Welcome back to B-Movie Enema and spooky month 2025’s theme, Black Horror Halloween!

This week, I’m not entirely sure how much I want to talk about this movie before diving right in. To get this out of the way, I’ll be reviewing 1975’s Welcome Home Brother Charles. Generally speaking, this month was intended to kind of highlight blaxploitation and horror. This movie is probably technically neither. I will talk a little more about what I think the actual horror of this movie is directed at, but why it’s hard to frame this as a blaxploitation movie is due to the writer/producer/director, Jamaa Fanaka.

Fanaka is back for his third time on this blog. Previously, I covered Penitentiary and its sequel, Penitentiary II. Brother Charles would be his first commercial film. In 1972, before making this movie, he made a short called A Day in the Life of Willie Faust, or Death on the Installment Plan. That was his student film made at UCLA, which was received fairly well. It was about a heroin addict. When I covered those two Penitentiary films, I made mention that Fanaka was keen to not have his films be called blaxploitation by audiences or critics. He felt the term was a little reductive or dismissive of his attempts to portray life for black men.

In fact, he wore his race proudly. He was born Walter Gordon and even used that name for his short. It was after he saw Cooley High, one of the more important films about African American culture, that he was a bit surprised to find out about the director’s race. Fanaka was very impressed with how accurately he felt Cooley High portrayed its characters. When he saw it was directed by a man named Michael Schultz, he assumed him to be a white Jew. Later, he was surprised to discover Schultz was, indeed, a Black man. So, Walter Gordon decided to use a name that would leave no doubt to people watching it that it was a Black man who made the movie. He visited the African Studies department at UCLA and took a look at a Swahili dictionary. He chose Jamaa Fanaka as his professional name because it loosely translates to “through togetherness we will find success.”

That same year, he made Welcome Home Brother Charles, his first feature film. He followed that with Emma Mae, also known as Black Sister’s Revenge. These first two movies were labeled as “blaxploitation” films, and I think it was by the time Fanaka made Penitentiary in 1979, he wanted to shake that label. After all, the golden age of blaxploitation had already come and gone. I get the impression he wanted to make movies that were for Black audiences, yes, but also weren’t prejudged by the term “blaxploitation” because that would be very easy to dismiss for several outsiders who might be interested in his films. I admit that last bit may be a little conjecture on my part, but it is true that the term “blaxploitation” did have some connotation to it.

I really don’t want to reveal anything about the movie’s plot, as it’s quite unconventional, but it also serves to tell the story and convey what I think the horror actually is in this movie.

Actually, you know what? I’m gonna give you one clue as to what this movie is all about. I’ll do that because if you watch this movie, you’ll see this right in the opening credits. As the credits move through the cast and the crew for the movie, we hear a very interesting theme that was written for this by Jamaa Fanaka. There’s a howling or whistling-like sound that kind of comes off as being indicative of what would be heard in jungle movies. Almost like it is meant to evoke monkeys, while there is a louder horn that plays a simple tone of two notes interrupting the howl. I think of it like the foghorn on massive ships coming into the harbor. All the while, the camera is zooming slowly in on a statue or idol of some sort. It looks like a person with their back turned on you. Then, as we get to the end of the credits, the idol is turned to reveal it is a black man with a giant hog.

Yup… You guessed it. This movie is all about statues. Big ones. Small ones. In between ones. This is the most artistic discussion of statues ever seen on film.

As the movie begins, Charles Murray has been chased by cops. He’s threatening to throw himself from the top of a building to his death. The detective trying to keep Charles from jumping to his death has called for Charles’s wife, Carmen. He hopes she will be someone who can talk him off the ledge. When she says that she was already told why the police had chased him to this point, and wonders if anything she has to say will change it, if they are going to pin whatever crime on him anyway. The detective, seemingly sensitive and concerned about Charles possibly tossing himself off a building, says that his only interest right now is saving her husband’s life.

