Super Fly [Superfly] *** (1972, Ron O’Neal, Carl Lee, Sheila Frazier) – Classic Movie Review 9989

Director Gordon Parks Jr’s successful though controversial 1972 action crime thriller Super Fly [Superfly] is a hit from the wave of 1970s blaxploitation movies, with Ron O’Neal working hard as Youngblood Priest/ Super Fly, a long haired, stylishly dressed urban drug dealer masterminding one final cocaine job so he can retire.

The ambiguous morality and message partly help to explain its interest and popularity. The black dealer is seen as a hero of sorts and the white cops out to stop him as kind of villains (one of them is a corrupt dealer), while the film has a very ambiguous attitude to drugs.

However, it is a super strong Seventies crime film, and the action is very well handled by director Parks Jr, in his début.

The title is also the slang name for the drug.

A sequel followed with Ron O’Neal – Super Fly TNT (1973) – and a second called The Return of Superfly (1990) with Nathan Purdee, and eventually a reboot, Superfly (2018), with Trevor Jackson.

Also in the cast are Carl Lee, Sheila Frazier, Julius W Harris, Charles McGregor, Nate Adams and Polly Niles.

The screenplay by Phillip Fenty was only 45 pages long, so there are many shots of people walking, driving etc, with several driving scenes extended during the final edit to fill its 91-minute length (including the end credits).

It is the first black-oriented film financed entirely by African-Americans and shot by a non-white crew. It is financed by two dentists and Gordon Parks, the director’s father.

All the essential music score is by Curtis Mayfield. It is one of a handful of films whose soundtrack out-grossed the film.

O’Neal disliked the cocaine montage, saying it glorified drug use and was akin to a’ commercial for cocaine.’ The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People civil rights organisation condemned the film for glorifying drug use and stereotyping African-Americans.

Gordon Parks Jr was killed aged 44 in a plane crash in Nairobi, Kenya, 3 April 1979, while making the film Revenge. Super Fly (1972) remains his best known film, earning Warner Bros $24.8 million internationally. It also became famous for the hit song ‘Freddy’s Dead’ (written and performed by Curtis Mayfield). He made three other films but none as successful as his first.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 9989

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