Shaft’s Big Score! *** (1972, Richard Roundtree, Moses Gunn, Drew Bundini Brown, Joseph Mascolo, Julius W Harris, Joe Santos) – Classic Movie Review 7625

Richard Roundtree recreates the role of hardboiled Harlem private eye John Shaft in director Gordon Parks’ s 1972 blaxploitation action crime thriller Shaft’s Big Score!, the tip-top first sequel to the enormously successful 1971 original Shaft film.

Shaft sees his girlfriend’s brother killed in a bomb attack on a building, whose safe is found missing. Then he finds himself pursued by mobsters in a wild chase through Manhattan and across the Harlem River. Roundtree is excellent in this pulsating, ultra-tough action thriller movie that really delivers the action thrills and spills.

Shaft’s Big Score! was made for $1,978,000, more than three times that of the original, which was produced on a $500,000 budget. It scored a big box-office success with a total $10 million gross, but it was less popular than Shaft.

It is more of the same Harlem hard stuff, with good work from the same star, co-stars (Moses Gunn and Drew Bundini Brown), writer (Ernest Tidyman) and director as the hit original. In the exciting action finish, Shaft is pursued through Brooklyn’s Naval Yard by a helicopter full of heavies with machine guns.

The film’s big score is by the director when Isaac Hayes did not return to reprise his iconic score after allegedly falling out with the director and also with MGM who refused to pay the fee he wanted, though he does contribute the song ‘Type Thang’ to the film.

Also in the cast are Moses Gunn, Drew Bundini Brown, Joseph Mascolo, Kathy Imrie, Wally Taylor, Joe Santos, Julius L Harris, Rosalind Miles, Angelo Nazzo, Don Blakely and Gordon Parks.

Like Shaft, it is filmed entirely on location in New York City, with locations including the Brooklyn Navy Yard and Cypress Hills Cemetery.

It was one of four 1972 MGM blaxploitation films cashing in on Shaft‘s success.

It was the last film to be screened (in a double bill with No Blade of Grass) at the Odeon, Balham Hill, Clapham South, South London, in 1972. The auditorium was destroyed in the early Eighties to make way for ’boutique apartments’, but the historic Thirties foyer and façade are intact and what’s left is now a Majestic Wine warehouse.

It is followed by Shaft in Africa (1973), the third and final original Shaft movie, with Richard Roundtree starring again. It was rebooted in 2000 as Shaft, with Samuel L Jackson.

June 2022 sees the film’s 50th anniversary.

The cast are Richard Roundtree as John Shaft, Moses Gunn as ‘Bumpy’ Jonas, Drew Bundini Brown as Willy, Joseph Mascolo as Gus Mascola, Kathy Imrie as Rita, Wally Taylor as Johnny Kelly, Julius Harris as Captain Bollin, Rosalind Miles as Arna Asby, Joe Santos as Andy Pascal, Don Blakely as Johnson, Angelo Gnazzo as Lieutenant Al Rossi, Robert Kya-Hill as Cal Asby, Thomas Anderson as ‘Preacher’, Frank Adonis as ‘Rip’, Henry Ferrentino Detective Salmi, Cihangir Ghaffari (credited as John Foster) as Jerry, Melvin Green jr as Junior Gillis, Dan Hannafin as Cooper, Marilyn Hamlin as Gus’s girlfriend, Kitty Jones as Cabaret Dancer, and Evelyn Davis as Old Lady.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7625

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