Thundercrack!

Referring to "Thundercrack!" as simply being a weird cult flick would be a serious understatement and actually a direct insult, since certain people around this website already tend to call mainstream movies like "Memento" or "Pulp Fiction" weird and confusing. Weird? Not quite… A term to summarize "Thundercrack" in one simple word has yet to be invented. The closest we've got now is "extravagant", "demented" and maybe also "totally f***ed up". This movie can't even be categorized in one genre, as it's hardcore pornography as well as slick comedy as well as cheesy 70's horror. Let's just stick to the old cliché saying: it has to be seen to be believed! Imagine yourself a typical low-budget horror opening, in which random people gather around an old dark mansion during a nightly thunderstorm. They're all slightly eccentric characters with unusual backgrounds and/or odd personalities and, naturally, the female owner of the mansion is the queen of all madness. Mrs. Gert Hammond (excellent performance by Marion Eaton) is a mentally messed up widow in a permanent state of delirium, constantly babbling to her deceased husband AND extremely addicted to peeled cucumbers. Her guests soon begin to physically experiment with themselves and each other and these sexual outbursts become gradually odder. Masturbation and ordinary hetero-sex at first, but before you properly realize it; you're up to your neck in gay sex, voyeurism, sex with peculiar attributes and even bestiality. This may sound like devastating cult-cinema, but director Curt McDowell captures it all on film like it's the most common thing in the world and after a while you almost begin to wonder whether YOU aren't the abnormal one for not yet having experienced sexual intercourse with a horny gorilla! "Thundercrack!" is shot in black & white and features a handful of stylish moments, despite the trashy subject matter and the obvious lack of financial means. This movie is available in two versions, but I can safely say already that even the 'cut' version (120 minutes instead of 150) is more than weird enough for every avid fan of offbeat cinema on this planet. Watch it, and I assure you'll never eat a cucumber again in your life!

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

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.

"Thundercrack!" starts out as a horror flick with some people taking refuge in a ghostly mansion during a storm at the countryside.Their hostess is one of the weirdest female characters ever shown on screen.Dead drunk,horny,delirious:Marion Eaton plays the role with a vengeance.What is the secret with her dead husband?Where is her son? Why does she keep human body parts in the cellar?It really doesn't matter much.Very soon,everyone gets involved in something much more interesting:having sex in every which way possible and impossible.Curt McDowell's "Thundercrack!" is easily one of the most bizarre porno films I have ever seen.It's shot in a black and white and loaded with raunchy hard core homo/hetero sex.The script is supremely strange and the acting is fine.Marion Eaton is especially memorable as a creepy Mrs Gert Hammond.I can't wait to see a fully uncut 152-minutes long version of this film.9 out of 10.

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.