SUPERFLY (1972)
A signature film in the Blaxploitation canon, this
dope-tastic urban crime flick from Warner Bros. is centred around Priest, (Ron
O’Neal) a tough coke dealer looking to retire on one last score. We know he’s a
bad-ass from the get-go as our first sight of him is snorting the white stuff
using his crucifix neck chain as a spoon. Oddly, as a light-skinned brother
sporting long straight hair, burners and a Zapata moustache, he resembles a
Spanish nobleman or the younger musician Prince more than a black pimp. I’m not
the only one to notice this. An associate provokes him with “Answer me, you
white-looking-’ before Priest decks him by way of interruption. Somewhat
Caucasian he may look, but there’s nothing fraudulent about how he does
business.
Ron O’Neal was a Broadway actor itching to portray a cool
character like Priest. He is the engine driving the plot and grabs the part by
the big leather lapels, working it with gritty intensity. He punches out key words with relish. “I ain’t
givin’ you SHIT!’ he seethes at a low level shake-down artist.
Priest’s drive to make it from crime and run with the
proceeds is justified in his view by the iniquity of society in not giving a
black ex-con a chance as much as it is by the greed for illegal profit. He
tells his girlfriend Georgia (Sheila Frazier) he anticipates making four million
from a thirty kilo coke deal because his pride will not stomach “Workin’ a jive
job for chump change”. There’s equally a burst of social commentary in an
exchange he has with his partner Eddie (Carl Lee) about how black people are
marginalised into such work by segregation of work opportunities. Eddie points
out “It’s a rotten game but it’s the only one the man left us to play and
that’s the stone cold truth”. There’s an attitudinal echo here of Shylock’s
position in ‘The Merchant of Venice’. Minority races pushed into less savoury
industries see themselves as driven by economic forces and then castigated for
serving a social need. (Although here unlike Renaissance Europe, the provider
of drugs is selling an illegal service rather than money-lending and these
crims do actually have a choice!)
The prospect of making a retirement killing is on the cards but
when corrupt cops offer them a direct deal through their protection as an
ongoing profitable business for both sides, its’ too tempting for Eddie to accept
getting out with just a million. What
they don’t know is that their friend Scatter (Julius Harris, later memorably
playing Tee Hee in LIVE AND LET DIE) has been pumped fatally full of heroin to
push the police’s scummy scheme forward.
In a winning denouement for crime, when the cops apprehend
Priest in the climax, after a Steve Austin style slo-mo fist fight on the docks
he brazenly threatens them with a mafia hit contract taken out on them as
insurance. Controversially he gets away
with it which is a guilty pleasure for the audience.
Aside from O’Neal’s bravura turn as the central character,
SUPER FLY also boasts one of the most famous Blaxploitation music soundtracks
courtesy of the groovy falsetto of Curtis Mayfield - who also does a club performance of the hit
song ’Pusher Man’ in the film.
With its trading in coke ‘kees’, grimy cops and hand-held
foot chases, the film benefits from the dirty veracity of THE FRENCH CONNECTION.
However, the backlash against Blaxploitation began with SUPER FLY’s release.
Black groups like the NAACP and spokesmen such as the Reverend Jesse Jackson,
sporting an impressive afro and sideburns that would have been strangely well
suited to this genre, vilified it as a totally negative depiction of black men.
To be fair, the movie’s portrayals are even-handed; whitey comes off no better
in the role model stakes, being made up exclusively of crooked cops. Ironically, SUPER FLY had the dubious honour
of being a model, but for the trend of customising cars into ‘Pimpmobiles’ and
led many gangsters and pimps into ‘pimping out’ their rides as a result of
seeing it.
O’Neal defended the film in the press pointing out ‘Super Fly
was made by black people in the ghetto and taken out to the monied affluent
people’.
It was successful enough to spawn a sequel SUPER FLY TNT and
then inexplicably a belated second sequel in 1990 (RETURN OF THE SUPERFLY)
which was resoundingly swatted at the box office.
The original is serious immoral fun and occupies a spot in
every fan ‘Best of Blaxploitation’ list you’ll see.
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