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Review

If African-American director Jamaa Fanaka is best known for any contribution to B-movie pop culture, it’s probably his Penitentiary films, a trio of violent action titles that became 1980s cable-TV staples. But Fanaka’s real contribution to cinema came quite a few years earlier…Soul Vengeance (originally titled Welcome Home Brother Charles) is a low-budget blaxploitation film Fanaka directed (and wrote, produced, and edited) in 1975, and it’s unlike any other film that ever emerged from that quintessential 1970s genre. An admirably gritty and authentic portrait of life in Watts ghettos of the time, Soul Vengeance is probably of greater interest for an outlandish (to put it mildly…) latter-act plot development that never fails to astonish. The story involves Charles (Marlo Monte), a small-time hustler set up by racist white cops, one of whom partially castrates Charles with a razor before sending him off to prison on trumped-up charges. Charles apparently learns some form of black magic in the joint (this is conveyed in a disturbing montage sequence accompanied by an unholy industrial voodoo drone), and upon release, he is able to hypnotize white women with his genitals, and he can also (“in a scene that will make viewers doubt their sanity” – Michael Weldon, “Psychotronic Video Guide”) cause his penis to grow to roughly the length and girth of an average fire hose, in order to strangle his former white tormentors with it. It should be pointed out that Soul Vengeance is not a comedy (which isn’t to say that there aren’t moments that will trigger outrageous laughter). Rather, Fanaka is taking the mythical archetype of the African-American stud to consciously surreal heights, offering a satirical commentary on race relations through one of the most bizarre narrative twists ever created. Lest this sound too serious, rest assured that Janaka’s underrated and fascinating film also contains its fair share of 70s soul music, afros, platform shoes, and all the other reliably entertaining ingredients of blaxploitation fare of the day. But Fanaka (whom Weldon labeled “a black Ed Wood”) has more subtextual tricks up his sleeve and in his pants, and this transforms Soul Vengeance into one of the era’s most mind-blowing black films.