DOUBLE FEATURE: The Human Tornado [1976] & Dolemite Is My Name [2019]

A few weeks back we enjoyed Rudy Ray Moore's first film, "Dolemite", and here we are at the sequel, "The Human Tornado." The title makes him sound like a superhero but unfortunately this isn't a superhero movie. Moore plays Dolemite again and the title seems to just be a reference to his sexual prowess rather than a new title or anything (but the movie does come with a sweet new theme song, of course). 

We open on some Dolemite standup intercut with a woman dancing and then we are at a house party at Dolemite's mansion where a party is going on to raise money for children (this plot point is never explained and doesn't appear again). In spite of the party, he's busy because he's apparently so great at sex than one of the police officier's wives offers him money for it. The party is broken up when some very racist police break in and shoot the wife, pinning the blame on him. Dolemite and some friends escape the party and hijack a car to get to Los Angeles and the flamboyantly gay owner of the car is happy to go along for the ride. Once in LA, they go to visit Queen Bee (she was a figure in the first film too as a brothel owner I believe) and find that her club and her girls are under the control of a local mob boss. Two girls in particular were kidnapped and brought to the torture chamber basement of some witchy old woman's house. Dolemite makes it his mission to find the girls, get the mob boss to give up his control over Queen Bee and her workers, and also to evade the racist cops who have come all the way from Alabama to find him. This involves, as expected, a lot of weirdness but it is overall more coherent than "Dolemite." There's an absolutely Lynchian sequence where Dolemite seduces the mod boss's nymphomanic mistress and, of course, the girls all get trained in martial arts to fight the mafia guys during an all out brawl at the end.

Overall, "The Human Tornado" is neck and neck with "Petey Wheatstraw" for best Rudy Ray Moore film that we've seen (although "Petey" still has the best theme song). There is never a dull moment in the film and we got a ton of laughs throughout. At some point we will have to watch them closer together to decide which one is actually superior, but we can guarantee that they are both wonderful so if you want to explore all of Moore's films, save them for last.

Spoon Rating: 9

Afterwards we decided to watch the latest addition to the world of good movies about bad films, "Dolemite Is My Name" (in keeping with the fact that we also did double features of "Plan 9"/"Ed Wood" and "The Room"/"The Disaster Artist"). As we were hoping, it was a great watch. Eddie Murphy plays Rudy so well and it was fascinating to see how they chose to portray Rudy's emergence in standup, his friendship with Lady Reed (who plays Queen Bee), and the process of actually making "Dolemite." Amusingly, because this was so fresh on our mind, we all observed immediately that they used footage from "Human Tornado" in their clips of "Dolemite" but we can forgive the transgression in the name of art.

We recommend the film for sure, but you should at least see "Dolemite" before you do if not a few of Rudy Ray's films.