Black Horror Halloween comes to a close on the greatest day of them all, Halloween!

Welcome to B-Movie Enema, and, brother, do we have a good one to close things out. If you think about it, Ganja & Hess was this artsy kickoff for the month. Then we got into some voodoo business in a movie that is maybe more about the dialogue than anything else. Right in the middle is the movie I will never forget because it had a giant killer dick. Then, last week, I opted for a movie with a strong cast and some good ol’ fashioned spirit possession.

So, how can we possibly finish this month off after all those bangers? With the movie that I promise you is my favorite of the whole month. I think about the artistry that started the month. Now, it’s time for more art. Give it up for the comedy stylings of my main man, Rudy Ray Moore, and the 1977 comedy Petey Wheatstraw!

But, Rudy, babe… I’m just talkin’ about Petey Wheatstraw! Yes, we’ve had vampires. We’ve had Baron Samedi and his legions of slave zombies. We had that killer dick. A ghost possessed a guy. What we’ve not had is the motherfuckin’ Devil or the sharp wit of Rudy Ray Moore slicin’ up people with that killer tongue of his.

I’m really not quite sure what more there needs to be said about Rudy Ray Moore. We’ve seen him twice on this blog before. We put our weight on it for Disco Godfather. He also had a cameo in Penitentiary II. I like how much Jamaa Fanaka has gotten mentions over the past few weeks. I think it would be best if we just let this speak for itself.

I do want to quickly call out the director of this movie, Cliff Roquemore. Roquemore not only cowrote this movie with Moore, but also Disco Godfather, which he also directed and produced. He specifically worked only with Rudy Ray Moore. Aside from Disco Godfather, he directed the sequel to Dolemite, The Human Tornado (which is the movie with the greatest line in film history), and he directed a 1982 live stand-up concert with Moore called, what else, Rude.

I don’t think we need to do any more beating around the bush. Let’s shut up and let Rudy cook. Oh, also, we’ll have a devil orgy. And potentially greatly endanger some winos and hobos.

Petey Wheatstraw introduces himself in a fashion that only Rudy Ray Moore can do. He talks about all the great things he did in life. I’m not sure if you realize this, but Mr. Petersworth M. Wheatstraw took the Fourth of July and put it in June. Monsignor Wheastraw, Esq. made leap year jump over the moon. He can even sit on a tombstone and produce baby ghosts. This guy is the real deal. He’s here to tell us the story of his life.

It all began on the day he was born, during a great Miami hurricane. His mother was subjected to difficult labor. Why was it so difficult? Well, Petey was born a six-year-old boy, and he is pissed that the doctor and his father interrupted his sleep. Well, the doctor interrupted his sleep by giving birth to him. His father for disturbing his sleep every other night. If there is one thing that Petey does do, despite being pretty ornery out of the gate, he listens to his momma. She tells him to chill the fuck out and then names him Petey Wheatstraw. A legend is born.

Petey also had a rough childhood. Neighborhood kids would pick on him, but he would come out swingin’. He consistently fought off his bullies, but he didn’t always win. He meets Bantu, an old kung fu master. He takes Petey as a student after seeing him fight off his bullies. Bantu thinks Petey has a lot of courage for taking on three attackers like he did one day when he was coming home from the store. Petey would end up becoming a master kung fu fighter.

What does he do with all that talent for fighting? He tells Bantu that kung fu wasn’t exactly what he planned to do with his life. He wanted to be a comedian. Bantu says that is totally possible to be. He tells Petey that he will always love and respect those who love and respect him. He also says that he will never take abuse from any man, living or dead. He will use his wisdom against all evil.

Petey Wheatstraw is seemingly pretty successful as a stand-up comedian. He packs places. He’s got bitches. He makes club owners happy when he performs. He’s not entirely loved, though. He has rivals in the form of the comedy duo Leroy and Skillet. But here’s the thing… Leroy and Skillet are so desperate to get a big show, they opt to take a fairly large loan from a local mobster to fund their own opening act at a Los Angeles club. The money is to help advertise their show during a time in which most comedians have hit the road. The mob guy tells Leroy and Skillet that he thinks this is a good investment. They think they have about three months with no competition from larger acts. The mob guy says he’s happy to do business with them until they miss paying him back.

Leroy wants to put on a big production. He wants singers. He wants dancers. He wants a massive show that will really bring people in and keep ’em coming back for more. Generally speaking, this should work well for the duo… until Petey books several weeks of shows at another local club called Steve’s Den.

Petey is getting settled in at Steve’s Den, and there are a bunch of expectations that this is gonna be a hell of a series of shows. While they get things squared away in the club, junkies from the street start stripping Petey’s car. This leads to a big ol’ classic chase as Petey tries to get the shit they took from his car. Naturally, once he catches them, it’s kung fu time.

