Thanks to the British Film Institute, there’s a list of films that played Scala. To celebrate the release of Severin’s new documentary, I’ll share a few of these movies every day. You can see the whole list on Letterboxd.

In the 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, it’s said that Thundercrack! played so often, up until the print that the London theater would show fell apart. They had one of only five prints that were made for this movie.

It was directed, shot and edited by Curt McDowell, the lover and student of George Kuchar — the writer of this movie — who described his work as the “prolific regurgitations of an enfant terrible.”

It’s an old dark house in the middle of a thunderstorm. We’ve seen it before, but we’ve never seen a place like Prairie Blossom. Willene Cassidy (Maggie Pyle) shows up in the middle of the night, paying a visit to the drunken Mrs. Gert Hammond (Marion Eaton), who pukes before we even get to know her. Taking pity on the woman, Willene — the wife of country star Simon Cassidy — gives her a bath and masturbates her. If this offends you, it’s best you stop watching this right now.

There’s more than one person seeking to get out of the rain. Chandler (Mookie Blodgett) is the widower of Sarah Lou Phillips, owner of the largest girdle factory in the United States. His wife has recently died as the result of a girdle fire at a cocktail party, falling into a swimming pool with her head on fire. Since then, he’s only slept with men, as women in girdles — nearly every woman in the world owns a House of Phillips brand girdle — he’d lose his erection as he remembers his wife ablaze. Luckily, Sash (Melinda McDowell) has no such underwear and is able to get him off.

Where is Mr. Hammond? He was turned into dust by a storm of locusts. Where is his son? He no longer exists.

When he did, he was a collector of sex toys, which are all over the large house, enabling all manner of sexual acts — real ones, mind you — such as Toydy (Rick Johnson) getting head from Roo (Moira Benson) to get the key to a locked room, but unable to perform until he watches Bond (Ken Scudder) and Willene get it on. Vegetables are also involved. And finally, there’s Bing (George Kuchar), who comes from the circus, a place where he accidentally made love to gorilla named Medusa who hates everyone. She’s in the car waiting for him. And oh yes, there’s a secret in the Prairie Blossom.

Buck Henry was a judge at Filmex, the Los Angeles Film Festival, and selected this as the first X-rated film allowed at that fest. Tons of people walked out. What’s strange is that McDowell was so broke when this came out that he worked as a janitor at The Roxie in San Francisco, where this played almost every Friday at 8 p.m. He married one of the owners, Robert Evans, who took control of his films after McDowell’s death.

How did this get made? Producers John and Charles Thomas were students of Kuchar and heirs to the Burger Chef empire. Two of the rooms of their house were used as the set.

At three hours and with a ten minute intermission, I was worried about this one, yet it won me over. There are numerous scenes that made me laugh at loud and almost every character gets a long and emotionally rich monologue, as well as a chance to get off. It feels like every fifty years or more after this was made that there’s something in it that will offend nearly everyone. I first read about it in my teenage years and it was so hard to find that it took me decades to finally see it. It’s a pleasure to let you know that it was well worth the wait.

A lot of the cast also shows up in Dan Caldwell’s Sip the Wine, another adult film that is about the world of making dirty movies in San Francisco. It may be IMDBS, but it’s said that Marta Kauffman and David Crane named Chandler Bing on Friends after two characters’ names in this.