Petey Wheatstraw is a candidate to become the devil's son-in-law. The storyline is a scaffolding on which Rudy Ray Moore's standup humor can be unfolded. Beginning life as the afterbirth to a watermelon, the young Wheatstraw becomes a martial artist, but is unable to best the evil comedy team of Leroy and Skillet, who also indulge in wholesale murder. Satan restores the comedians' victims to life, and charges Petey with the task of marrying his clock-stoppingly ugly daughter to give him a grandchild. When Petey attempts to default on the deal, he is pursued by the devil's henchmen.

While Rudy Ray Moore is best remembered today for his outrageous blaxploitation movies, such as Dolemite and The Human Tornado, he started out as a standup comedian who broke barriers for off-color comedy on such "party" albums as Eat Out More Often. Rude is a performance film which captures Moore on-stage at a comedy club, delivering the rhyming rap routines and epic tales of sexual conquest that first made him famous.