Thundercrack! (Curt McDowell, 1975)

nKeeping track of rugged men with mustaches is not my strong suit. In fact, it’s one of the weakest suits I own. No foolin’. Stand two guys in front of me with mustaches (it’s entirely up to them if whether or not they wear nothing but a white jock strap when they stand before me), and I’ll have a hard time telling them apart. However, the makers of Thundercrack!, the epic black comedy/erotic monstrosity from the mid-1970s about girdle trauma and inter-species intercourse, doesn’t merely toss two mustache-sporting gentlemen in my general direction, uh-uh, they chuck four, count ’em, four, freaks with hair growing above their mouthy crevices at me over the course of the film’s two and a half hour running time. Luckily, their facial hair wasn’t what caught the elongated pubes of my fancy in its bear trap of love as I watched this bizarre oddity unfurl its lumpy mucus all over the spastic thimble collection that is my unconscious mind. If you can believe this, there was facial hair in this movie that buttered the dimples that pepper my inner thighs that didn’t involve burly men with mustaches, and it was located on the expressive face of the alluring Marion Eaton, the demented sex kitten who now visits me in my dreams on a nightly basis thanks to her squishy labia drenched in five gallons of low carb marmalade. Of course, I’m never asleep at night, so these dreams are more like daydreams. Except they occur at night, making them nightdreams. Whatever you want to call them, every time I get dressed or undressed, I always try to imagine that Mrs. Gert Hammond, the character Marion plays in Thundercrack!, is watching me from an adjoining room through a pair of holes drilled in the eyes of a painting of George Washington. However, since this Canada, the eyes belong to Anne Murray; if you thought I was gonna say, Pierre Trudeau or  Sir John A. Macdonald, I’m afraid to tell you that I don’t want portraits of creepy-looking men, no matter how important they were to history of Canada, staring at me as I’m getting dressed or undressed in the comfort of my own mental asylum.
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nWe all know what I’m doing, but what is Mrs. Gert Hammond doing as she watches me get dressed or undressed? Excellent question! She’s inserting a peeled cucumber into her quagmire-esque vagina. Duh, squared!
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nEyebrows! Shit! Fuck! Piss! I can’t believe forgot to mention that it was Marion Eaton’s always deranged eyebrows that diverted my attention from the mustaches on the faces of the fellas in this film. There I was, putting all this effort into setting up my rational obsession with Marion Eaton’s eyebrows in Thundercrack!, and I decide to go on this weird tangent about drilled holes, peeled cucumbers, and, of all things, Anne Murray. It was totally unprofessional on my part, and I promise that it will happen again. Imagine if I didn’t happen again? I get shudders just thinking about it. On the positive side, my off-kilter digressions are gonna put my kids through college someday.
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nIf I had my druthers, my children, the statuesque Agnieszka (she likes Jem and collects defective scrunchies) and the pugnacious Zbigniew (he likes Sgt. Rock comics and has a rational fear of centipedes), will hopefully get into any number of the fine community colleges that litter the borough of Brooklyn, New York. Why there? Well, they have an excellent Canadian History course (learn all about John A. MacDonald and the cultural significance of Anne Murray’s pussy), and, more importantly, that’s where Roo (Moira Benson) went. Who the fuck is Roo, and what did she learn at a community college in Brooklyn that was so great? For one thing, she knows how to make an atomic bomb. And secondly, she gives great head. How do you know that? Just ask the cock attached to Bond (Ken Scudder), as I’m sure it will tell you what an oral delight it was to intermittently splosh around inside Roo’s pretty mouth.
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nOpening with a scene that features Mrs. Gert Hammond (Marion Eaton) sitting in her kitchen on a stormy night mocking the weatherman on the radio, the film, directed by Curt McDowell (Loads) and written by George Kuchar (Hold Me While I’m Naked), quickly moves onto the road where we meet Bing (George Kuchar) as he’s driving through the aforementioned storm. Ranting about circus life and informing us that “gorillas are different from children because they have more hair,” Bing is clearly insane. The next character we meet is Toydy (Rick Johnson), who’s hitchhiking in the rain. Eventually picked up by Sash (Melinda McDowell), a chick who got a red butt in Tuscon, and Roo, a tough city girl with sensual lips, Toydy thanks the ladies and gets in the backseat. Distracted by Toydy’s cock (Roo insisted that he pull it out), she looses control of the car.
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nThe fate of the threesome is unclear, as we don’t see what happened to them. But Bond tells Chandler (Mookie Blodgett) that he saw an explosion. Unimpressed by what Bond saw, Chandler continues to drive. Isn’t he gonna stop to see if they’re all right? No, I’m afraid not. For you see, the House of Philips Unlimited is where Chandler is going, and no-one, not even a car accident, is going to stop him from reaching his destination. What’s going on at the House of Philips Unlimited? Well, his late wife, Sarah Lou Philips, daughter of Leland Philips, the girdle king of central Texas, died because of the girdles they make at the House of Philips Unlimited, and Chandler has made it his mission in life to destroy his former father-in-laws girdle factory.
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nSeemingly unaffected by the world around him, Chandler continues on with Bond, a guy he picked up at the bus station. Hold one. The bus station?!? That’s sounds kinda gay, if you ask me. Oh, believe me, I would never ask you. But you’re right, it’s gay, all right. Traumatized by the girdle fiasco, Chandler is now only sexually attracted to men, hunky men…with mustaches…who hang out outside bus station bathrooms. Suddenly, their conversation, which has has so far run the gamut from dodo bird tattoos to bongo drums, is interrupted by a not-so wily woman named Willene Cassidy (Maggie Pyle), the wife of a famous country singer.
