A few months ago alterna-horror producer Charles Band started a new venture, a streaming video service that features oddball sci-fi, horror and fantasy films from the 60’s and 70’s that make up a genre known as grind house. Now grindhouseflix.com is going to be featuring going to be featuring Band’s latest cinematic endeavor, Ooga Booga.
Billed as “a tongue-in-cheek grindhouse exploitation flick in the vein of Django Unchained ” Ooga Booga gives us the story of an an innocent African American medical student who is brutally murdered by dirty cops, but his soul is magically transferred into an action figure named Ooga Booga. Paired with his tribal spear and a former girlfriend to help he roams the streets and trailer parks to find the evil racists that ended cut his life short.
The film opens with trip to the Hambo the clown show, complete with an alcoholic clown and his porn star side-kick. From there the racist humor and full on political incorrectness send this train barreling down the bad taste track that you would expect from a guy who pioneered direct to video movies.
Paired with cult favorites like Karen Black (House of 1000) corpses and Stacey Keach, the other members of the cast dole out the nudity and drug jokes, off-color would be a bit mild of a description for most people. If you don’t know anything about grind house movies, this could be a good introduction since it lacks the blood and guts the you’ll get from many of Full Moon’s other “classics” like Puppet Master and Gingerdead Man, but even with that Ooga Booga won’t be a favorite for the average movie watcher out there in the suburbs.
It would be too easy to jump on the soapbox and rip Ooga Booga to shreds with all kinds of witty chatter, this isn’t a movie I’d normally go out of my way to watch. So what I’ll say for it is if grind is your thing, Ooga Booga has enough to fill a big sausage casing. It’s got racism, rape, a giant drunken pig-man, spears, jungle drums and killing. If it had been made in the 70’s it would have been part of a triple feature at the tacky theater down the street. These days you’ll just have to settle for dumping some soda on your living room rug after not vacuuming for a couple of months to get the same ambience.
Ooga Booga does not have an MPAA rating, but be reminded it isn’t for kids, families, or easily offended folks. It can be had via RedBox and on demand for $1.99 rental or $7.99 to own. You can get more info from fullmoonhorror.com.