Leroy and Skillet try to sort out of plan to stop Petey’s shows so they can cash in. Well, one plan is to have a couple of guys who work for them go out and take down some of the posters that Petey’s partner, Ted, and his little brother, Larry, were hanging up. Next, they figure Petey is staying with a local woman who is in love with Petey named Nell. So Leroy calls Nell’s place to talk to him.

Apparently, Leroy and Skillet have a past with Petey. He seemingly loaned the duo some money they have yet to pay back. Leroy says he wanted to talk to him about repayment, but with one condition. That condition is to postpone Petey’s shows for a couple of months so they can perform without his competition. When Petey refuses to bend, Leroy and Skillet have their goons escalate. Leroy tells them to rough up Ted.

Now… I’m not entirely sure if the term “rough up” had a different meaning in 1977 or what, but for these goons, “rough him up” is to start with a little scuffle, to immediately pull out a gun to shoot Ted. Well, Larry is there to karate kick the guy’s hand, but when the gun goes off, Larry is shot and killed! Say what you will about a goofy comedy with Rudy Ray Moore doing his insult comedy and kung fu to perfection, but this shit can hit hard too!

So where do we go from here? I mean, is it possible to go back to comedy after killing a small child? The answer is… not yet. We gotta have Larry’s funeral.

Where everyone else dies, including Petey himself.

The little kid’s brother, mother, all their friends, and even the preacher get gunned down by Leroy and Skillet’s goons. I have some questions about Leroy and Skillet’s operations and how much of their mob loan is going to hired goons to stop one man from doing a stand-up act, but I’m not exactly from Los Angeles, nor am I a Black comedian. So I don’t exactly know the politics and economics of this venture. I’m just a passenger on this journey, like all of you. I also don’t exactly know when this decision was made to go from the accidental killing of a young child to saying, “Fuck it, let’s kill ’em all!” but here we are.

There is one thing I do know. I’m not sure if you are aware of the old trope that if a preacher is killed during the funeral for a small child, this will freeze time and bring the Devil himself to the scene. Yeah! Didn’t know that? I’m pretty sure that’s taught in Sunday School. Oh… wait. Probably only in Sunday Schools… FOR SATAN! I digress. The Devil wakes Petey up and presents him with a card introducing himself as Lucifer.

Lucifer asks Petey to get up. When he does, he is taken to hell for a proposition. Lucifer wants a son. If Petey marries Lucifer’s daughter, they can have a son, which is good enough for government work down in Hell, I guess, and Petey will be brought back to life. This would give Petey the chance to get revenge on Leroy and Skillet. Before the deal is sealed, Petey asks what the daughter looks like. As soon as he sees the picture, he says, “Aw hell, no!” Turns out the daughter of Lucifer is quite unfortunate-looking, and Petey has LOTS to say about that in a screed about all the things her ugliness can do.

Thankfully, Petey hears the voice of Bantu speaking to him about wisdom, so he changes his mind and agrees to Lucifer’s terms.

This turns time backwards and brings everyone who was shot and killed back from the dead. They do remember being shot and killed, though, so Petey has to explain all that happened. They are glad to be alive again, but Petey has struck a bargain with the Devil, and that’s… Well, that’s just not Christian, ya know?

It’s a good thing that Petey has no desire to go through with the deal. He is going to work on a plan to stave off the marriage and even get out of it. The thing they have to deal with now, though, is Leroy and Skillet. These two are clearly trouble because they are willing to murder, A LOT, to get him out of the way. Ted wants to deal with the goons first because of what they did to his little brother.

So that’s where the rest of the movie begins. As the goons help out at the club where Leroy and Skillet are going to perform, Ted goads them into chasing him into an alley where he does a little kung fu. Then, Petey makes his appearance which scares off most of the goons because they think he’s a gh-gh-gh-ghost!

Willy, the scarred goon who leads the other goons, is so scared by seeing Petey, he shits his pants. Petey tells him to warn Leroy and Skillet that he’s still alive. Later, Petey gets a call from Lucifer telling him that he will have powers beyond his dreams. Petey can use those powers through the use of Lucifer’s special pimp cane. The only thing he has to remember is that he needs to be careful when and where he uses the powers.

After fighting off a bunch of goons sent by Leroy and Skillet, Petey gets another call Lucifer to tell him he might want to hurry up and get that cane because at the rate things are going with Leroy and Skillet, there’s no tellin’ when they might try to attack him again.

