Take a historical trip through the blaxploitation films of the ’70s with Afros, Macks & Zodiacs, Something Weird Video’s 90-minute collection of these flicks’ coming attractions, all laden with shooting, loving and waka-waka guitar strumming. With the VHS tape’s release at the dawn of blaxploitation’s Tarantino-fueled resurgence in the late 1990s, Something Weird was well ahead of the curve. Dolemite’s own dirty ol’ man Rudy Ray Moore hosts the affair, with three ladies resembling Pam Grier’s Coffy huddled by his side.

In addition to the aforementioned Dolemite, Moore is represented by two other trailers of his unique action-raunch vehicles: Disco Godfather and The Human Tornado. In the latter, he boasts, “I’ve gotta dong as big as King Kong!” He gets off a better, more clever line in Dolemite: “I want him outta here in 24 hours, and 23 of ’em are already up!”

Other highlights include:
• In Monkey Hustle, the boys lift Quasars, while the girls wear T-shirts reading “Sweet Potatoes.”
• Tamara Dobson’s Cleopatra Jones character is pushed as “the sweet soul sister’s answer to James Bond.”
• Ebony, Ivory & Jade are touted as “.45-caliber kittens.” The titular first third (Rosanne Katon) karate-chops a few guys as she busts out of a tight “Big & Tall” T-shirt.
• The concert film Wattstax features Ike and Tina Turner, a heavy-haired Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rufus Thomas, who performs onstage in white tube socks.
• Robert Hooks’ Mr. T, the hero of Trouble Man, warns a caller asking for someone named Chalky, “This is T. Chalky’s dead. Now I’m comin’ to get your honky ass.”
• Trick Baby treats its source novel as if it were as hallowed and highbrow as Charles Dickens: “The way Iceberg Slim wrote it!”

Occasionally, director Domonic Paris (Film House Fever) lets Moore break into the proceedings to tell a dirty joke, none of which are all that funny. As the nonetheless amusing master of ceremonies, he tends to rhyme his lines like so many of the narrators of the trailers featured within. (Adolph Caesar, you were the teaser.) The program ends with a dirt-cheap music video, “Fonky Party,” that sees Moore squaring off against Jim Kelly (Black Belt Jones), then looking remarkably well for his age.

I especially enjoyed the monster-knockoff trailers for both Blacula movies and Dr. Black and Mr. Hyde. Sad to say, Blackenstein is a no-show. All in all, Afros, Macks & Zodiacs is a fine compilation, even if suspiciously Shaft-less. —Rod Lott

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As of November 2022, the magician Max Maven is no longer of this earth. Anyone watching TV in the 1980s will likely remember him; he was the guy who wasn’t David Copperfield, Doug Henning or Harry Anderson. With ink-black slicked hair, a single earring and pencil-thin mustache and goatee, he’s the one who looked like a satanist, albeit a satanist who could produce a rabbit from a hat.

Pioneering at the time, Max Maven’s Mindgames was an hourlong special made exclusively for home video. Marketed as “the video that reads your mind,” it’s plant-the-camera directed by Bruce Seth Green, the guy behind such VHS rental gold as Nudes in Limbo and Massage … the Touch of Love.

Maven “communicates” with viewers through a series of magic tricks. Most are considerably lame, like the opening stunner of “making” your two index fingers touch one another. Oooooh! On a set reminiscent of Match Game PM (if Gene Rayburn had tolerated strobe lights and dry ice), Maven uses his brain powers to force you choose a preselected flag (the true neat bit) before moving on to the requisite card tricks. In between, he acts like a moron in some horrid “comedy” bits; as the writer, Maven only has himself to blame.

Many tricks have themed backdrops — the jungle, a surgical ward, a Vegas casino — but no matter the locale, they reek of cheap thrills. The guy had talent, but the limitations of videotape don’t exactly make for mesmerizing feats of mentalism. With support from a talking computer, a rotund ratings rep and a pair of sequined sweeties, Mindgames includes a musical number to “Yankee Doodle,” a clip from Battlestar Galactica and a man in a duck suit. —Rod Lott

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According to The Party, the proper marriage proposal requires roses, champagne, breakfast foods “and a king-size floating raft.” Beverly Hills’ heretofore most eligible bachelor, Richard Wells (Mark Derwin), uses those items to pull an “I will” out of his window-dressing girlfriend, Cathy (Kati Chesney).

Before going out of town, Richard quickly sets up her bachelorette party. Although taking place in daytime, the event comes complete with banana-hammocked male models to guide Cathy through a “treasure hunt.” This involves a game of ring toss with an inflatable clown penis.

