Ever have one of those optimistic weekends that you planned ahead of time for greatness, but every moment seems doomed to progressively worse failure and by the time the smoke clears you're looking back on three dismal days of sto cazzo, and you managed to piss off everyone around you in the process?Mark the first weekend in June as one of those.Between a nostalgia-free cruise through the shambles of what was once my old neighborhood(Beirut comes to mind), revisiting an old dvd of my ex-family that opened some forgotten wounds, and crossed wires/botched plans with the first girl I've truly grooved on in ages(for serious), I'm almost ready to cheer on the first rays of Monday morning sunlight over here.Almost.As terminally rotten as things were for ol' Wop, I'd still never leave you without your regular review to kick off the new week; hopefully a much better one.
With a liberal dose of East Coast Hatecore segueing into some sixties calypso that's blaring in my headphones tonight, what better film to draw focus upon than Jamaa Fanaka's controversial pioneer 1975 effort, "Welcome Home, Brother Charles"(also known as "Soul Vengeance")?What Fanaka captured on film stands as a gritty, surreal extension of the eternal pissing contest between black and white males; an urban yarn o'vengeance handled with much artistic flair, a seldom-seen-yet-primo slice of seventies blacksploitation fare that has to be seen to be believed and a must for any genre collector's shelves.I first crossed paths with tonight's review back in the VHS trading days of the early nineties, a title I had heard mention of but never made much of an effort to screen for myself to that point.That all changed when I threw the tape in, instantly dumbfounded by the bleak, racist world painted in bold master strokes by Fanaka's urban brush.It ain't every day you see white bigots getting vengefully choked the fuck out by a killer black penis.Onward.
"Quit ticklin' me, muthafucka! I will NOT give you my Rufus tickets!"
We're introduced to Charles(Marlo Monte) as he sits on a high building wall, surrounded by cops, and threatening to swandive if they don't back off.His girlfriend Carmen(Reatha Grey) is brought in to talk him down, but instead, he reminisces about the weird events that led up to this stand off.Three years earlier as a street-level pusher, a botched hotel room drug deal left him in the cuffs of two cops named Jim and Harry, the latter being the crooked, racially frustrated bigot-type who decides to beat the stuffing out of Charles in the back of the squad car, nearly castrating him in the process(intentionally, mind you).On top of that, he receives a three year prison bed on which to stew upon directly after his day in court goes stereotypically(Seriously, a cop tries to cut your dick off, you might wanna bring that up in front of a judge.Just sayin'.).In the hoosegow, Chaz's wounds eventually heal as he develops a deeper spirituality, vowing to go straight amidst what sounds like a foghorn-based avant garde theme from Fanaka himself, and a montage of black and white shots of an anguished Charles brooding in his cell.Once he's on the outside again, he notices that all his old homeboys are immersed deeper in criminality than before he went in, and his former friend N.D.(Jake Carter) used Chas' incarceration to turn his girlfriend Twyla into a stripper.A prostitute named Carmen, who tried to help him as he was arrested, makes a soul connection with Charles that soon blossoms into love.But this ain't the same Charlie as before, baby.
Rule of the streets #17: Never mess with a black man's junk.
Charles's current adherence to the straight and narrow is frequently broken by the sad truth that his home has degenerated into a criminal underworld, an inability to return to productive society, and lapses of vengeance-fueled race hate against those who sought to oppress him in the beginning.And his dick grows to about twelve feet in length, strangling whitey constrictor-style whenever the feeling grips him, in a tongue-in-cheek nod to the old white racist myths about black slaves comandeering the slavemasters' wives with their enormous sex organs.So, yeah.He pleases the wives of his enemies after bedding them with Svengali-esque hypno-powers(jail was awfully productive for this guy,huh) then strangles the shit out of the honkeys-in-question with his ridiculously enormous johnson.I'll let you wrap your minds around that concept for a while, and suggest that you seek out the Xenon dvd for the exciting conclusion and potential answers to the film's eternal questions: Did Harry take Charles directly to jail, and if not, how did he skirt around the attempted castration at the hospital? Where was Chas' girlfriend Twyla prior to his prison sentence? Do undercover cops often double dip as bomb diffusal specialists? Does the sight of a giant, unfurling, black dick cause white folks to freeze up like a deer-in-headlights prior to strangulation? Once you draw your conclusions, send them off to me, ferchrissakes.I'm just as curious as you are.
Boy, Scatman Crothers could sure throw a party...
Brother Charles was one of Fanaka's three feature films he completed as student projects while studying at UCLA, the third, Penitentiary(1981), a prison boxing picture starring Leon Isaac Kennedy, was a top grossing independent film that year.Xenon's print is allegedly missing somewhere in the neighborhood of seven minutes of more shocking footage compared to other copies of the film.I actually can't remember whether the VHS I snared years ago was any more graphic than this disc.Eh, it matters little at this point.I recommend Brother Charles to any and all blaxploitation fans, and bestow three wops upon it.Hunt it down for yourselves!
I exclusively choke chicks out with mine, but whatever fries your calamari, homepiss.
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