Reeling Back

Family matters when it comes to maintaining interest in a movie franchise. Shaft, opening today (June 14) in the U.S. and Canada, offers three generations of the African-American crime-fighting clan. In the new picture, retired private detective John Shaft (Richard Roundtree) is revealed to be father (not the uncle) of practicing P.I. John Shaft II (Samuel L. Jackson), who is the father of John “J.J.” Shaft (Jessie Usher), an F.B.I. special agent. Lest we forget, John Senior was the title character in director Gordon Parks’s incendiary 1971 feature Shaft, one of the two urban action films that begat the “blaxploitation” movie genre. (The other was Melvin Van Peebles's independently-made Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song.) Said to have saved the struggling MGM Studios from bankruptcy, Shaft was followed by Shaft’s Big Score (1972) and Shaft in Africa (1973). There was even a short-lived Shaft TV series. All if them starred Roundtree. John Senior’s nephew and namesake was the title character played by Jackson in Shaft, director John Singleton’s 2000 franchise reboot. Today’s reunion, directed by Tim Story, offers Reeling Back an opportunity to look back at some early blaxploitation pictures. The four films being added today (with links to each following the Afterword to this posting) include director Gordon Parks Jr.’s 1972 style-setting tale of an inner-city drug lord, Super Fly.