The Monkey Hustle

The Monkey Hustle also written as The Monkey Hutle is a 1976 American blaxploitation film written by Odie Hawkins and Charles Eric Johnson. It stars Yaphet Kotto as Chicago conman and hustler Daddy Foxx and Kirk Calloway as his teenage apprentice. Costars include Thomas Carter, Donn C. Harper, Rudy Ray Moore, and Rosalind Cash.

The film includes a loose plot centered around the ensemble cast of characters in which Foxx mentors Baby D Calloway, Player Carter, and Tiny Harper in the ways of smalltime hustling. An example of a hustle is the boys apparently stealing some televisions from a truck for Foxx in sight of a local shop owner. The boys then steal the televisions from Foxxs truck and stash them in some trash. The shop owner offers the boys 55 cash for the televisions which they accept. However, when the shop owner returns with his dolly, he finds that the boys have run off with the cash as well as the televisions which were actually empty boxes. The overarching plotline is to prevent the construction of an expressway through the neighborhood in which all the characters reside. Using facilities that are not adequately described in the film, Foxx and local numbers man Glitterin Goldie Moore use potentially corrupt connections within the city government to prevent the construction.Roger Ebert, writing in the Chicago SunTimes, gave the film oneandhalf stars out of four, calling it a goodhearted muddle but opining that they must have left half the script back in Hollywood. Ebert did note with pleasure that the films business justified opening the balcony at the nowdemolished Roosevelt Theater, where he hadnt sat in four years. Edward Blank in the Pittsburgh Press viewed the film more harshly, saying it should have been rated R instead of PG for its low moral tone and that it was disconcerting to see Yaphet Kotto and Rosland Cash slumming. In 2009, Black Dynamite star and cowriter Michael Jai White cited The Monkey Hutle as a major influence, telling the Los Angeles Times, It was just brash, unlike anything Id ever seen... I remember these biggerthanlife characters, who reminded me of my uncles, and it was the first time I saw anything familiar in my life on the big screen. The Monkey Hustle was released to DVD by MGM on January 20th, 2004 in a Regionwidescreen DVD. ........

Source: Wikipedia