Nollywood Omen

BY ANDY CAPPER

This is the devil saying: “I am Lucifer! I will take over the world!”

This is one of his slaves, gravely agreeing that what his master says is true.

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“Nollywood is the answer to CNN,” says a star of

Nollywood Babylon

, a Canadian documentary about the Nigerian film industry—a veritable movie factory that churns out 25,000 films a year at a budget of less than $10,000 each. I was so intrigued by the idea of cheaply made Nigerian films that on a recent trip to Monrovia, Liberia, I picked up a bunch of Nollywood movies from a downtown DVD shack called Trans International Entertainment Business Center. It doubled as a barbecued-chicken-feet outlet.

I bought films like

Deadly Consequence, Emotional Problems,

and

Romantic Issues

and then watched them all with intense disappointment. They were little more than American soap operas set in dusty Nigerian villages. They had plots so unfollowable and audio so bad that they were impossible to watch for more than ten minutes each.

But then I started watching a film, or should I say a QUARTET of films, by Pastor Kenneth Okonkwo, who’s regarded as one of Nollywood’s most important producers. The film is called

666,

and it is the most retarded-hilarious-fucked-film-to-watch-while-everybody-in-the-room-is-high-as-shit-at-4-AM thing I have seen since we covered that Turkish remake of

Star Wars

back in 2002.

Here the devil sends a laser beam down to one his slaves in an effort to destroy the world by using the laser beam to open up a grave for another devil, who is blue.

The slave gladly receives the laser beam.

The four episodes of

(each has its own DVD) follow the efforts of the devil to take over the world and how he enlists the people of Nigerian villages to do so. The devil is a large, bald Nigerian man with a beard. He has a team of female concubines who sit beside his throne in hell. He is constantly surrounded by flames and is always laughing maniacally about how much he’s going to destroy the world. “I am Lucifer! I will take over the world!” he shouts while his evil bitches laugh.

In the first scene of

666,

the devil sends two assassins up to earth to kidnap a pregnant woman. They cut her belly open in a tunnel and steal the baby, whom they baptize in the service of Satan. Throughout the movie, Satan terrorizes the people of Nigeria despite the efforts of Pastor Okonkwo (yes, he also stars in the film). Okonkwo often sends lightning bolts down to hell by the power of extreme prayer.

Here, Pastor Okonkwo prays that the devil’s laser beam does not awaken the other devil.

The devil’s slave is hit by Christian lightning generated by Pastor Okonkwo’s prayers.

In part two of the quartet, the kidnapped child returns to earth and causes all manner of problems. He seduces a woman in her late 20s by flashing lasers out of his eyes; he goes on a bar crawl and possesses a woman who then kills a priest. Then, when a gang of Christians capture him and attempt to ritually stab him to death, he uses his powers to brand each of their foreheads with a lovely 666.

Weird shit happens every five minutes in these movies. The special effects (wobbly devil eyes and laser beams shooting down from heaven) are accompanied by

zow

! and

zap

! noises that sound like they’re from a late-70s arcade game. It is the most fun ever, and while hardly an answer to CNN, it must be sought out by everybody reading this and made into a cult classic. I don’t know how many of you will make it to Liberia or Nigeria to buy DVDs anytime soon, so you know what? I’ll put them up on YouTube. Search “666, Nigeria, Vice” anytime after October 1. Deal? Deal.

Watch out for more on our trip to Liberia, where we learned about this jewel of a genre and hung out with General Butt Naked, on VBS.TV.

In this scene, two men have just had sex. This was put into the movie to show that the devil is at work in Nigeria even when he’s not firing laser beams into graveyards.

This is the Nigerian version of Damien from The Omen. Here he is using his devil powers to tempt an older woman into bed.

Here he is postcoitus.

This is one of the devil’s concubines. She is about to threaten a Christian man with a drill to the head because he is refusing to accept the 666 stamp.

He is very afraid of the drill.

The film ends with another Christian man having his eyeball sucked out by a vacuum, whereupon this guy (who isn’t actually Pastor Okonkwo) tells us to repent at once because the end times are upon us and you wouldn’t like it if you had your eyeball sucked out by a vacuum. Fin!