Petey Wheatstraw: The Devil's Son-in-Law [DVD] [1977]

Xenon's DVD for Petey Wheatstraw isn't terribly impressive, but offers just enough to pacify the film's fans. The image isn't much to write home about; the disc foregoes the widescreen format for a full-screen picture and the old print they used for the disc is full of scratches and dust speckling. However, the digital format makes it more colorful and sharp than previous VHS editions. Sound is limited to Dolby mono and delivers a reasonably sharp soundtrack. This DVD also includes a commentary track by star/co-writer Rudy Ray Moore. Unfortunately, this commentary is amongst the most useless in DVD history. Moore only delivers about 15 minutes' worth of comments total during the film's 90-minute running time and there are huge, lengthy gaps of silence as a result. When Moore does speak, he rambles and more often than not just instructs the viewer to rewind the scene to savor a bit of the onscreen humor. The only other extras on the disc are three trailers; the unrelated Black Godfather trailer is forgettable but the two Moore-related trailers (Dolemite and The Human Tornado) are gems that blend eye-popping exploitation highlights with side-splitting "rapped" narration. In short, Petey Wheatstraw is unimpressive as a DVD, but does a passable job of serving of this film up for its fans.