'Black Devil Doll' gains a quick and vocal cult movie following

I wish I could say I planned it this way. My dad would be so proud.

Tonight at Beach Theatre, an independently produced exploitation flick titled Black Devil Doll is showing at 11. The place will be packed, and I should receive a share of ticket sales. It can keep the concession money. People will be too grossed out, or perhaps laughing too hard, to eat.

I haven't seen Black Devil Doll, but its online and positively NSFW trailer tells the story: an African-American puppet with Dolemite diction rapes, beats and mutilates exclusively white women, taunting them with crude sexist comments along the way. I'm told it's a comedy; Chucky meets Blacula with sex and gore galore.

It didn't strike me as being funny in light of St. Petersburg's uneasy racial relations, and I expressed that on my Reeling in the Years blog, unleashing a torrent of pro-Black Devil Doll comments from around the United States. Hell hath no fury like a gorehound scorned, I guess.

Many of them confirmed my knee-jerk impression of folks who'd enjoy this movie. (One printable example: "I hope Steve falls in a puddle of AIDS.") Even the movie's producer, Shawn Lewis, chimed in with scatological insults.

Then about the time that an online talk radio host in Michigan requested an hourlong interview, I realized that Black Devil Doll and I have something in common: we're both benefiting from some good, old-fashioned movie ballyhoo.

And I inadvertently kicked it off, unlike my father, who often planned stunts like this when he operated theaters, like staging a fake heart attack with a hired ambulance arriving during a drive-in screening of Blood Feast in the early 1960s. Dad sold out the drive-in for two weeks after news spread that Blood Feast may have killed somebody.

Beach Theatre owner Mike France is handling Black Devil Doll with the same ballyhoo spirit. He's enforcing NC-17 standards on Black Devil Doll (no one under 17 admitted) although the movie hasn't been submitted to the MPAA ratings board.

France also hasn't seen Black Devil Doll, only the trailer online, which he says "doesn't exactly soft-sell it." He didn't get the same ugly vibe I did.

"It's clearly a joke, judging from the trailer," France said. "I'd be very surprised to see the finished film and find out they're playing it straight."

Black Devil Doll already has found an audience for such entertainment from Los Angeles to New York, even Salt Lake City, a city not exactly known for its permissiveness.

"This movie is for the cult film audience; people who are ready to be offended," said France. "People who'll walk into a movie and say: 'I dare you. You cannot offend me. Try to do it.' "

That quote should fill a few more seats. Sell the sizzle, not the steak. Take it from someone with experience on both sides now of ballyhoo outrage: it isn't just the shock but what you do with it.

Steve Persall can be reached at persall@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8365.