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nSomehow convincing him to check on the car accident, Willene tells Chandler and Bond to meet her at the large house at the end of the road. When Mrs. Gert Hammond hears a knock at her door, she can’t believe her ears. Realizing that the voice on the windy side of the door is not only a human voice, but a woman’s voice, Mrs. Gert Hammond starts to freak out. Obviously not accustomed to having visitors, she asks Mrs. Cassidy to “please forgive the delay,” and goes about fixing herself up. However, in her mind, “fixing herself up,” entails drawing on eyebrows in a haphazard fashion and vomiting on her wig while wearing a black slip. As strange as it sounds, I happen to know several people who are into the whole “mature ladies who vomit on their wigs while wearing black slips after they fall in the toilet” fetish, so this scene should be right up their alley. 
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nWelcome to Prairie Blossom. I hope your brain is ready to absorb some fucked up shit, because Thundercrack! is about to get weird. Putting her vomit-stained wig back on, after giving a couple of shakes, Mrs. Gert Hammond finally gets around to inviting Willene into her home. The film’s first big laugh comes thanks to Gerd’s forgetfulness in regard to the history of Prairie Blossom, as the schmaltzy piano music stops and starts when Gerd does.
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n”How many days and nights has your womanly body been deprived of a wash cloth,” asks Mrs. Cassidy before she removes Mrs. Gerd Hammond’s slip. Placing her surprisingly taut body into a warm bath, Mrs. Cassidy proceeds to cleanse Mrs. Gerd Hammond’s filthy frame in what turn out to be the film’s first erotic sequence. Well, at least I thought it was erotic; Mrs. Cassidy goes to town on Mrs. Gerd Hammond’s tired, aching vagina with the devotion of a loving mother.
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nAfter changing into the shortest kimono humankind has ever seen, Mrs. Gerd Hammond, her pussy refreshed and vibrant like a summer day, welcomes Bond, Toydy, Roo, Sash, and Chandler into her humble abode. There’s no sign of Bing, but I’m sure he’ll be around soon. While sitting in Mrs. Gerd Hammond’s living room, Chandler tells the group what exactly happened to his wife on the day her girdle burst into flames. Just in case you wondering, the animosity that was prevalent between Chandler and Bond on the road continues inside Prairie Blossom, as the two of them are constantly fighting with one another.
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nTelling them to take off their wet clothes, and “change into apparel hanging before them,” Mrs. Gerd Hammond invites them to get dressed in a bedroom at the end of the hall. And so begins the “pealed cucumber dildo voyeurism” sequence, so named because it involves a pealed cucumber dildo and voyeurism. Watching each of her guests get undressed in a room that is littered with pornographic materials through a pair of holes in the wall, Mrs. Gerd Hammond stuffs her box while Chandler uses a masturbation machine, Roos pleasures herself with a conventional dildo, Sash plays with a puppet, and is soon joined by Bond (he’s wearing a condom with a chicken head on the end), and Toydy penetrates an inflatable sex doll while penetrating himself with a conventional dildo.
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nSomewhat flustered after Toydy catches her in the act, Mrs. Gerd Hammond retreats to the kitchen, where she talks with Mrs. Cassidy about her son (it was his room where all the guests got changed/masturbated/had sex). I liked the look on Mrs. Gerd Hammond’s face as Mrs. Cassidy inadvertently ate her pealed cucumber dildo, as it reflected the look most people would probably sport if someone started to unwittingly eat your unwashed, veggie-based sex toy. Oh, and in case you were wondering what the status of Mrs. Gerd Hammond’s son is, she explains it by saying, “My husband is dead, my son no longer exists.” I know, what could she mean by that?
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nAs you would expect, or maybe you wouldn’t, it is, after all, Thundercrack!, the characters pair off together: Chandler and Sash have sexual intercourse in the wine cellar, Roo gives Bond vigorous blow job (work that cock, girlfriend! man, her snotty face makes my twig hard), and Toydy toys with Mrs. Gerd Hammond in the kitchen.
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nSuddenly, an elephant roars. It would seem that a throng of decrepit circus animals are running loose outside, including a gorilla named Medusa (Pamela Primate). It’s at this point in the film, which is exhaustively long at 158 minutes (the ideal length for a movie of this type is around 80 minutes), that Thundercrack! starts to display its razor sharp wit. The dialogue that centred around Chandler’s vendetta against the House of Philips Unlimited was sort of clever and Mrs. Gerd Hammond’s passionate defense of her pickling technique was delightfully stupid.
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nWhen Bing finally does show up, things get even more weird. Yeah, I know. You wouldn’t think that was physically possible if you were to judge by what has transpired up until this point, but they do; get weirder, that is. Wondering why a bunch of heterosexual women and gay men are hanging around the house belonging to a crazed mature woman with a rocking bod and a set of eyebrows that look like they were applied by an apoplectic dandy fop, Bing is flummoxed and a tad ansty in the pants department (his Kucharian cock longs for ripe gorilla pussy). But don’t fret, Chandler fills Bing in on all the juicy details.
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nAs Bing began to tell the tale of how he and Medusa first became intimate (a gorilla handjob underneath the big top), I couldn’t believe I was still watching this. Anyway, since Medussa is crazy about bananas, and Toydy had brought along two crates worth (he always travels with fresh fruit), Bond decides to allow Toydy to fuck him in the ass in order to procure a crate. The idea is for Bond and Mrs. Cassidy (they’re in love) to distract the gorilla with the bananas so that they may escape his furry clutches. It’s a long time to wait for some gay sex, but it’s totally worth it. Okay, maybe that’s a bit of a stretch (don’t worry, Toydy used plenty of lube), but I did appreciate the man-on-man action that came near the end of this bizarre exercise. Oh, and as Mrs. Gerd Hammond would say, “People come and go, but the cucumber must stay.” I think I know what you mean, Mrs. Gerd Hammond. I think I know what you mean.
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