U of T's Cinema Studies Student Union is bringing one of the great classics of 1970s exploitation to the big screen at Innes tonight, and given the cheapitude of the film's production values it is therefore entirely appropriate that the whole triple-bill screening is gloriously free.

The flick in question is Rudy Ray Moore's blaxploitation masterpiece The Human Tornado, and if there was ever a film that quintessentially captured the decline into utter inanity that capsized the all-too-brief blaxploitation genre, this was it.

Tornado is the second Dolemite film, and features one of the greatest opening sequences prior to Raiders of the Lost Ark, in which Dolemite (played with near-incomprehensible reefer madness by Moore) gets busted for sleeping with the (white) Sheriff's wife, and proceeds to jump off a cliff... naked.

The tag line for the flick was A ONE MAN DISASTER!, and it's apt.

I have enormous affection for Dolemite in general and Tornado in particular; if Shaft and Cotton Comes to Harlem were the respectable A-list hits of the genre, and Sweetback the revolutionary rallying cry, then the Dolemite movies are the example of what happens when you give production money to people so stoned they can't even remember their own lines. Dreck to some, but cinematic gold to me!

CINNSU is running Tornado at the end of a triple-bill of "Cult Night" movies tonight, starting at 6:30 [CORRECTION: show starts at 6:00!]. It's preceded by Monster Squad and David Cronenberg's The Brood. All of the films are presented in 35mm - a feat in itself - and the entire night is, as I've said, free. What more do you need?