The party is ambushed by a nosy TV reporter and cameraperson, capturing all these shenanigans and unwrapping of such gifts as anal beads, a rather threatening dildo, one open tube of fruit-flavored oral lube and — thanks, Grandma! — a VHS on sensual massage. As the theme song goes, this love will be extraordinary.

Then Cathy and her friends go for a ride in a limousine, despite the magician performing rudimentary tricks inside. All fun comes to a halt when the limo gets pulled over by a motorcycle cop — oh, never mind, it’s just Richard in disguise! He wasn’t out of town after all! Rich people, such scamps!

The end.

Shot on VHS, this oddity bears no plot, story, stakes or point. At just 60 minutes, it’s literally amateur hour. At no point does The Party not appear to be on the verge of going porno; mind you, for all its sex talk, no sex exists. I’m not even certain its director exists, credited under the assumed pseudonym of C.J. Leverton.

Against all odds on display here, Derwin continues to act steadily, including such big-studio pics as Accepted and Everest. Meanwhile, Chesney and most of her remaining cast members have zero other screen credits, which is clearly for the better.

The Party: Cry if you want to. —Rod Lott

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After announcing her engagement, the sheltered Ana (Emma Cohen, Horror Rises from the Tomb) is shattered to learn how her widowed father takes the news: by squeezing his head through a noose and taking one giant leap off a chair. (Dramatic much, Pops?) Given the dead dad is played by the bug-eyed Howard Vernon (Revenge in the House of Usher), the sight of him hanging with tongue jutting makes him look like an emoji.

It’s not intended as funny, of course, nor is the Jess Franco film another of his bugaboo fright fests. Instead, The Other Side of the Mirror is a Euro-arty examination of grief with brief touches of the psychosexual and briefer hints at the supernatural.

Unable to marry after tragedy, the guilt-ridden Ana flees her comfy, seaside mansion life to hobnob with the Portugal art crowd in the city. Falling into bed with a number of partners, however, proves deadly, with each man meeting the business end of well-kept cutlery. She’s like a black widow without the vows … but is dear ol’ Dad bidding her post-bedding acts? That one of her victims is the director (Ramiro Oliveros, The Swamp of the Ravens) of a production of Medea is not accidental; in fact, it’s Oedipal.

Classy yet spotty, Mirror finds Franco showing restraint from his usual zooms-and-wombs affairs. The movie ambles; one scene holds a hypnotic power, while the next dissipates into apathy. In many ways, it reads like a less-effective revisit of his Venus in Furs, complete with jazz. And therein lies Mirror’s highlight: Cohen’s cooing rendition of “Madeira Love,” backed by a live band and thankfully shown in full. If only the whole were as groovy. —Rod Lott

A gastronomic grotesque, Peter Strickland’s Flux Gourmet explores issues of patriarchy, intimacy, trauma, oppression, artistic integrity and unrelenting flatulence — “seldom malodorous,” mind you.

At the Sonic Catering Institute, a three-person culinary collective undertakes a four-week residency. Fronted by Elle (Fatma Mohamed, Strickland’s The Duke of Burgundy) the trio is a dysfunctional, codependent mess. That could also describe its performance art, if said act can be properly described at all, being displays in which the auditory co-exists with the alimentary. The institute’s head (Gwendoline Christie, Strickland’s In Fabric) puts Elle and her teammates (Assassin’s Creed’s Ariane Labed and Hugo himself, Asa Butterfield) through seemingly nonsensical exercises involving graph paper or grocery-store improv. A glacial-level fracture forms.

Documenting this monthlong experience of epicurean toxicity is a journalist (Makis Papadimitriou, Chevalier) struggling with a secret: painful, excessive farting. Strickland being Strickland, that’s hardly the film’s most outrageous aspect, as he marries concepts from the two aforementioned films with the sound-dependent conceit of his 2012 breakthrough, Berberian Sound Studio. Then he bakes that mix at an exponent of 350˚ for 111 minutes until unclassifiable, and serves with avocado paste, mint sauce and an omelet-related fetish. You won’t know what hit you — a great thing indeed.

Although sound designer Tim Harrison (Censor) is the picture’s unsung hero, Mohamed’s performance looms large with an absolute fearlessness. As discomforting and disturbing as Flux Gourmet is, it’s also brutally funny, with comedy as dark as the innermost section of the human intestinal tract. Those laughs serve as a salve as Strickland transports his audience from the EVOO to the OMFG. Prepare to swear off Nutella and smoothies for life. —Rod Lott

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