Not Coming To A Theater Near You – Janurary 2011

January 7, 2011 by Editor
Filed under Mondo Archive

Not Coming To A Theater Near You – January 2011

Petey Wheatstraw: The Devil’s Son-In-Law (1977)

Written By: Matt Sanborn
Mondo Film & Video Guide Feature Contributor

“Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

It’s January and we remember a great man and leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King talked of self respect, dignity and grace. As he once claimed: “An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.” I got my feelings he didn’t have Rudy Ray Moore’s films in mind when he was talking about this.

Moore, better known to most as Dolemite, is to many the jester of what we call Blaxploitation films. Let us take the opening scene from this month’s feature “Petey Wheatstraw, the Devil’s Son in Law.”

We start off with Moore telling us about his eponymous character, with quips like: “I took the fourth of July and put it in June!” This intro is but filler to what is surely one of the most amazing birth scenes, (or any scene for that matter), in film history. The birth of little Petey Wheatstraw.

A hurricane rages as a raving woman is about to deliver a baby in a shack to a doctor who screams out: “She’s about to give birth to an elephant!” “All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.”

The baby bites the doctor, tearing the woman, and out comes the first child – a watermelon!

That’s right, the first baby is a watermelon… (In fact there are a lot of watermelons in this movie – being chopped with machetes, being blown up and being smashed.)

And then out pops the second child, a 10 year old boy. The doctor spanks him and Petey attacks him for that. He then attacks the father for disturbing him in his sleep every night. His mother grabs the nappy headed child, sets him straight and gives him his name as thunder crashes. And off we go!

Petey grows up fast and is taken under wing by a kindly old man named Bantu who teaches him martial arts, and tells him to bow down to no man in life. With this new confidence and positive outlook Petey goes out in the world and becomes a successful standup comedian. This is the perfect set up for Moore to pad the film with some of his infamous rhyming, call and response, stream of consciousness act he became famous for along with Red Foxx and LaWanda Page (Aunt Esther of Sanford and Son fame) in the southern Chitlin’ Circuit. Petey is popular and packing them in to an LA night club much to the dismay of comedy team Leroy and Skillet, (also veterans of the Chitlin’ Circuit), who have borrowed mob money to open up their own club. Nowhere near as popular as their rival, they can’t fill seats, and Mr. White of the syndicate wants return on his dollars.

The two comedians confront Petey and ask him to lay low while they get their act off of the ground. Wheatstraw will have none of it, leaving the duo in a bad spot. With the mafia breathing down their neck, they do the only thing one can, hire goons to kill Wheatstraw. However, in a very serious and graphic scene, the hitmen end up killing a young boy who is the son of Petey’s business partner. “At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.”

This gives Leroy and Skillet another advantage, the whole Wheatstraw crew will be in one place, and in perhaps the most effective scene in any Moore movie, he and his clan are gunned down in a bloody slow motion scene which is more realistic than one would expect. There is carnage everywhere, and as Petey lay mortally wounded on the ground, a man named Lou Cipher appears to him. (And you thought they invented that for “Angel Heart.” Bullshit!).

Lou, who is really you know who, tells Petey his death was not meant to be, and is willing to undo the whole thing on one small condition. That Petey marry and knock up his daughter, therefore providing him a grandson. Seeing a photo of the stop a truck ugly woman, Petey at first says no, but the wisdom of Bantu fills his head, and he agrees.

The shooting is undone, the scene shown in reverse, and the game is now on. Toting the devil’s very own Pimp Cane, Wheatstraw has sworn revenge on his would be assassins, and plots a way to trick the devil himself. “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

What follows is some of the most outrageous Rudy Ray Moore ever filmed. Themes the actor loves are included such as bar room fights, bad martial arts, people shitting themselves, naked women with huge jugs, and a story line so preposterous it is almost impossible to buy into no matter how high you are when you watch this thing. But the film and its frenetic pace, ridiculous dialogue, scenes of physical comedy that would make the Three Stooges blush, mixed with a head shaking plot have a certain charm about them that you buy into it. There are not a real lot of revenge films featuring the murder of a young child which are comedies, but this one aspires in that direction.

The ending, however, creates a movie which is not a comedy but a moralistic tragedy that it seems Moore is completely unaware he is involved. This film was a big step in terms of quality and craftsmanship when compared to his first film the 1975 “Dolemite.” Director and co-star D’Urville Martin thought so little of the film that he phoned it in, and to this day the movie might have the record for the most shots with the boom microphone visible. Despite, and maybe because of this, that revenge themed movie has taken on a legendary status.

Moore followed it up with another Dolemite film, “The Human Tornado,” (1976), and brought in director Cliff Roquemore, who would also man the post for “Petey Wheatstraw.” The film makes the Dolemite character more super hero-ish and is miles away from the raw amateurishness of the first film. Still, it lacked quite a bit. Petey Wheatstraw was another step in the crew’s film making ability, but still played a bit too much like its two predecessors. If you haven’t seen the first two, then it is pretty fresh, and very unique, but here there are still some of the same old gags: Moore in his underpants, fight scenes ending with people shitting over themselves, Rudy bedding down with bevies of black beauties for your eyes to try and avoid, and of course, near Step-and-Fetchit like humor.

“I want to be the white man’s brother, not his brother-in-law.” Which brings us to one of the most remarkable things about all of Moore’s movies which separates them from other blaxploitation films of the 1970s. There is very little, if any, anger towards whites and segregation. I am not sure if this is intentional, but it seems simply something Moore did not want to delve into – he is a pure entertainer. Mainly, his films, while seeming to want to ascend to something a bit more moralistic, quickly collapse under their sheer silliness and end up being little more than a black Keystone Cops feature.

This is very evident in the end of Petey Wheatstraw. With little time left on the clock before he must turn his soul over to the Devil and his body to his butt-ugly daughter, the film’s plot breaks down into what seems to be a troupe of actors and writers trying to figure out how to end the story before the film runs out. The last half an hour is a completely enjoyable mess which really needed some revision and clarity, but maybe that is part of the charm.

Now I might be a little too hard here. Moore is a comedian and plot, continuity and everything else takes a back seat here to gags and jokes. And this is a funny film. Its pure outrageousness and audacity are enough to make one sit through this time and time again, laughing like a 5 year old who just heard a most sonorous fart. No white director and actor could have gotten away with 1/100th of what is presented here. I have seen people stare at the screen with their mouths open, almost not able to accept the juvenile joy and craziness which transcends camp by miles. Some blacks might find this film offensive because of all the reasons I have mentioned, especially some of the watermelon and stereotypical characters, while whites might find in uncomfortable or politically incorrect to find something so out there, and dare I say unintentionally dangerous, as this movie something to laugh at.

But in the end, it is evident that Moore wants you to just laugh and be entertained. His films, though so heavily attached to race, go beyond skin color. Not laughing here would be like not wanting to enjoy the Three Stooges because they portray Jews in a bad light. This is a film that wants you to laugh, but you might not want to. But do it, don’t be some politically correct asshole. Just enjoy the thing. But there are plenty of people who won’t. And that’s why Petey Wheatstraw will not be coming to a theatre near you! “Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.”