I have seen a lot of crazy shit in my life, but nothing prepared me for the utter insanity of Penitentiary director Jamaa Fanaka’s debut feature. Welcome Home Brother Charles (also known as Soul Vengeance) opens with a bizarre R&B/industrial theme while the camera scrolls over an African penis statue. Cut to local drug dealer Charlie (Marlo Monte) getting busted by a cop who just caught his wife with a black man, so instead of just booking Charlie, the cop tries to castrate him.

Charlie is sent to prison for three years where he has a frightening nightmare (told through black-and-white stills). After he’s released, the film becomes a “make the ghetto a better place” film, where Charlie does good in the neighborhood, getting a girlfriend out of prostitution and talking to his young brother about the dangers of gangs. But then, Charlie goes psycho and starts killing the honkies who put him in prison … with his magic penis.

I don’t know how and I don’t know why, but all of a sudden, Charlie’s member has the power to make white women go into a hypnotic trance and do his bidding. Once he has his enemy cornered, he simply takes off his pants and his dick grows bigger and bigger until it wraps itself around the judge’s neck, strangling him.

So, in other words, Welcome Home Brother Charles is one of the greatest films of all time. —Louis Fowler

Buy it at Amazon.