Navigation

Thundercrack (1975)

Click for "Thundercrack" stills, courtesy of Melinda McDowell.

Dir: Curt McDowell

Here good reader is one of the greats. One of the true landmarks of 'Underground' cinema. One of the staples of many a late night cult movie circuit's repetoire. Ladies and Gentlemen…I give you….THUNDERCRACK!

Talking of thunder cracking, our story opens in the midst of a storm as a group of stranded travellers take shelter at the house of a 'seen better days' Southern Belle who just happens to be a paranoid, delusional, alcoholic nymphomaniac who is still mourning her dead Husband, Mr Hammond (who it turns out died in a very…erm…unusual fashion), and only refers to herself as Mrs Gert Hammond (Marion Eaton).
She may, or may not, have a Son as well as she tells them that he does not exist anymore. He's not dead…he just doesn't exist anymore!

The travellers are an equally strange bunch. Two women named Roo and Sash and a male hitchhiker they picked up (who have had a car crash), Mrs WilleneCassidy the Christian Wife of a very bad Country singer (Maggie Pyle), rich and recently widowed Chandler Wilson (Mookie Blodgett) whose dead wife was a girdle manufacturer heiress and Bond (Ken Scudder), another male hitch-hiker who Chandler makes arrogant passes at.

Mrs Hammond tells the guests that they can change out of their wet clothes, but only in one specific bedroom. A bedroom that is amazingly stocked with various sex toys and a strategic peephole that Mrs Hammond uses to spy on her sexually charged guests as she pleasures herself with one of her (very ample) cucumber stock!

Soon everyone is having some kind of sex with everyone else, and matters become even more complicated with the arrival of the ever so slightly deranged Bing (George Kuchar) who is hauling a truck load of circus animals. That includes a psychotic, sex crazed Gorilla who, it turns out, has escaped and is roaming the grounds.

As the all round madness and mayhem continues… pickled body parts, dark secrets, trumpeting elephant silhouettes and even more sex are thrown into the mix to create a night no one will ever forget……

With a screenplay by veteran underground film maker George Kuchar (from a story and characters by Mark Ellinger) and directed by one of his students (Curt McDowell, who also helped on the story) It is easy to see why "Thundercrack" was such a big influence on post "Pink Flamingos" John Waters ("Desperate Living"/"Hairspray") and anyone familiar with Waters's work will find much of the same amateur (in the best possible way) enthusiasm, passion, crazed genius and extremely warped creativity on show here.
All shot in scuzzy black and white, giving the film the feel of an old 30's/40's 'Old Dark House' set-up, but with very different content!

The big difference you will find in "Thundercrack" compared to the work of Waters (one blow job in "Pink Flamingos" aside) is the inclusion of full hard core sex. Sex that is as crude, messy, honest and as gloriously rough and dirty as it gets.
Pretty much all tastes are catered for with a mixture of masturbation, oral and hetro/homosexual fucking (complete with cum shots) all brought into service to help make the already outrageous proceedings that much more extreme in their damning non-conformity to mainstream sensibilities.

The sex is masterfully weaved into the film's structure and actually becomes part of the plot and never a clumsy distraction.
Mrs Hammond's voyeuristic bedroom includes a vacuum operated 'blow job' device (put to instant use), dildos and a blow up doll. And the guests use them all as soon as possible, much to Mrs Hammond's masturbatory pleasure.
One of the many bizarre sexual encounters includes one of the women, Sash (Melinda McDowell, Sister of the Director and still giving her all in support of the film all these years later..see link below) slipping on Bond's leather jacket and sticking a huge dildo out of the front of her jeans to seduce Chandler, as she notices he has an eye for the boys. Which leads him to announce he only goes for boys now because of the fact that most women he meets wear corsets made by his wife's company and it's all too much for him to bare.

The sex also brings about some wonderful moments of dialogue, something that is one of the strengths of the film as a whole.
After one of the guests has sex with the blow-up doll, a dildo pushed up his arse at the same time, he then waves said dildo at the shocked Willene shouting "Here's a toothpick for yer"!
The script is also littered with coy food/animal references to sex with lines like "Working up some gravy to squirt on your mashed potatoes" being used to describe masturbation.
In fact food features heavily in the movie as a whole. Bad taste has a field day when Willene Cassidy picks up the cucumber used by Mrs Hammond and takes a bite from it, "Boy, this sure tastes odd…would you like to share it"? "No" replies the smirking Mrs Hammond "I've already had it". According to Melinda McDowell, and unkown to the actress chewing, that WAS the cucumber that had really been used! Suffering for one's art indeed.
Mrs Hammond is later grabbed in the kitchen by a horny guest "You remind me of a nice piece of shish-kebab meat" he says romantically "Flattery will get you nowhere" she replies as he slaps bacon fat over his penis in lubricating preparation for some anal penetration, "I bet you when fart it'll sound like an oink" he declares!
Fruit is thrown into the equation when one of the women loses her virginity. As the guy enters her he says "Your body may be losing a cherry, but it's gaining two plums and a banana"!

