Disco Godfather

When his nephew Bucky (Julius J. Carry III) is hospitalized after freaking out on angel dust, ex-cop Tucker Williams (Rudy Ray Moore), the Disco Godfather, vows to clean up the streets. With Tucker rallying the populace against drugs, local politico Stinger (James H. Hawthorne), who is behind the PCP factory, puts a contract out on Tucker, then changes his mind for no apparent reason and has the hitmen killed, then puts out another contract. Meanwhile, Tucker has discovered the snitch in the police department who's been feeding Stinger information on upcoming raids. Following up on a lead, Tucker raids Stinger's factory, where Tucker is captured and force-fed angel dust. Breaking loose, he attacks Stinger while hallucinating. In the end, the police arrive, and try to subdue a screaming Tucker.

After the increasing wildness of his previous starring vehicles, the conventionality here is a major letdown. Moore had already shown that his forte was exaggeration and satire; playing it straight in a preachy, talky role was a puzzling step backward considering his rather limited acting skills. Likewise, the fights in his last few films had benefited greatly from being sped up and played for laughs. Here he seems to have unlearned those lessons and flails about in a sluggish, awkward manner. Interestingly enough, Bucky's initial freakout seems triggered by seeing Moore bopping about in an open-fronted sequin disco outfit. A reasonable reaction, all things considered.

In addition to the on-again, off-again contract, the plot is a collection of holes strung together by implausabilities. The traitorous cop is caught but not arrested; instead we jump-cut to him dead in a bathtub, an apparent suicide. An old man is introduced with no connection to the plot, his dog recently dead. Tucker (whose name was clearly chosen for its vast rhyming potential) gives the man a new dog, which is then found nailed to Tucker's door. The old man is killed. Why? Seemingly because the plodding, slow-moving story wasn't quite long enough for feature length. Padded with endless dancing sequences and interminable diatribes against drugs (...and then there's the story told of a girl who cooked her baby and served it for Thanksgiving dinner), the film inadvertently emulates a bad trip by seeming to last days. Of course, the most entertaining moments by far are the actual glimpses into drug-takers' hallucinations: Bucky, an aspiring basketball player, imagines his arm chopped off; Tucker sees fearsome apparitions of demons, skulls, and worst of all, his mother. The entire ending, in fact, is a sort of tag-team freakout, jumping back and forth between Tucker strangling Stinger, and a hospital room prayer meeting-cum-exorcism for another unfortunate "wack" victim.

Newcomer J. Robert Wagoner is credited as co-writer and director; surely he deserves much of the blame for this misfire. Co-executive producer Jules Bihari was one of the founders of Modern Records, the fiercely independent Watts label famous for John Lee Hooker, Elmore James, Jimmy Witherspoon, and other modern bluesmen. The Bihari brothers, formerly of Oklahoma, were pioneers in discovering, recording, and distributing black music. (One of their employees was musician/talent scout Ike Turner, who brought them their biggest act, B.B. King.) Among their subsidiary labels were Flair, RPM, Crown, and Kent, the latter home to Rudy Ray Moore's later comedy albums. Moore enlisted many of his regular collaborators for DISCO GODFATHER (also known as THE AVENGING DISCO GODFATHER): Cliff Roquemore, director of Moore's last two films, was co-writer; Jerry Jones, writer of his first, played a concerned doctor; comedy-record compadre Jimmy Lynch acted and designed the wardrobe and sets; Howard Johnson was fight coordinator as usual, and Moore's DOLEMITE costar Lady Reed had a small role. Someone among them should have seen this toned-down, cleaned-up project was ill-advised. (Violence, sexual situations, substance abuse, extreme profanity.) leave a comment