Thundercrack!

Imagine Rocky Horror in black and white and as serious perved-out schlock-horror. Now, let's soup up the story a little . . .

We have a big old mansion on the hill. Some strangers are caught in a thunderstorm as their truck breaks down and decide to shelter. They are shown to a room in which they can change into some dry clothes (this room just happens to contain a wide variety of sexual 'aids'). Maintain an atmosphere of menace.

Soup it up a bit more. One of the characters is love-sick for a sex-crazed gorilla whom he had an affair with back in the days when he used to work in the circus. The owner of the mansion has the remains of her husband pickled in various bottles in the kitchen. Her son contracted a weird condition in the Far East that made his balls so heavy that they crushed things and sent him crazy (so he's behind a locked door and trying to get out).

Into what is becoming an increasingly complicated story that involves clichéd situations treated and re-created with incredible vision, add the odd 'porno' scene (why have pretend ones??). The effect of this is equally unsettling. Just as you get into the comfort zone of camp horror, some carefree full frontals make you feel distinctly on edge - all the better to freak you out for the next scary plot development. I should add that a bountiful mix of hetero and gay sex ensures it is not a film for dirty old men unless they are exceedingly liberal and the sudden shifts between genuinely erotic and scarily weird make you feel involved with the characters rather than observing them from a superior height.

I saw this film for a second time in 2005 and it was apparent that a number of very explicit scenes had been previously deleted. As the graphic sexuality runs simultaneously with double and triple puns explaining the subplots, it makes much more sense with them in and makes the film more cerebral than the average psychotronic experience. The acting by lead character Marion Eaton is also outstanding, almost Shakespearean, and contrasts with the tongue in cheek hamminess of other cast members in a way that makes your jaw drop. One of the most unusual films you'll ever see, I can't imagine anything more weird if John Waters was abducted by aliens and then regurgitated all over someone making a psychotic horror spoof with political and psychological undertones.

If you like cult films this as a jewel. Go and see it with very open-minded friends, or people you know very well! Thundercrack! is a cult classic for the seriously open minded.

I had the pleasure of seeing this at a midnight screening of the Seattle International Film Festival. Wow. This may have been the strangest film ever produced. It is a comedy, a claustrophobic thriller, a love story (well, sort of), a monster movie, and a porno all at once. It would be not enough to simply describe as satire, it is far more than that. You should not pass up the opportunity to see it on the big screen if you have the chance. Any fan of the bizarre can't miss this one. Highly recommended!

THUNDERCRACK! is, in a strange way, a scurrilous precursor of DEAD MEN DON'T WEAR PLAID, and with wicked wit and precision, subverts not only the entire `grammar' of film, but an endless succession of Hollywood images, situations and clichés in the process. It even manages to satirise pornography; no mean feat when such images still retain their power to shock and unsettle some people! Using the familiar "lonely-house on a storm-swept night acting as a safe haven for lost and confused travellers" scenario, (some chance!!), it explores the manners and mores of `normal' society with such wicked wit that only the most puritanical would not be capable of responding. Thankfully made in black-and-white, the entire cast and, it appears, crew, throw themselves into the venture without inhibition or qualm, and the result is Hollywood turned on it's head, and all those previously `hidden' and subliminal subplots exposed for what they really are. For broad-minded adults, a most amusing and entertaining tonic, showing perhaps, that even sex should not be taken TOO seriously.

Thundercrack! is a true original in the world of cinema, one of those hybrids that defies one genre even as it dabbles and sticks its 160 minute (yes, *160 minute*) run-time in-to (ahem) every genre orifice it can. It's a dark comedy, and yet its also extremely campy (on purpose, like I imagine this was written and performed for a tiny off-off-off-off-off-OFF-off Broadway production in the early 70's, and certainly Marion Eaton plays to all the balconies); it's shot in a 16mm black and white style that evokes Romero with Night of the Living Dead and, more-so, Faces by Cassavetes, and while the cinematography is rich it doesn't stick long for either relationship drama or stark horror; it *does* have some horror elements, or rather some parts that mock the idea of what a horror movie is. I direct you in the immediate path of the gorilla and a character who may or may not be locked behind a door...

Oh, and did I mention it's a porno? Because that is what it primarily is. This is f***ing, but it's also 1970's people f***ing and it's hairy (one of the women, god bless her, I could tell didn't shave her legs) and sweaty and it's an equal-opportunity sex movie. Director Curt McDowell and writer George Kuchar have their scenario set simply as this: Eaton is a mad woman living by herself in her home (as she readily tells anyone who even half-listens, her husband is dead and kept... in places, and her son "does not exist), and due to some accidents and other mishaps on the road nearby while it's raining (ala, uh, Psycho I guess?) they all have to crash at her place for the night. She'll feed them, and (again, akin to Psycho) may have a peeping-tom set-up to look in on her non-existent son's bedroom which is lined with sex toys and images galore and... yeah, everyone ends up f***ing each other. A lot.

