Not quite as awful as "Dolemite"....which is hardly a hearty endorsement!

MartinHafer

Some of the very worst films of the 1970s were the Dolemite pictures starring Rudy Ray Moore. Moore could not act nor did he know any martial arts....so it's weird that he went on to make some micro-budgeted martial arts films! Tonight I found one of Moore's non-Dolemite films, "Petey Wheatstraw"....but it pretty much is a Dolemite film in all but the name of the main character and it comes with a strong super-natural bent.

Petey Wheatstraw has an act that is identical to Moore's 'Dolemite' character. When he comes to a new town to perform, two idiot gangsters, Leroy and Skillet, are determined to keep him from doing his act. Why? Because these guys borrowed some mob money and they need to have a huge turnout at their club....but with Wheatstraw performing at a rival club, they stand to lose a lot of money...as well as their lives. Soon, Leroy and Skillet's minions go on a killing spree...and end up killing Petey.

Now you might think the story would end there, but it's only the beginning! Lucifer welcomes Petey to Hell and offers him a proposition--if Petey marries Lucifer's very ugly daughter, he'll allow Petey to return to Earth to enact revenge. And, to help him, Lucifer gives him his magic cane. However, instead of just going out and killing Leroy and Skillet and their minions, Petey does good around the ghetto...and Lucifer needs to return to remind him that he needs to focus on revenge first! But Petey has a plan to try to get his revenge AND outwit the Devil! Can it possibly work?!

This film takes itself even less seriously than the Dolemite pictures. This makes it marginally better, as bad acting, silly costumes and a dopey script work a bit better when it's so obvious the film is a big joke. This does NOT mean it's a good film...it isn't. But there might be enough silliness that bad movie fans might just enjoy it....all others should definitely stay clear!! Terrible acting, terrible writing, occasionally terrible cinematography (such as the blurry shots during the "Ghetto Street USA" song) and a super-dopey plot make this hard to take for most viewers....though it does have a few funny moments.

By the way, the next film up on my Roku after this one was "Amateur Night"....which seems very fitting.

score 2/10

MartinHafer 21 December 2019

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw5339023/