Reflections on ... Thundercrack! (1975) and The Scala Cinema

/ George Kuchar and Marion Eaton in Thundercrack! (1975) /

To commemorate the release of the excellent new documentary Scala!!! Or the Incredibly Strange Rise and Fall of the World's Wildest Cinema and How It Influenced a Mixed-up Generation of Weirdos and Misfits (2024), the British Film Institute is currently holding Scala: Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll Cinema, a season of films associated with London’s notorious, much-missed repertory cinema. 

Reader, I was one of the mixed-up generation of misfits warped by the Scala at an impressionable age. (I moved to London just in time to experience its final year or so; I remember feeling bereft when it closed). The first double bill I ever saw there was within a month or two of arriving: Girl on a Motorcycle (1968) / The Wild Angels (1966) (in other words, Marianne Faithfull and Nancy Sinatra as black leather-clad biker mamas). This was when Kings Cross was still a genuinely dangerous grungy red-light district / junkie central (just walking from the tube station to the cinema felt like risking your life).

From there, I plunged into essential underground classicks by the likes of John Waters, Russ Meyer, Kenneth Anger, Andy Warhol, Richard Kern and Bruce LaBruce. But for me, the film synonymous with the Scala will always be Thundercrack! (1975). It was a blast to revisit it on Sunday afternoon with friends. In this triple X sensual and depraved oddity written by George Kuchar and directed by Curt McDowell, a motley crew of freaky outsiders seek shelter at an isolated old dark house one rain-lashed night. The house in question is called Prairie Blossom and its chatelaine is the eccentric, drunk, reclusive and deeply horny Mrs. Gert Hammond, a Blanche DuBois-type wearing Anna Magnani’s black slip. 

/ Marion Eaton as Gert Hammond /

If you’ve never experienced Thundercrack!, anticipate hardcore sex scenes interspersed with verbose faux Tennessee Williams dialogue (“Take me away from all this! I’ve got money, a car and a body – and they’re all yours!”). You get a measure of Thundercrack! immediately when Gert vomits into a toilet, her wig falls into the bowl, and she simply slaps it back onto her head to answer the front door. (“Who’s there that speaks to me in the voice of a woman? It’s been years since those doors felt the touch of a human knuckle!”). As Gert, the remarkable Marion Eaton’s gutsy and committed performance deserves to be proclaimed alongside Divine’s in Pink Flamingos or Female Trouble in the gutter movie pantheon.

/ Ken Scudder's deeply memorable jockstrapped crotch in Thundercrack! Read his story here /

Scala!!! is in cinemas now and will be available for streaming soon. Thundercrack! is apparently available on Blu-ray, but really, you wanted to watch it in a cinema full of rowdy drunk people - ideally at midnight!