DOLEMITE Color, 1975, 90 mins. Directed by D'Urville Martin
Starring Rudy Ray Moore, D'Urville Martin, Jerry Jones, Lady Reed, Brenda DeLong / Music by Arthur Wright / Cinematography by Nicholas Josef von Sternberg
THE HUMAN TORNADO Color, 1976, 85 mins. Directed by Cliff Roquemore
Starring Rudy Ray Moore, J.B. Baron, Glorya De Lani, Herb Graham, Ernie Hudson, Howard Jackson / Music by Arthur Wright / Written by Jerry Jones / Cinematography by Fred Conde & Bob Wilson
PETEY WHEATSTRAW: THE DEVIL'S SON-IN-LAW Color, 1978, 95 mins. Directed by Cliff Roquemore
Starring Rudy Ray Moore, Jimmy Lynch, Leroy Daniels, Ernest Mayhand, Ebony Wright, Steve Wildman / Music by Ernie Fields, Jr. / Cinematography by Arledge Armenaki / Nicholas Josef von Sternberg
THE DISCO GODFATHER Color, 1979, 93 mins. Directed by J. Robert Wagoner
Starring Rudy Ray Moore, Carol Speed, Jimmy Lynch, Jerry Jones, Lady Reed, Julius Carry / Music by Ernie Fields, Jr. / Cinematography by Arledge Armenaki
Format: DVD - Xenon (MSRP $19.95 each)
The virtually nonexistent plot of Dolemite kicks in when our antihero is released from prison and comes home to find out that his rival, Willie Green (director Martin), has muscled in on Dolemite's territory and completely corrupted the neighborhood. With the help of nightclub goddess Queen Bee (Lady Reed, a fellow stage performer who appeared on several of Moore's albums) and an interracial gang of karate-trained hookers (seriously!), Dolemite decides to bust some chops. After taking out some corrupt white mobsters, Dolemite hunts down Green himself for the big bullet-spraying, chop-socky showdown, but not before bedding a few of his girls along the way.
Technically inept and amateurishly acted, Dolemite fails on virtually every level on which a movie is supposed to work, but that's really part of its charm. With no previous acting experience, Moore seems to be reading cue cards throughout and usually throws his punches and kicks several feet away without ever connecting with his opponents. Put simply, this is one great party movie: Moore's nasty rap numbers, his nonsensical and profane putdowns, and heavy doses of comical sex and violence make for one seriously fun and highly bizarre ride. While imperfect, Xenon's DVD transfer is light years ahead of those cruddy old VHS copies. The print bears an R rating card at the beginning, though supposedly a slightly different X-rated cut circulated in a few theaters during the movie's initial run. In any case, it's hard to imagine what was cut, though a few lines do appear to be missing (in a film edited so randomly, it's hard to tell for sure). The image quality is surprisingly clean and sharp, with nicely saturated (and often tacky) colors and a relatively clean soundtrack (let's face it, this will never be a THX title). If you ever wanted to rap along with "The Signifying Monkey," this DVD is the answer to your prayers, as it contains the complete words for both the full routines in the film, as well as snippets from Xenon's recent Legend of Dolemite (a self-promoting documentary) and Shaolin Dolemite (basically footage of Moore spliced into a kung fu film). All in all, a great DVD, and well worth picking up at that price if you're in the mood for some wacko fun.
Dolemite became a surprise smash hit around the country (though not surprisingly, it didn't go over too well in suburban hardtops). Naturally, the next year saw a sequel, filmed under the title Dolemite II but shown almost everywhere as The Human Tornado. Determined to make the sequel more outrageous than the original, Moore really goes to town here, speaking virtually every single line in rap (his acting, relatively speaking, has improved by this point) and, in one memorable scene, even posing as a Chinese door-to-door salesman of erotic paintings (I'm not making this up). In the raucous opening, a redneck cop catches his wife in bed with Dolemite (hopefully the only time Rudy will ever feel compelled to bare it all on-camera), leading to Dolemite rolling naked down a hill and taking off on a high speed car chase. This time the story involves an evildoer named Cavalletti, an Italian gangster who busts up Queen Bee's place and holds the Queen Bee girls hostage so he can take over the club scene. You can tell these are really evil folks because they live in Pasadena and hold parties where boys in bikini briefs come out and do tricks with nunchucks. Dolemite seduces Cavalletti's wife (who has fantasies about bodybuilders popping out of a toybox) in a scene worthy of Russ Meyer, and soon Dolemite's gang (featuring a bald Ernie Hudson, way before Ghostbusters) decides to pay the mobsters a visit in person. It all culminates, oddly enough, with a gruesome act of dismemberment in a Gothic basement.