So let’s really get into the Halloween vibes of Petey Wheatstraw. To get Lucifer’s pimp cane, Petey and his business partner Jimmy need to go to a graveyard. Alright, so we have some good ol’ fashioned graveyard business happening here. Jimmy is scared to simply be in the graveyard. Not only that, but it’s late at night. On top of that, we hear wolves howling at the moon. It’s just good atmosphere.

Beyond the comedy stylings of Rudy Ray Moore, there is something else that Petey Wheatstraw is kind of known for. For whatever reason, Moore did a lot of comedy at the expense of what he called winos or hobos. When they get into the graveyard, Petey and Jimmy stumble across a wino who has stumbled into an open grave. Just to have some fun at this guy’s expense, instead of helping him out of the hole in the ground, Petey decides to kick dirt on top of the wino. Why? I have no idea. Why do I find it so funny in this movie? No idea.

The next day, Leroy and Skillet are setting up their stage for their concerts. They meet with the mob guy who loaned them the money, Mr. White. He reminds them that he will kill them if they don’t make money off this little deal of theirs. Meanwhile, at Steve’s Den, Lucifer’s pimp cane suddenly starts vibrating. It leads Petey to the bathroom, where it reveals that Leroy and Skillet have put some dynamite in the club to blow Petey up. He gets the dynamite outside and throws it into a watermelon truck before it explodes.

Petey decides that he’s going to go to Leroy and Skillet’s opening night and give them an opening they will never forget.

I… I’m wondering if it’s the fact that Leroy and Skillet are both welcomed to the stage, but only Leroy comes to the stage, and he’s got a safety pin for a dick. I’m not likely to ever forget that.

During Leroy and Skillet’s set, Petey uses the cane to make Leroy do a bunch of insult comedy like Petey does, but directly at Mr. White’s wife. The Skillet is made to say that he hopes they didn’t water down all their drinks… then calls them assholes. Then, when Leroy and Skillet retreat so they stop saying offensive shit, a singer comes out. The cane makes the singer lose her voice, followed by her afro wig, followed by her dress. After she runs off stage, Petey then makes it snow inside the theater and makes the centerpieces on the tables explode. While the audience tries to run away, Petey’s locked the doors, preventing them from leaving.

After Petey finally opens the doors, Leroy and Skillet are taken by Mr. White and his associates, presumably to be killed in a fucking gutter somewhere in Los Angeles. While Petey was fixing his rivals, Ted was exacting his revenge on Willy. He had him out in the alley kicking the shit out of him, but Willy, to stop this beating, takes out a knife and stabs himself in the gut, killing himself, and robbing Ted of the satisfaction of getting him back for killing little Larry.

Lucifer and his daughter watch from Hell, where she proclaims just how divinely sexy she finds Petey. Petey isn’t so worried about all that right now. He just wants to take advantage of all that power his pimp cane gives him. He helps a woman by turning her cheating husband into a puppy. He saves a kid from being run over by a car, but then brushes his and another little kid’s hair roughly, causing one to run away and the other to break down and cry. He makes a fat woman skinny. He gives a guy a brand new car and new clothes for him and his family after seeing his car broken down in the middle of the street. He then just skips down the street and seems to make it rain money for everyone in the ghetto.

But there is one thing he still needs to do something about, though… Lucifer goes into Steve’s Den looking for Petey. I do have to wonder exactly how powerful the Prince of Darkness truly is if he can’t just spot Petey making it rain literal buckets of cash in the middle of Los Angeles and go directly to him, but, eh, what do I know? Anyway, it looks as though Lucifer just decides to wait for Petey in his dressing room. Lucifer says he’s picked the date for Petey’s wedding to his daughter – tomorrow night. He wants to get his cane back, too, but Petey says he needs it for one more day.

Now, Petey only has about a day and a half to figure out how to get out of this wedding pact. His plan is simple… Petey tells Jimmy to make a mask that looks like him. They’ll go out and find an old wino. They’ll dope him up with some heavy shit and put the mask on him. Then, when Lucifer comes to collect Petey, he will get the wino instead. By the time Lucifer figures out the bait and switch, Petey and company will be on the other side of the country. Clearly, they know that Lucifer does not know how to simply use some dark magic shit to just pop up wherever he wants or needs to be.

They find a wino, even though the guy is a little chubby. Petey says the guy is all “butt and gut,” but they take him anyway. They put the mask on the wino, and he looks just like Petey. You see, Petey told Lucifer that he would be in deep meditation at the time that he would be picked up. So, the heavily drugged wino will just look like Petey in a deep state of meditation.

The afternoon of the big day, Lucifer drops by Steve’s Den and picks Petey up. Not for the wedding itself, but for a private bachelor party. Lucifer sets him up with a cushy room with a nice big bed and a whole lotta bitches. This is the next little fun Halloween element in the movie. I mean, not the demon sex orgy in which Rudy Ray Moore fucks a ton of bitches in a comedy scene, but the way they look.