When he sees his wife, he has a flashback to when she was turning tricks for a greedy pimp. Elsewhere, Charles was meeting a friend at a nearby motel. They were meeting a connection to likely buy some drugs. The detective from the earlier scene, Jim, and his partner, Harry, were staking out the motel. Charles and his friend take off running, which leads to Charles being arrested by Jim and Harry. All this happens right where Carmen was going to go meet a john. Jim legitimately does his job and, yeah, that means he needs to take Charles downtown for booking. Harry, on the other hand, is a racist hot head. He wanted to beat the shit out of Carmen for calling him a pig and would very much like to work Charles over to “set him straight.”

And, I suppose, if Charles gives up the whereabouts of his buddy he was with at the motel, Harry will take that too. But then again, he also really likes beating up Black guys. Unfortunately, Jim would prefer not to rough up perps, but here we are. He only intervenes when he thinks Harry is gonna kill Charles.

When Jim gets back to the Jeep, Harry’s hands are quite bloody. As is Charles’s face. Jim accidentally gets knocked out by Harry. While Jim is knocked out, Harry says he’s going to make sure Charles never brings any of his kind into this world ever again, and cuts off Charles’s dick. This will be reattached in the prison hospital after he is arrested.

At some point later, Jim and Harry are back on their surveillance assignment. While watching a house across the street with Charles’s friend, N.D., the two cops spot a blonde going into the house. They don’t see the woman’s face at first, but that doesn’t stop them from kinda thirsting after the bombshell. Turns out, the woman is Harry’s wife, Christina. Naturally, this does nothing for the race relations between Harry and just about every Black guy on the planet.

Jim and Harry are called off the surveillance detail to help with a bomb threat at the airport. Harry diffuses what might have been a small nuclear bomb. As he does that, N.D. rails Christina to orgasm. She arrives at the hospital because she got a call that Harry came into contact with radioactive materials. He tells her she has no need to worry. After all, he’s not the one who is “contaminated.” Later that night, he reveals he knows about her affair with a description of the guy that I cannot in good conscience transcribe. She tells him that he’s no man and his dick is tiny and sucks.

He takes it as well as you might think.

She barely survives his throttling. She says she meant everything she said and did. He sucks. His dick is teeny. He didn’t even have the guts to destroy the object of his humiliation. She wants him to get away from her and stay away.

Later on, Charles is on trial. The prosecutor praises Harry after the cop’s testimony. The prosecutor even goes so far as to call Charles a devil. This righteously pisses Charles off. He says that “jive motherfucker” over there is the devil for what he did to him. His outburst gets him detained and escorted out of the courtroom. The judge then praises Harry for keeping calm while Charles was hurling insults at him. As if you couldn’t figure this out already, Charles is sent to prison.

Prison is not a pleasant experience, but Charles eventually gets released after three years. Charles immediately tries to find his ex-girlfriend, Twyla. He finds out from a friend that she’s dancing at a club. He tells Charles that it is probably a good idea that he doesn’t get mixed up with Twyla anymore. After all, it’s been a long time, and a lot can change. One of those things that changed is that Twyla started shacking up with N.D. while Charles was gone.

At the club, N.D. issues a not-so-subtle threat to Charles. Basically, he can talk to Twyla all he wants, but she’s not his to touch. After being tossed out of the club by N.D.’s goons, Charles goes home to see his mother and younger brother, Tito. When Tito tells Charles that he can help him get back at whoever roughed him up. He tells Charles that he’s in a gang. Charles is none-too-pleased by this, but Tito lays it down that he should know what it’s like growing up in this neighborhood. Either you are in a gang or not. If you’re not, there’s not much of a future for you.

Charles goes back to N.D.’s club, but this time he runs into Carmen. She was curious what happened to that guy who tried to help her out when that crazy pig was ready to beat the fuck out of her for calling him out for what he is. She invites Charles to go with her to Santa Monica, where they can chill. On the way out, Carmen’s pimp tries to stop her because he knows Charles doesn’t have any cash on him and he just wants that monies. The pimp slaps her, and Charles threatens to bitchslap his ass.

