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Review

Last year’s highly touted DVD reissue of Scarface featured a documentary that examined the film’s massive impact on African-American culture in the two decades since that film’s release. But this new DVD of the blaxploitation favorite Superfly remains equally essential viewing for anyone interested in adopting an old-school approach to the appreciation of cinematic ghetto classics. Director Gordon Parks Jr.’s debut film is one of a trio of quintessential early-70s African-American landmark films (The Mack and Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song are the other two), and the documentary featurettes and commentary track on this disc place the importance of the film – culturally and cinematically – in the proper context. Like Scarface, Superfly centers upon the urban anti-hero figure of the drug dealer, here incarnated by the outstanding (and, sadly, recently deceased) Ron O’Neal, in a performance that gives the film much of its impact. “Priest” (O’Neal) is one of NYC’s top coke dealers, but he’s anxious to make that mythical final “big score” and then retire from the business – and his primary obstacle comes from the corrupt white cops who are eager to exploit Priest’s trade for their own financial reward. The blaxploitation genre of the 1970s lamentably devolved from works with a defining radical socio-political sensibility and gritty authenticity early in that decade, to sanitized and banal genre retreads as the movement drew to a close; Superfly is one of the superlative examples of the early blaxploitation wave, and the film remains one of the defining cultural artifacts of the era – and no discussion of Parks’ classic film is complete without mentioning Curtis Mayfield’s unforgettable score, often cited (correctly) as one of the greatest film soundtracks of all time. Sadly, Parks Jr. would direct only three more films in the mid-70s – the cult favorite Three the Hard Way, the unique black western Thomasine and Bushrod and the romantic drama Aaron Loves Angela - before he was killed in a 1979 plane crash in Kenya. Through Parks’ stylish direction and O’Neal’s commandingly charismatic performance, Superfly endures as an essential classic.

From the TLA Guide
Picketed by blacks for its glorification of the drug underworld, Superfly was nonetheless a huge popular success. New York City is an urban wasteland which provides the gritty backdrop to this tawdry tale of one tough-talking, coke-sniffing pusher (O'Neal) who plots for one final mega-deal before retiring. With a hypnotic Curtis Mayfield score in the background, the film captures the drug dealing world and, unlike most films of this type, takes no moral high ground.