This sexual tone to the dialogue exchanges and the film in general reaches it's peak during Bing's anecdote about 'Medusa' the sex crazed Gorilla, told with hair wringing, finger chewing craziness, (a fantastic 'trash' performance by Kuchar) that describes how, on his birthday he was plied with booze and fooled into having sex with 'Medusa' thinking, it was a hooker his work mates had lined up for his birthday treat (they had shaved her!).
"I knew she was black and that her skin was kinda tough and she smelt funny. But after 2 weeks on the road….".
After the deed, he continues, "We lay there in the dim light, her black stubby fingers around my pecker" (cue scene of said gorilla masturbating Bing to climax) "…then she turned that massive pointed head towards me and bared those giant yellow teeth in a smile of affection"!
Which all leads to a highlight of the movie where he tells the tragic tale (complete with cheap circus flashbacks) of 'Medusa'. A tale filled with death, ape rape, primate humiliation and body parts thrown to the dancing hippos!

As with all the best 'Trash' cinema, this use of dialogue and outrageous scripting is just as important as the extreme imagery and crazed set-pieces. The above examples are just a tiny sampling of the script's many absurd delights.
Another camp joy is Chandler's rant about how his wife came to die where we find out she burnt to death setting fire to one of her corsets at a garden party, as a sign of liberation, not knowing it was flammable! She was not helped by the guests who, according to Chandler; "…threw their drinks on her to douse out the flames…only they forgot it was alcohol they were drinking"!

Bing is given many more chances to shine (and Kuchar takes full advantage of them) where he tells of his hate for the uncaring public that came to leer at the circus animals, "Have you ever seen an ostrich run over by a wheelchair" he laments. And on his failure to relate to children he declares, "Gorilla's are different from little children, they have more...hair".

But all this craziness would fall apart if the performers were not up to the task. And although most of the acting (Eaton and Kuchar aside) is nowhere up to the trash genius of Waters's regulars like Divine, Mink Stole and David Lochary, everyone does a solid job and all give performances that are suitably ragged and manic, and most importantly...All are obviously loving it and giving it their full respect.
But all are put in the shade by Kuchar and Marion Eaton, especially Eaton.

With total 'trash' awareness she creates one of exploitation's most memorable and enjoyable grotesques in Mrs Hammond. Her drink ravaged panic when Mrs Cassidy (the first of the guests to arrive) knocks on her front door is complete 'Trash' heaven!
"Who is it who speaks to me in the voice of a woman" she shrieks as she hurries to make herself presentable, by painting on huge crooked black eyebrows and accidentally throwing up over her wig before putting it on her head!
This leads to the first sex scene (and a typically strange one) where the preaching Mrs Cassidy, strips off the vomit caked Mrs Hammond to bathe her, "How many days and nights has your womanly body been deprived of a washcloth" Mrs Cassidy cries.
And as she blindly goes on and on about her Country singing husband and the power of God she fails to even notice that Mrs Hammond is using her hand to pleasure herself in the water, not even noticing as Mrs Hammond orgasms!

From then on Eastman strides with assured 'Trash' grace through her many warped scenes, slowly getting crazier and more sex starved.
People too often overlook just how clever acting in films such as this is. With rushed schedules, no money and pages of dialogue (a frequent mainstay of John Waters's movies) acting in 'Underground' cinema can be the hardest gig of all.
And it takes a large talent to make the gloriously absurdist dialogue work. And "Thundercrack" is packed with the stuff!
Mrs Hammond's revelation about her Son is a perfect example of how to deliver such off the wall ideas.
After stating that her Son liked enema's via a hose she whines "My Son was big to for his age…he was to be doomed with…bigness". A 'bigness', that in a truly joyous scene of bad taste, is hysterically revealed later on by the way!

It's one of the finest turns in 'Trash' history and gained Eaton hordes of loyal fans. Many years later at the great (and now sadly late) 'Scala Cinema' in London (where "Thundercrack" had perhaps its biggest cult success, playing every month for 10 years!) she was mobbed by fans of the film and spent many an hour signing autographs. A sign of her strengths, just as much as the film itself.

Sometimes the pace slows down (much more than in a John Water's film), due to it's limited setting, set-up and 2 hour running time, (the non-theatrical print runs half an hour longer at a whopping 152 minutes!), but overall this is damn near perfect 'Trash' viewing from start to finish.
And it's a rare case of a film actually living up to (even surpassing) it's cult reputation and as such everyone involved deserves the highest praise for delivering a true masterpiece of 'Trash' Cinema packed with 'Camp' delirium.

Never officially released for home viewing, bootlegs have been the only way for people to view the film in their homes. But recently it has been announced (though no sign of it yet) that an official DVD (with the full backing of Melinda McDowell) of the full 152 minute version is due for release. And I urge every fan of 'Underground'/'Trash'/'Exploitation' cinema to add this gem to their (obviously) delightfully warped collections. Check out http://www.thundercrackthefilm.com/ for details.

The cinema's that nurtured this, and other, works of grimy art may have fallen foul of time, finance and the increasing political correctness that has castrated much of modern cinema, but if this DVD release goes ahead you can at least keep alive one of the 'underground' scene's most influential titles in your own homes. All hail 'Trash' cinema.

(Images - Thanks to Melinda McDowell for her kind permission)