollers; 20 percent off all music in store.

Midnight screening Friday, Studio on the Square, with appearance by Cori Dials and preshow music by the Dough Rollers. Sponsored by Memphis Roller Derby, so bring skates for $2 off $7 ticket price.

Midnight screening Saturday, Studio on the Square. Sponsored by Black Lodge Video, so rent two movies for $2 off $7 ticket price.

Memphis Brooks Museum of Art screenings at 1 p.m. Sept. 24-26. Tickets: $7, or $5 for museum members or with Gonerfest ticket.

For tickets and more information, visit cigarettegirlmovie.com or guerrillamonster.com.

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