More polished and ambitious than its predecessor, The Human Tornado loses some scrappy charm in the process but should still please viewers with its outrageous setpieces and Moore's incomparable verbal talents; in many ways, this is the closest thing we've ever had to a black John Waters film. Like Dolemite, the film is presented fullscreen and exposes a lot of extraneous image area at the top and bottom. Unlike Dolemite, however, the boom mike doesn't drop into frame every two minutes, and the compositions are more carefully arranged. Once again, the picture quality is excellent, which is especially surprising considering the tattered production history of these films.
Apprently deciding to expand his routine beyond the Dolemite persona, Moore next portrayed Petey Wheatstraw: The Devil's Son-in-Law, the most deliberate attempt at comedy in his career. Born as a full grown boy out in the boonies, little Petey is tormented by his friends but learns martial arts from a kindly old man (G. Tito Shaw) as a means of revenge. When he grows up, Petey becomes - what else? - a stand up comedian and uses his kung fu prowess to keep order in the neighborhood. Unfortunately, his plans to open a new club conflicts with the money-grubbing interests of wicked rival comedians Leroy and Skillet (a real comedy team from the '70s), who rub out Petey and virtually all of his friends and family during a funeral. In Hell, Petey learns the Shaw was actually Lucifer himself, and the two strike a deal: Petey can return to life and use the powers of evil to seek revenge, in exchange for which he will marry the Devil's butt ugly daughter. Moore returned to his urban milieu again with The Disco Godfather, also released on video as The Avenging Godfather and - the best of both worlds - The Avenging Disco Godfather. Moore really shines as Tucker Williams, the dancing king DJ "godfather" mixmaster at the popular Blueberry Hill nightclub. His routine involves spinning wax and rapping hilarious catch phrases for the crowd. One night his nephew, Bucky (Julius Carry), comes to the club hopped up on "PCP! Angel Dust! The new psychedelic drug of the '70s!" and winds up in a hospital with lots of other drug-damaged wrecks. After a helpful lecture by a doctor on the dangers of hard drugs (including one jaw-dropping flashback), Tucker decides to wage war on the drug community, kickboxing and bitchslapping his way into your heart. Meanwhile viewers also get to experience first hand the horrors of PCP, which consists of weird psychedelic visions involving an African demon woman and a day-glo skeleton (these sequences obviously influenced the last segment of Tales from the Hood).
An extremely dark film (literally), Disco Godfather looks as good as it ever has but was obviously more of a nightmare to transfer to DVD. The low budget obviously presented any real depth in the shadowy photography, so a few murky shots actually looked that way in the theater. Overall, though, the flashing lights and sequins look just great, and simply having this title at all is pretty miraculous. Considering what they had to work with, Xenon has done a nice job with these (certainly better than their kung fu titles so far), and hopefully a DVD for Petey Wheatstraw will be coming along soon.
If the name Rudy Ray Moore doesn't mean anything to you, prepare to be amazed. Back in the '70s, "blaxploitation" (a genre which actually wasn't always exploitative but was signified by a prominent use of black actors and filmmakers in various genres, mostly horror and action) flourished in drive-ins and urban theaters thanks to studios like AIP and MGM. On the really wild side, though, some maverick films slipped through that defied even this new genre, off the wall oddities like Welcome Home Brother Charles (Soul Vengeance) and, most notoriously, Dolemite. Rudy Ray Moore, a stand up comedian, created the "mack" character of Dolemite, a crafty, foul-mouthed crime boss stud who raps stories to the masses and kicks serious butt whenever he gets the urge. In 1975, Moore brought Dolemite to the screen... and the rest, of course, is history.
Thanks to the Devil's magical cane, Petey walks around turning no good husbands into little dogs, making fat women thin, and so on, while he comes up with a plan to get out of his unholy marriage plans. The scheme he comes up with will leave viewers speechless. Xenon's DVD again looks much better than the VHS edition, though the print looks more worn that the other Rudy Ray Moore titles. However, the heavy saturations of red during the Hell scenes look better than might be expected, and the funky disco score sounds just fine. Moore himself provides a commentary track, which would normally make this a great collector's item. Unfortunately, this ranks with Driller Killer, Resurrection, and In the Mouth of Madness as one of the dullest and most useless commentaries ever recorded. Moore explains that the film is one of his favorites, then vanishes completely for 99% of the film. He occasionally pops in to offer a completely irrelevant comment or point out stock footage, only to vanish again into silence. A real disappointment. Extras include the same trailers on the other Xenon titles.