Later, Charles goes to see a doctor. He wants to do a thing about his thing, ya dig? However, the doctor, a White guy, doesn’t really offer up any physical treatments. Instead, he wants to send Charles to a psychiatrist to talk about what’s going on with his whangdoodle. The doctor asks why he didn’t tell the prison doctor about what is going on down there. Charles says that if he did that, well, it’s unlikely he would have gotten paroled. The doctor says that he believes Charles because he’s seen the scar tissue and he knows what things look like down there. Charles wants to “settle the score” with the man who disfigured him. This doctor, Meyerson, wonders if his deep hatred for this guy has created some kind of mania in Charles.

Charles and Carmen are now living together. She doesn’t turn tricks anymore. She now works at a restaurant. Charles doesn’t like it when she jokes about being a hooker because he doesn’t like her making light of herself. While they get ready for dinner, Charles sees Harry on the TV being interviewed by the news about a college drug ring he busted. Carmen also recognizes the cop, but Charles is in a near catatonic state over seeing the man who messed up his pecker.

Charles goes to Harry’s house and claims to be a telephone repairman there to fix their phone. Christina lets him in. Conveniently, she’s cooking dinner, so he has a chance to take the phone off the hook and look around the house to see if anyone else is home.

He then calls her into the living room and shows her his junk. It… Well, I think it hypnotizes her? You know, like how Dracula, or I suppose in this case, Blacula, would mesmerize his prey? She’s completely dickstruck by it and doesn’t fight back when he puts her against the wall, lowers her skirt and panties, and fucks her.

I don’t know if he had to go to all this trouble to mesmerize her with his cock. She was already down with the fever. She was cheating on Harry earlier because he had a worthless little white boy dick. I’m pretty sure she would have no issue with Charles. He seems pretty nice, educated, and doesn’t seem to mean anyone any harm. But okay, he’s got a magical cock now, and that’s kinda rad. He gives Christine some chores to do. In the middle of the night, she wakes up and lets Charles into the house.

Motherfucker is Blacula!

I wonder if this was something he did to Carmen, too. Like, did he whip that thing out when they went to Santa Monica that one night, and she instantly decided to quit turning tricks and settle down to have a normal domestic life with Charles? If… If he showed that thing to Twyla, would she have left N.D. to go back to Magic Peen? What are the limits of these powers that we just learned he had? Does it only work on White bitches? Does it work on White men (also known as the other White bitches)?

I mean, I know what’s going on here, and I will be getting to it later. But for now, while Christina stands by the kids’ rooms and prevents them from leaving, he kills Harry. After doing the deed, he tells her to wait ten minutes and then call the police. He tells her exactly what to tell them, which, I’m sure, has something to do with Blacula being there or something.

Now, in order to go do his revenge shit, Charles had to sneak out of the house while Carmen was asleep. She heard him leave around three in the morning. She is, naturally, curious about where he went and why he would have to go that early (or late) to do it. Charles is not so keen on telling her too much. Still, she buys him a nice red outfit and talks about how happy she is with him before they make love together.

I really do like Marlo Monte as Charles and Reatha Grey as Carmen in this. They have some good chemistry. It feels like they either knew each other before making this movie or they just clicked. I believe they are a couple and legitimately enjoy each other’s company. Monte never made another film. Grey, though, continued working until she passed away last year. She also worked in casting, often getting extras for various movies. She still has a couple of posthumous things to come out, but she racked up over 70 credits in what came to about a 50-year career, all said and done. They are quite good in this. I like their scenes together. I have some serious critiques of this film later, but none of them have anything to do with their performances or their chemistry together.

