Watermelon Man

Jeff Gerber is a white insurance agent living a comfortable life in the suburbs with his wife and children. He is also a committed racist, and he never misses an opportunity to mock or harass Black people, at home and at work alike. That world is upended one morning when he wakes to find that his skin has turned dark, with no explanation. As he tries to understand what has happened to him, the neighbors and colleagues who once accepted him begin to treat him the way he had always treated others.

Melvin Van Peebles directed the film, the first of the three features he made, followed by Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song in 1971 and Identity Crisis in 1989. Herman Raucher wrote the screenplay, and John B. Bennett produced. Godfrey Cambridge plays Jeff, with Estelle Parsons as his wife Althea and Erin Moran as their daughter Janice; the credited cast runs to fifty performers. Columbia Pictures released the comedy in May 1970, and it took in about one million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds a 6.7 rating from roughly 3,200 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 6.3 from a much smaller group of about sixty users.