Look at those little nipply horns. If this weren’t a bunch of demon bitches, who we will see their real boobs and nipply bits, this really would look like a bunch of kids figured out a way to turn those packing peanuts into little devil horns for their Halloween costumes. It’s kind of charming and adorable that a movie figured out how to create a bunch of demons on the cheap.

Anyway, agents of Lucifer come to Steve’s Den to get Petey. They take the wino, but he wakes up in the back of the car and pulls off the mask. He runs away. In Hell, a pissed off Lucifer declares they have been tricked, and his daughter screams in anger, causing an earthquake. Petey uses the cane to stop the earthquake. Forgetting that Petey still had the cane until he stopped the earthquake, Lucifer tells his demon goons to get the cane and bring Petey to Hell. Petey is able to fight off the first attack of the demon disciples with the cane. These disciples have real devil horns and messed-up faces. But subsequent attacks continue until Nell is captured. Lucifer reveals to Petey that he has Nell, and he’ll hurt her if he doesn’t come to the roof, bring the cane back to Lucifer, and surrender to be taken to Hell to be married to Lucifer’s daughter.

A final battle between Petey, Lucifer, and Lucifer’s demon disciples ensues. Petey has Jimmy bring a car to the front of the building and wait for him. On the roof, Petey is able to successfully hold onto the cane to fight off the disciples and eventually defeat Lucifer himself. Unbeknownst to Petey, Nell convinced Jimmy to go back to her apartment down the road to get a few things she left behind during one of the attacks from Lucifer’s disciples while she and Petey were trying to pack in a rush to get to the airport as soon as possible. When he gets down to the street, he thinks he sees Jimmy’s car having returned from Nell’s apartment, but it’s actually a car driven by Lucifer’s new agents, Leroy and Skillet, while Lucifer and his daughter are in the car with him.

Petey Wheatstraw is a very fun and funny movie. It’s Rudy Ray Moore at the height of his acting career. It’s during a period where he had a bunch of fame from Dolemite and The Human Tornado, but also during a time in which he was actually something of a box office draw for Black audiences. It’s also got a competent production value behind it. Dolemite and The Human Tornado may be funnier, but this and Disco Godfather are technically better films.

Regardless of which movie you decide to watch, Rudy Ray Moore is just so damn fun to watch. Yes, you are getting his stand-up routine in plot, dialogue, and performance, but he’s so charismatic as a person. Yeah, he might rip into you as part of his act, or he might say a bunch of really inappropriate shit, but here’s the thing… He’s saying the things the audience would say. In one scene, out of nowhere, a woman comes into Steve’s Den to audition for a spot to perform in the club. She sings terribly, and the song she sings is terrible. What does Petey say when she starts singing her terrible song terribly? “Aw hell, who is this bitch?” Not only is Rudy Ray Moore’s raw, but sharp, wit on display in his reaction, but he’s also a stand-in for the audience too. How do I know? Because I also was like, “Aw hell, who is this bitch?”

That’s the thing about Rudy Ray Moore. He was so raw, but he was quick-witted too. He just said what he thought, and it turned out to come fast and made us laugh. I have to assume that Moore was just as influential to someone like Eddie Murphy (who, of course, played Moore in Dolemite Is My Name) just as much as someone like Richard Pryor would have been. You see raw and sharp wit from each of them. It’s that wit, the rawness, and the charisma that make watching Moore’s movies so fun, and why I love watching them.

That puts the wraps on Black Horror Halloween. We had a good collection of various beasties and monsters and Halloweeny things. Sure, maybe not all of these are scary, or, for that matter, actually horror movies, but we had some fun, didn’t we? I covered some movies I legitimately had always wanted to watch and cover. Not to poke fun at them. Not at all… These have been on the list to cover for years. I’m glad I could find an opportunity to just get them all out in a single, fun theme. Why not Halloween, right?

Why am I defending these picks so hard? Not everything is a found footage jump scare movie, okay? Grow up and broaden those horizons! Now, I apparently am arguing with an imaginary 13-year-old horror moron (horron?). Anyway. You get the point. These may not have been the typical horror movies, but they were fun and interesting nonetheless.

November is now just around the corner (can you believe it?). To kick off the penultimate month of 2025, we’re going to cover a sequel. Back in August, I looked at 1980’s Scared to Death. Next week, we move up to 1990 and the sequel to that movie, Syngenor. Until then, watch out for winos, slave zombies, and killer dicks, and make sure you enjoy your Halloween candy with your kids.

I don’t have kids, so more candy for me, motherfuckers!