A rare screening of Curt McDowell’s THUNDERCRACK! was one of the unsung highlights of the Cambridge Film Festival this year. Comically melodramatic, naturally sexy and wonderfully absurd, this B-movie pastiche is Rocky Horror in extremis. It attracted a grand total of eight audience members to Screen 1. Shame on you, Cambridge!
Cursory research suggests a tumble of anarchic tomfoolery and hard-core porn, which naturally nipped interest in the bud for some – and it’s certainly a film that either turns you on or turns you off. But THUNDERCRACK! was by no means the most peculiar, challenging or inaccessible film in the programme. Like Holy Motors, it subverts the grammar of film – and like Looper, it transforms the ridiculous into the sublime. Fortune favours the bold, and even this cut-back Dutch bootleg version has so much to offer: a consistent fix of eloquent wit, satire, Frisco hippy erotica and fun for two hours. Frazzles of lightning and dodgy sound recording obscure some of the dialogue, but it’s still one of the most quotable scripts you’re likely to come across. Curt McDowell is the natural forefather of some of the most popular subversive artists, from John Waters to The League Of Gentlemen.
“What the hell is a biped?”
“You’re a biped, dummy.”
“Now look, Chandler, I don’t mind you calling me a dummy. But don’t be calling me dirty Italian names.”
THUNDERCRACK! is a classic “dark and stormy night” story, where various misfits seek shelter at an isolated house whose dreadful secrets slowly unfold as the characters share their torrid back stories. One of the wonderful things about THUNDERCRACK! is the way that the sex scenes are the most normalised element of McDowell’s mise-en-scène. Love, obsession and neurosis are bizarre and stylised – but the shagging is natural and unselfconscious. Often a coupling will play second fiddle to an onlooker’s didactic monologue, or a hammy shift in character dynamic. At other times, the realism of sexuality is in the ridiculous – Toydy grapples with a floppy inflatable man while struggling to contain an errant butt plug, whose peregrinations are marked in the soundtrack with a swanee whistle. The whole maelstrom is held together by eloquent dialogue which works best of all in the hands of Marion Eaton, who plays the tragically deranged Amanda Wingfield of the menagerie, Mrs Gert Hammond. The late Eaton was a seasoned actor and a champion of what she termed “erotic realism” – read this great memorial to her at Brightlights.
Curt McDowell was terribly unhappy with the film being “butchered”, as he put it, so he hated for this truncated version to be screened. The director’s cut is very different – some scenes pared back, some of the wonderful monologues extended, and extra sex scenes. Missing treats include a scene where Bond reveals he has a tattoo of a dodo on his thigh, which Chandler finds to be in extremely poor taste as the animal is extinct; and a subplot regarding Sash’s butt, which used to be red but is now white.
Tartan planned a UK DVD release which never came to fruition (to learn more about Tartan film, read our interview with Hamish McAlpine). Only one copy of the original 16mm print director’s cut exists, and it’s currently in the hands of Synapse Films where a digital restoration is underway. The transfer and clean up process is posing an even huger and more expensive task than usual, not least because of the great affection Synapse have for the film, and their determination to honour Curt McDowell’s memory – join us in harassing @synapsefilms for an update. Because, like it or lump it, THUNDERCRACK! is a holy relic of American cinema and San Francisco porn.
George Kuchar (“Bing” in THUNDERCRACK!) taught film at the San Francisco Art Institute until his death last year. Cambridge Film Festival 2009 introduced the Kuchar brothers with the documentary IT CAME FROM KUCHAR, and we had the privilege of interviewing George – read it here.
See Rick Trembles’ excellent illustrated synopsis
If you like the look of THUNDERCRACK! you might add the following to your Christmas list:
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaYQ7VY8tyA
The blockquote about bipeds is the one bit I snuck in for and had me in stitches. I left when someone started rubbing someone’s crotch and talking about bananas
Proof, if proof be need be need be, that there’s something for everyone in THUNDERCRACK!