All posts by Louis Fowler

Welcome Home Brother Charles (1975)

brothercharlesWTFI 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.

brothercharles1I 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

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The Erotic Witch Project (2000)

eroticwitchWhile The Blair Witch Project was by no means the horror masterwork as it was touted, it still had potential to be a good film. Obviously, director John Bacchus (Batbabe: The Dark Nightie) saw this potential, too, and decided to run with it, adding the essential elements needed in any great movie: gigantic, silicone-enhanced breasts and an on-the-loose ape.

Following the same basic plot of Blair Witch, The Erotic Witch Project follows three horse-faced hotties — Darian Caine, Katie Keane and Victoria Vega — as they venture to a remote wooded area to debunk the myth of the “Erotic Witch” for their sexuality class. They head off, even with news that an ape has escaped into the woods. The three bicker argue and lose their map. Pretty much the same so far, right?

eroticwitch1Soon, the girls start hearing the orgasmic howl of the witch, which causes them to perform many, many sexual acts, both solo and with each other — one even using a twig! These scenes are never really “hot,” mostly because of all the stretch marks and pimples on the actresses’ asses. Also, they seem really forced and fake. Unlike so many others, these girls just don’t seem to really enjoy being exploited in a film that is just above porno.

They wake up in the morning and find dildos and an inflatable woman strewn all about the campsite. Then, the ape finds their camera and watches them get it on. I think he masturbates, too, but it is implied and not shown. Not that I really wanted to see it anyway.

Blair’s nonexistent chills, production values and dialogue are mimicked perfectly, but this is the better movie, which is really not saying much. —Louis Fowler

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Blood Beast of Monster Mountain (1975)

In the 1970s, movies about paranormal and/or cryptozoological phenomena were all the rage, from Chariots of the Gods to The Legend of Boggy Creek. Boy, did they keep Leonard Nimoy and Peter Graves’ electricity running.

Not as prestigious is Blood Beast of Monster Mountain, produced by adult-film theater owner (and, if one believes the onscreen credits, world traveler, lecturer and psychic investigator) Donn Davison. Basically, Donny inserted hilarious pseudo-documentary footage about Bigfoot into the even more hilarious 1965 family film The Legend of Blood Mountain, which has next to nothing to do with Bigfoot.

After opening with a country song about Bigfoot, Donn tells us that for years he has told producers “no” to taking part in a Sasquatch picture, but changed his mind when the director promised to make “a lighthearted movie, while still adhering to the facts.” Enter the original film, which opens with a hunter tripping about and screaming, ending up with blood all over his face.

So far, so good, right? Well, you haven’t met the film’s “hero,” Bestoink Dooley (Moonrunners’ George Ellis), a newspaper copy boy who dresses like a vaudevillian Sam Kinison and looks like Buddy Hackett after a night of lovemaking with Otis, the drunk from The Andy Griffith Show. As he begs his editor for the Blood Mountain story, a guy who looks like Moe Bandy hits something in his truck, but this is never followed up, because it immediately cuts to Bestoink’s dream — a bizarre sequence about him being a good reporter and making his editor look like a doofus, as if a guy named Bestoink could do that.

After that, things get really confusing, as scenes constantly switch from day to night, women walk through in bikinis for no reason, and Bestoink get his hands on a flamethrower. Bestoink is the most appalling human being I’ve even seen in a movie (and that includes everything with James Spader); furthermore, Blood Beast of Monster Mountain is shot with a technical expertise that would even have Eegah director Arch Hall Sr. shake his head and say, “Geez, that was shitty.”

Overall, a most entertaining hour-and-a-half. —Louis Fowler

Hollywood Babylon (1972)

Why isn’t more softcore porn as educational (or gossipy) as this? Hollywood Babylon, pseudo-based on the best-selling Tinseltown scorcher by psychedelic Church of Satan co-founder Kenneth Anger, is the ultimate precursor to The E! True Hollywood Story, with a much-needed emphasis on the nastier side of fame. Granted, we’re never really told who most of the stars (repeatedly referred to as “the golden people”) are, but it doesn’t matter — you came for some ‘70s bush-filled debauchery, and that’s exactly what you get.

Here are a few highlights among its star-studded and stud-starred recreations:
• Corpulent comedian Fatty Arbuckle bangs a girl to death with a champagne bottle after saying things like, “Later, Toots, I’m in a lovin’ mood.” The narrator laments, “If only his fans could see their jolly, fat star now!”
• One nameless star falls in love with a 7-year-old girl, gets her pregnant at 15 and marries her in a Mexican village that “smells of human urine and donkey dung.” Now mortally afraid of normal penis-to-vagina sex, he vows never to have to do it that way again. So what does he do? He obsessively forces her to go down on him all the time, even bringing in other girls to teach her how to do it properly (i.e. no teeth — you fellas know what I mean).
• Hilariously German director Erich von Stroheim, when not filming orgies, masturbates and cackles maniacally (monocle and all) as he watches a “professional sadist” whip the shit out of a chained naked girl. Is it just me, or did Stroheim look like Dr. Hugo Strange?
• Notorious lover Rudolf Valentino liked highly masculine, domineering women, was married to two “renowned dykes,” was worshipped by “swishing sissies” and his final words were, “Now, do they still think me a pink powder puff?”
• Swedish sexpot Uschi Digard — the hottest, most buxom star of ‘70s adult cinema — gets into a face-slapping catfight that leads to one of the most erection-inducing sex scenes you’ll ever see. She then models lingerie for her director.
• Lastly, America’s first sweetheart Clara Bow invites the whole football team into her boudoir, with sexy results. In the best end credits sequence since Don’t Go in the Basement, they run over the final scene of the exhausted football team, exposed wangs and all, sprawled out in Bow’s room. —Louis Fowler

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The Peek Snatchers (1965)

Remember the good ol’ days of burlesque shows? Me neither, but from the looks of The Peek Snatchers, they really weren’t all that. As a matter of fact, they were nothing more than sub-Stooges sight gags, lame plots, lamer accents and a string of voluptuous ladies — sexy guts and all — dancing around to seedy nightclub jazz. In other words: Why wasn’t there a sequel?

After a newspaper headline (presumably from The Plot Exposition That Won’t Be Used Later Times) reads “Tel-Star Orbits the World, Claim Many Things Uncovered” and “Big Jewel Robbery — Two Scientists Missing,” we meet two goofballs who may be the scientists. They bumble and stumble around, say stupid one-liners and stare into a white piece of paper masquerading as a super-computer that can see anything in the world.

With all that power, do they fall into international intrigue or get involved in some sort of espionage? Nope. Instead, they stare at 1960s tits and ass. So in between gay cowboy jokes and Japanese Beatle gags, we see a chunky stripping Latina, a chunky stripping blonde, a chunky folk-singing stripping Asian and a chunky belly-dancing Arab — sexy ladies one and all.

So fellas, wait for the wife to go to work, drop the kids off at school and get ready to masturbate, old-school! —Louis Fowler

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