I saw someone else on Letterboxd describe this as being like a haunted house film where the ghosts are instead (gulp) stains that are left after the sex acts. That's not a bad way to go about it, but I think that undersells just how insane this whole production is. Kuchar's script is incredibly tasteless, but it knows it is and embraces it, and Eaton is digging so deep into this character's psychosis that you're not sure if she'll be genuinely-great at being like a Blanche Dubois crossed with the old lady from Hansel & Gretel, or so not great at it that it works a different way. And I should also mention there's an intermission - yes, a goddamn intermission - where one can settle for ten minutes and think about what has transpired just before. Indeed the filmmakers even give us a set-piece where Mrs. Gert Hammond describes what happens to her husband, in a long monologue we can only half hear due to the only halfway passable sound recording, and the way it's shot and edited is... mesmerizing.

... And then after the intermission, Bing shows up for the rest of the run time (he's introduced briefly early in the film but then disappears while everyone else shows up), and so does the gorilla. This is when the movie gets... really good.

I think Kuchar may be the best of the non-Eaton actors here - no wonder, likely, since he wrote it - but he actually has a lot to play. While he didn't write it originally for himself, he knows just what to do to make this, uh, ex-circus worker who somehow through one odd night got the attention of a female gorilla seem completely compelling. And through that, naturally, more laughs and crazy humor emerge. It seems even weirder for me to try and criticize any of these other performers since this is, I must stress again, an *adult film* in all that entails: this is graphic sex - straight and, eventually, gay - but it's also inventive right off the bat with some of the, uh, toys that get used. But how does one judge performers when they may not have been picked for their acting prowess but because they can keep "it" up or look good without a blouse on? It's fair to say some of the cast finds the crisp campiness in Kuchar's dialog, and some (the good-hearted wife of the country star character) are not.

I'm sure I could try to criticize the production quality either, but what good would that do except to make me look like a fool for trying? This is something that can't really be considered a typical porn film because there's much, much higher ambition to the filmmaking (at least on the whole) and even in simply shooting it in rough 16mm black and white; it can't be regular sexsploitation because it's too long (a legitimate flaw I think, though exactly where to cut is hard to say); it's not something that you could easily show an art-house crowd because of the sex since it goes beyond even the typical breaking-point limits like Romance or In the Realm of the Senses. It's basically a wild underground experiment that doesn't give two million hells what you think of it. It knows what it wants to do, and Curt McDowell and his team want to surprise the audience and, hopefully they think, their audience will be in on the joke. It may be a very long, over-sized joke, but you know what they say about long, over-sized things...

Thundercrack isn't great, but why carp? Like mother! (another movie with an exclamation point at the end), it exists in the world that it's in, and we can either take it or we can't. I did, for the most part.

Absurdly weird and funny porno flick you say? Count me in! So I just finished Thundercrack! a couple days ago. And it's taken me this long to collect my thoughts on this weird-ass film. All I knew going in is that it was weird, funny and full of sex. And that hits it right on the nose.

In the midst of a dark and stormy night, seven strangers find shelter at the residence of one Mrs. Gert Hammond. She's one character you have never come across in all of your film viewing. That's for sure. Mrs. Hammond takes them all in with open arms and is happy and proud to have company on this particular night. But she fails to realize that she's gone completely insane. And you will realize this in a matter of seconds when watching the movie. And the actress playing Hammond does a fantastic job pulling off one of the strangest performances to date. Most of the time you're watching her act with pure curiosity, the next moment you're laughing your ass off. The scene where she's getting ready for her first arrival had me really laughing. Anyways, her guests are four men and three women. A couple guests know one another and the rest "really" get to know one another. Thundercrack! is chock full of flashing lightning, pickled husbands, sex, horny gorillas, gay sex and one used up cucumber.

There are many upsides to this wonder of a porn flick, but there are a couple downsides also. For me, the flick was pretty difficult to hear. It's a rare movie that has not received the proper treatment it deserves. The music is too loud when people are talking. And sometimes when you're trying to read lips, the lightning from the Thundercracks! can't let you see what they're saying. This is a big problem, because the dialogue is where the movie shines. But if this problem is resolved, wowee, this could be one hell of a treat for the unsuspecting viewer. There's a rumor that a nicely packaged DVD is coming out....who knows when though.

Again, this movie is perversely strange and strangely perverse. For many a year I've yearned for a movie that could compete with my messed up dreams. And this is it. If you like porn, witty dialogue, funny acting, cucumbers, and just overall weirdass movies, you'll definitely get a kick out of Thundercrack! Right Chandler? 8.5 outta 10