After making love, Carmen tells Charles that she got a call from that friend of hers who had that beach house out in Santa Monica. She said she was heading out of town again, so Carmen thinks it would be nice for them to go out there again. Charles declines, saying he’s waiting on a call about a job. She tells him that he keeps getting these promises for calls, but nothing ever comes. She even suggests that she might go back to hooking if they need some extra money. Charles is adamant against her ever doing that again, even putting his hand around her throat to show he means business. He puts his hand again to her throat when he says that he won’t be going back to dealing drugs either. He wants both of them to have a normal, kind of righteous, life.

But let’s do more mesmerizing cock shit!

This time, Charles poses as the water cooler guy… You know, the guy who changes the big jugs of water at the water cooler? He cocknotizes the wife of the prosecutor who put him away. Just like with Christina, he fucks her with his big ol’ dick and leaves her with some instructions. Once again, like Blacula, he waits outside for the commands he gave her to play out. This time, we see how he kills his victims.

And here’s the big payday for all those who are still reading this review of a 50-year old blaxploitation movie about a guy with a giant dong. The dong is VERY giant. Yeah, with some mental concentration, he can not only make White bitches crave that cock and serve him as his slaves, but he can also stretch it out like he’s Mister Fantastic and attack dudes. Yup… Welcome Home Brother Charles is about a guy who has a prehensile penis. Welcome home, indeed.

Hell yeah! We’ve had pot zombies and munchies and subspecies. We’ve done avengers of the toxic kind. We’ve had honorable men and dangerous men. Space babes, Amazon hot boxes, and Frankenstein creating bikers… But I gotta say, after over 500 of these reviews, it’s nice to know there are still some things out there, like prehensile monster dicks hanging off a black man, that can feel new and fresh. More on that in a bit.

Later, Jim interviews the prosecutor’s wife. He tells her that they’ve been investigating instances of other deaths that involved servicemen coming to the homes of the people killed before their ultimate demise. She doesn’t remember anyone coming to the house before that night. She also doesn’t believe anyone actually killed her husband. The next day, Jim finds out that Charles had seen his doctor about these dreams he was having about killing a cop who tried to castrate him by strangling the man with his oversized dick.

Charles has one final person to get revenge on… the judge. Apparently, Charles already visited the judge’s wife. I guess we didn’t need to see that scene play out a third time in this movie. This time, though, Charles isn’t going to get the justice he seeks. Jim is already waiting for him. While Charles asks the judge about what justice was passed down, and what about his justice for nearly getting his cock cut off.

Jim tries to ambush Charles during his pontificating to the judge, but the judge’s wife knocks the gun out of his hand, giving Charles a chance to get the gun and escape. He runs into a couple of cops in the lobby of the apartment building and has to run away from them. He gets to the roof. And now we’ve come full circle and back to the beginning of the movie

Charles is perched precariously on the railing on the roof of the apartment building. He tells Jim that he was saving him for last. The standoff goes on for hours until they finally bring Carmen to try to speak to him. She screams at him to jump. The movie freezes, and we see this quote from my favorite verse of one of my favorite Beatles songs on the screen: “Let them indulge their pride if thinking I am destroyed is a comfort to them; let it be.”

Actually, I don’t know where that quote comes from. I think it might actually be original to this movie. I did a Google search, and it only brings me to either Fanaka’s work or IMDb’s user reviews.

So… Here’s the thing. I cannot really say Welcome Home Brother Charles is a very good movie. It’s got pacing issues and is probably too long. For the most part, it seems as though the first hour is kind of filler to get to the final 35-40 minutes when things get really interesting, what with the magic dick and stuff. As a movie trying to tell a story, it kind of fails. Fanaka would become a much better storyteller later, but I also really do not want to sell the concept short.

This is a film about the White fear of Black men. You could go one step further and say this is a movie about White men’s perception of Black people (men and women) as something less than human or dangerous. The man who propositions Carmen early in the timeline of the story is the judge who sentences Charles to jail. He sees the Black woman as a tasty sexual treat that is only good for that thing, and the Black man as a menace to society. You can maybe even go one step further again by also saying this has the element of White women being drawn to Black men as a way to either get back at their boring husbands, or needing to use their sexual members’ physical prowess to satisfy the bored housewife. After all, there has to be some psychology around dildos and vibrators often being available in large sizes and dark colors.

