Put yo weight on it! I was born in the early/mid-80s so I grew up well past the prime of disco, so I can't vouch for what makes horrible disco dancing. But if I had to guess, I'd say Rudy Ray Moore sucks at it. Unless contorting your face and stabbing the air with your pelvis constitutes wicked disco skills; I could be wrong. As the 70s were drawing to a close, Rudy Ray Moore was riding that disco high and decided to be a little more socially conscious with his fourth feature. In what may or may not be a serious attempt at an anti-drug message, Moore and director J. Robert Wagoner (and screen writing help from former collaborator Cliff Roquemore) have Moore tackling his most dangerous adversary yet: angel dust. Moore is Tucker Williams, a retired police officer who runs the hottest local disco joint, Blueberry Hill. But all is not well…there is a new drug flooding the streets and the youth are becoming addicted to angel dust. When Tucker's nephew Bucky suffers a mental breakdown from a bad trip in the middle of his club, Tucker makes it his solemn duty to track down the supplier of the drug and clean up the streets. Known as the Disco Godfather, he begins an investigation into its local production at the command of Stinger Ray, a local businessman whose legitimate front is some sort of basketball team he is recruiting for. Or something. I couldn't quite figure out who Stinger Ray was supposed to be. Zaniness ensues.

"Haven't you heard, Godfather? Our children are dying."

The movie begins with a nearly ten minute sequence of disco dancing at Blueberry Hill with Moore chanting "Put yo weight on it!" in a failed attempt to institute a new catchphrase, presumably to pad the running time to feature length. You need to have a bit of patience with this movie because it has a tendency to cram in a disco break randomly, regardless of how it brings the story to a screeching halt. If Moore and the filmmakers had intended to do a serious movie to address a serious social issue, they probably shouldn't have made the drug portions so hilarious. The people high on angel dust in this movie are just too funny, accurate or not. I've never witnessed anyone high on the drug, and I have my doubts that the writers were overly concerned with research. Disco! There's a scene where the Disco Godfather is given a tour through a facility where people recover from angel dust, but it doesn't quite have the effect I think the filmmakers were going for. The movie has the usual bits of awesome we've come to expect from a Rudy Ray Moore movie: cheesy effects, horrible acting, and moments of total absurdity. There's a point where the Disco Godfather battles a cowboy. No joke, a cowboy. And the cowboy is using a whip. It's just so bizarre and misplaced, and I totally love moments like it.

I do need to give this movie some credit. It is the first Rudy Ray Moore movie I've seen with structure! There aren't multiple plot lines going in random directions, but one solid story of the Godfather's battle against angel dust. The problem is that the movie is just boring. It's weak. I watch Moore's movies for the absurd characters, low production value, and strange attempts at action. We don't get much of that here. With the quasi-serious tone, we lose a lot of the WTF factor that makes Moore's movies so fun to watch. DISCO GODFATHER is a difficult movie to remember after seeing it because there really isn't anything memorable here. I honestly didn't care about this movie for 90% of it until the final battle at the angel dust production plant. Moore busts out with his weird brand of kung-fu as he battles his way into the plant until *gasp!* he's exposed to angel dust! Moore's nightmare on angel dust makes it worth the hassle of watching his movie. It's the best Moore moment since the final battle through the house on the hill in THE HUMAN TORNADO. Oh, and we get some of the regular cast in the movie. Jimmy Lynch and Jerry Jones return, and Lady Reed is relegated to a minor role that spares us her usual painful line delivery. In the end, the movie fails to live up to any of Moore's movies that came before it. It doesn't have nearly as many laughs, and it has 100% more disco. If it weren't for the awesome finale, I probably would have marked it even lower.

Disco Godfather (1979) is a movie I recently watched on Amazon Prime. The storyline is about a disco owner who is sick of seeing his customers and kids in his neighborhood die from Angel Dust. He sets out on a mission to spread the word that angel dust isn't welcome and hunts down the local drug dealers in the area. This movie is directed by J. Robert Wagoner as his only major motion picture and stars Rudy Ray Moore (Dolemite), Carol Speed (The Big Bird Cage), Hawthorne James (Speed) and Julius Carry (The Last Dragon). The storyline for this picture is awful - as is the dialogue, action scenes, any scene Moore dances, and I could go on and on. This is one of those cult classics because it's so bad but fits into this era...huge step down from the more quality films from like Dolemite and Coffy. The slang is fun (put your weight on it) and so was the skating scene. But the way they made angel dust addiction seem like a demon in your body and exorcism process was crazy. I'd score this one a 4/10 and only recommend to diehard fans of blaxploitation movies.

A fun energetic wacky and fast moving blaxploitation movie that goes on to promote something that other blaxploitation movies didn't: the cleaning up of drug dealers from the black community, led by disco owner Rudy Ray Moore. As the Liberace of the blaxploitation genre, he's a delightfully flashy dresser, equally flamboyant in his personality too, and determined to bring down the street drug industry that got his smart young nephew Julius Carry to overdose on PCP.

There's an unintentionally funny scene where the Aunt Esther like mother of a female victim of PCP decides that she's going to use faith to clean up her daughter, and while the poor girl is having convulsions, her mother and a bunch of church ladies saunter around her bed as if she was possessed like Linda Blair in "The Exorcist". I couldn't help but laugh at the silliness of the moment. While the film isn't exactly the best acted (mainly due to poor sound that has the actors sounding forced), it's very watchable, and certainly well intended.

Moore isn't the greatest of actors, but he's got charm and sincerity, and he's not exactly playing "Othello". Hawthorne James is a great sleazy villain. Honestly have to say this is one of the best later blaxploitation movies because it grabs the viewer's emotions and doesn't let go. Carry shows great promise as Moore's nephew and I wish he had done more A grade work.