The Monkey Hustle

The Monkey Hustle
Directed by	Arthur Marks
Produced by	Arthur Marks and Robert E. Shultz
Written by	Odie Hawkins and Charles Eric Johnson
Starring	Yaphet Kotto Kirk Calloway Rudy Ray Moore
Music by	Jack Conrad
Cinematography	Jack L. Richards
Editing by	Art Seid
Distributed by	American International Pictures
Release date(s)	1976
Running time	90 min.
Country	USA
Language	English

The Monkey Hustle (also written as The Monkey Hu$tle) is a 1976 blaxploitation film written by Odie Hawkins and Charles Eric Johnson. It stars Yaphet Kotto as Chicago con-man and "hustler" Big Daddy Foxx and Kirk Calloway as his teenage apprentice. Co-stars include Thomas Carter, Donn C. Harper, Rudy Ray Moore, and Rosalind Cash.^[1]

Plot synopsis

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 small-time 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 Foxx's 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 over-arching 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.

References

1. ^ "Blaxploitation cinema: Can you dig it?". The Los Angeles Times. http://articles.latimes.com/2009/oct/11/entertainment/ca-blaxploitation11. Retrieved 2011-01-28. 

External links

• Monkey Hustle at the Internet Movie Database