The reason why I chose this movie is less about monster cock and more about the fact that this is, if viewed in the right way and right angle, a horror film. This man was terrorized by a cop. That cop mutilating him, and the anger and hatred around that moment, created a monster. That monster is the epitome of all the White man’s fear of what Black men represent. They are our shame and our insecurity. We have a history of punishing them for our inadequacies and believing that they make us feel that insecure shame, even though they absolutely do not.

I was a teenager in the 90s. Even then, at a time in which I should have thought we would be past that, White boys and young men were raised to think that Black guys would be better at pleasing your girlfriend or your crush than you ever could. I wasn’t as athletic. I wasn’t as hung. I wasn’t as smooth or charismatic. Whether it worked or not, I was being kind of trained by the dumb adage of “once you go black, you never go back” as being a real thing that women did or thought themselves. Of course, none of this is true. Still, this IS a horror movie… but specifically for White men. This is a movie that a racist could point to (probably with his pointy KKK hat) and shout, “See? I told you! Black women walk the streets, and Black men want our women!”

I promise you, no matter how kind of over-the-top silly the premise of this movie is, someone saw this as a terrifying movie. A Black man may someday show up and turn your suburban White wife into his love slave and end your life… with how much more he has in his loins than you do.

In some ways, the entire characterization of Charles and Carmen doesn’t help idiots from forming that idea. Charles sells drugs when we first meet him in the timeline. Carmen was a prostitute. Both aspire to be much, much more than that, but even Carmen tells Charles that he’s being led on by offers of possible above-the-board employment. The need for money has Carmen thinking about turning tricks again, even if her pimp is the most dangerous person in her life. Limited, unequal opportunity for the community breeds crime.

So, when it comes to the dreams and desires of Charles and Carmen, Fanaka is building interesting characters. They really are the best aspect of this movie. They seem to want something good for themselves. I think Fanaka captures a community quite well. He’s being honest that there are shadowy elements within the members of his community. There are points in this movie that end up becoming extremely important. Charles getting mutilated. Charles going to jail. Charles coming out of jail and finding it difficult to lead a proper, straight life. These are three very important things that end up being twisted into him needing to get revenge when he can’t find help to get past his mutilation, going to jail for an unfair amount of time, and not being able to get work to have the life he and Carmen want to live.

All of that is an interesting idea, and having his revenge on these White dudes by using the one thing that would be scariest for them, but the movie is too long. It’s too heavy on the meandering, plotless stuff that tries to build the world and characters in this community. I absolutely understand the movie’s idea. I absolutely love the revenge stuff in the final 30-40 minutes (because I get the psycho-sexual insecurity and the almost absurd direction taken), but it’s not a smooth or easy pace. Still, if you are interested in Black cinema of the 70s (whether it is the stuff that is easily called “blaxploitation” or films like this that want to separate themselves from that term), I think Welcome Home Brother Charles is something you should probably watch out of curiosity, if for no other reason.

Next week, we will definitely go into the realm of true blaxploitation for our next film in this Black Horror Halloween theme. Join me for a ghostly tale of a slain hustler who takes over the body of a law student in Arthur Marks’ 1976 horror film J.D.’s Revenge. I’ll see you here for that. Until then, I’m gonna see if I can mutilate my dick to the point that I can make it extend out and grab drinks for me from the fridge while I sit around like a total loser.

Also, if you want to read a little more about the themes of this movie, I definitely recommend the article by Dean Brandum at Senses of Cinema called “Fear of a Black Phallus: Jamaa Fanaka’s Welcome Home Brother Charles (1975)” because it is really good and specifically focuses on the entire White fear of Black men.