Superfly with Ron O'Neal: DVD Cover
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Superfly Director: Gordon Parks Cast: Ron O'Neal, Carl Lee, Sheila Frazier, Julius Harris

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  • DVD Release Date: 01/13/2004
  • Original Release: 1972
  • Rating: Rated R
  • Sales Rank: 14,243

Viewer Rating: (5 ratings)

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  • Customer Reviews
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Features

Commentary by USC School of Cinema and Television professor Todd Boyd; a new documentary, "Last Deal: A Retrospective," including interviews with cast and producers; Ron O'Neal on "The Making of Super Fly; Curtis Mayfield on Super Fly; and "Behind the Threads," with costume designer Nate Adams.

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Scene Index

Side #1 --
1. Comparisons [4:58]
2. Uptown-Bound Credits [3:25]
3. Would-Be Muggers [2:40]
4. Priestly Business [5:38]
5. Chance to Get Out [4:11]
6. Shakedown [:16]
7. Pusherman [2:49]
8. One Last Time [3:25]
9. The Payoff [8:22]
10. Sexy Bath [4:08]
11. Fighters [4:50]
12. The Last of Freddie [3:03]
13. The Law Makes it Real [4:17]
14. Dealing Montage [5:10]
15. March Someplace Else [3:43]
16. Owned By the Man [4:22]
17. New Hires [7:14]
18. Priest's Cut [3:59]
19. Elevator Switch [3:49]
20. Meeting the Man [4:05]
21. Dirty Laundry [2:28]
22. End Credits [2:08]

Scene Index

Editorial Reviews

An African-American man finds that leaving behind his life of crime is harder than he imagined in this groundbreaking crime drama. Priest (Ron O'Neal) is a stylish and successful cocaine dealer who drives a fancy car, commands a small army of street salesmen, and lives a life of luxury. However, Priest is just smart enough to know that there's no real future in dealing coke, and one day he makes a proposal to his partner Eddie (Carl Lee) -- they take their 300,000-dollar savings, buy 30 kilos of cocaine, and use their street team to move it out in four months, leaving a million dollar profit for both Priest and Eddie, allowing them to get out of the business for good. Eddie is wary but willing to go along, but Scatter (Julius Harris), a former dealer who set Priest up in the cocaine trade, is both unwilling and unable to sell them that much product. As Priest looks for a new source for his big score, one of his underlings, Fat Freddie (Charles McGregor) is picked up by the police, and under violent interrogation, Freddie tells the cops about Priest's underground empire. When Priest is confronted by the police, however, he learns they're less interested in putting him behind bars than in making him a partner. While Superfly was a box-office smash and (along with Shaft and Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song) one of the key films of the nascent blaxploitation movement of the early '70s, it's best remembered today for the soundtrack composed and performed by Curtis Mayfield, which included the hit songs "Freddie's Dead," "Pusherman," and the title tune. Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Customer Reviews

Superflyby Anonymous

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November 15, 2006: This movie is outrageous. Gordon Parks Jr.'s "Superfly" is interesting enough with its cliches of drug pushers, users, pimps, hos, and the dismal life that is the ghetto. Good performances are given by Ron O'Neal as Priest, the drug pusher who wants to do the unthinkable -- get out of the business, and Julius Harris as Scatter, Priest's former connection to "The Man". After a little "help" from his friends Priest discovers he can only trust his woman, Georgia (Shelia Frazier). But, Priest has masterminded a way to take him and Georgia away from this life to another. A director today, for example, could never get away with making a movie like this, modern audiences just don't have the attention span. The movie moves along like a series of music videos, stopping periodically to insert some dialogue and characters and situations, after which it moves back into another music video. Even that sex scene in the bathtub seemed to go on forever, panning up and down and up and down and up and down the naked bodies in the tub, presumably long enough for the song to play out before we can move on to the next scene. From a technical standpoint, the film is an absolute disaster. There's a foot-chase early in the movie during which a wire of some sort falls directly in front of the camera lens not once, but twice, the audio is numerous scenes does not even remotely match the video (the never-ending bathtub scene, for example), and the acting is abysmal. Throughout the film, the enjoyment comes from Curtis Mayfield's superb soundtrack. It has a way of elevating what might be just another b film to a cult classic. From "Little Child Runnin' Wild" in the opening sequence to Curtis Mayfield's live performance of "Pusherman" in Scatter's club to the end credits with the title track, this is simply one of the finest pieces of music ever written specifically for a film. The soundtrack album, which produced hit singles with "Freddie's Dead" and "Superfly", stands with Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" as perhaps the two greatest soul albums of the 1970's.

Superflyby Anonymous

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October 01, 2006: in 1972, when this movie was released, i was a raw draftee, 20 years old and on my own, away from home, for the first time. halfway through boot camp at fort jackson, south carolina, we were finally allowed to move off the Company Street and around the base. superfly had just hit the theaters, on-base and off, and i hiked across the post to see it. what an experience. there wasn't anyone in the theater, white or black, who didn't identify with priest and his situation vis-a-vis "the man". when he finished his soliloquy regarding the consequences which would occur should any harm come to "one hair of my pretty head", the whole place erupted. superfly was important as the first movie in the vanguard of what would become the blaxploitation genre, though it brought obviously higher production values to the screen and exhibited a greater understanding of, and sympathy for, its characters than many of the later spate of imitators. it also brought together a crew of name individuals who collaborated to produce a minor gem of film making, not just black film making.


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