Leadbelly (1976)

          Offering a simplistic overview of major events in the life of legendary blues/folk singer Huddie William Ledbetter, better known as “Lead Belly’ or “Leadbelly” because of his muscular build, the slick biopic Leadbelly dramatizes the cause-and-effect relationship between Ledbetter’s difficult life and the soulful quality that infused his performances. Born in 1888 Louisiana, Ledbetter grew up in the racially divided South, eventually spending many years on chain gangs and in state prisons because his temper caused trouble and his race ensured that mercy from government officials was in short supply.

          Completely eschewing Ledbetter’s post-prison life, during which he had a complicated relationship with success, the movie kicks off with a long sequence illustrating why Ledbetter left home. After achieving minor local fame as a musician, Ledbetter (Roger E. Mosley) gets into a brawl with a neighbor who lodges a police complaint, so Ledbetter’s long-suffering father, Wes (Paul Benjamin), tells his son to flee in order to avoid imprisonment. Absconding to a red-light district, Ledbetter becomes a kept man for a madam named Miss Eula (Madge Sinclair), who gives him his nickname while also teaching him musical lessons about the blues. Next, Ledbetter hits the road with fellow musician Blind Lemon Jefferson (Art Evans), but another fight lands Ledbetter in prison. He escapes and lives briefly under an alias, but then he’s recaptured and sent to prison at Angola, where he serves a long term for a murder charge stemming from the death of a man whom Ledbetter claims he killed in self-defense. The movie then fudges history by combining major events that actually occurred during two separate stints at two separate jails—Ledbetter charms a governor into issuing a pardon, and Ledbetter’s music is discovered by iconic folk-song archivist John Lomax (James Brodhead).

          As directed by photographer-turned-filmmaker Gordon Parks, Leadbelly is a notch more visually sophisticated than the average made-for-TV biopic of the same vintage, but in every other regard it’s quite ordinary. The script by Ernest Kinoy lacks depth, and only a handful of scenes involving supporting characters display real emotional power. In particular, a vignette of aging Wes visiting Angola and trying to buy Ledbetter’s freedom is a heartbreaker that says volumes about the black experience in the Jim Crow South.

          Having the vigorous Mosley play the title character at various ages is a problem, since slapping some gray into Mosley’s hair can’t mask Mosley’s youth, and the movie pushes Mosley’s talents way past their limits. He’s an appealing an expressive actor, and he does a fantastic job belting out Leadbetter’s tunes, but his range is far too limited for a role of this scope. In his defense, history seems to indicate that the real Ledbetter was often belligerent and self-destructive, so the choice to play the character as an underdog who overreacts to situations that challenge his manly identity is somewhat understandable. For all of its merits, however, Leadbelly leaves too much of the real Leadbetter story untold.

Leadbelly: FUNKY

The Super Cops (1974)

          To get a sense of how The Super Cops uses wiseass humor to satirize rampant police corruption, think Serpico with jokes. Directed by blaxploitation vet Gordon Parks and written by the witty Lorenzo Semple Jr. (from a book by L.H. Whitemore), The Super Cops depicts the early adventures of real-life New York City cops David Greenberg and Robert Hantz. Hungry to become detectives, the boys started making busts while they were still cadets, which put them in opposition with the corrupt cops pervading the NYPD in the days before the storied Knapp Commission cleaned house.

          At first, cadets Greenberg (Ron Leibman) and Hantz (David Selby) are mistaken for shady operators looking for payoffs, but when it becomes clear they’re genuine do-gooders, the folks profiting from the status quo target the eager newbies as threats. After graduating from the police academy, Greenberg and Hantz get assigned to a dangerous precinct in Brooklyn, where drug dealers hire gunsels to take out overzealous cops. Undaunted, Greenberg and Hantz make like cowboys by staging brazen busts. Their swaggering ways make waves in the district attorney’s office, so Greenberg and Hantz run into trouble getting convictions. Eventually, the resourceful heroes engineer a bold double-cross, framing crooked cops who are trying to frame them.
          All in all, the adventures of Greenberg and Hantz are thoroughly entertaining (although their characterizations were undoubtedly whitewashed for dramatic effect), and Semple’s playful dialogue gives the movie whimsical flair. Parks does well meshing the tough realism of his blaxploitation pictures with the pithiness of Semple’s approach, ensuring that the movie zooms along.

          That said, the story is episodic and the ending is anticlimactic. Furthermore, Leibman and Selby try hard to develop a buddy-movie dynamic, but their vibes are incompatible; Leibman is consistently cocky and overbearing, while Selby waffles between macho stoicism and streetwise sensitivity. The supporting cast is merely passable, with Sheila Frazier the standout as a world-weary hooker/informant and Dan Frazer providing amusing work as the boys’ skittish commanding officer (“Get me outta this meshugana precinct!”). Oddly, however, the weakest element of The Super Cops is probably its title, which suggests a broad comedy. Nonetheless, it’s easy to understand why the most likely alternative wasn’t a viable option: On the street, Greenberg and Hantz were known as “Batman and Robin.” (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

The Super Cops: GROOVY

Shaft (1971) & Shaft’s Big Score (1972) & Shaft In Africa (1973)

          Richard Roundtree’s lead performance is a triumph of super-cool swagger, director Gordon Parks shoots the streets of New York City with a keen eye for grungy detail, and Isaac Hayes’ Oscar-winning music is nuclear-powered funk/soul, but Shaft thrives on style over substance, because despite these considerable surface pleasures, the quasi-legendary flick is a dramatic washout. Still, it was zesty enough to trigger a slew of sequels and to inspire the blaxploitation craze, so it must be ranked as of the most significant B-movies of the ’70s even though it’s not exceptional cinema. The storyline is standard stuff about tough-talking private dick John Shaft (Roundtree) getting hired to rescue a gangster’s kidnapped daughter, so what makes the picture significant is the characterization of a cocksure black superhero operating outside the law and doing whatever he damn well pleases; in the defining moment, Shaft exits a conference with a pushy white cop by announcing that he’s off “to get laid.”
          Roundtree cuts a great figure with his immaculate facial hair, black turtleneck, and black leather suit, so when he shoots his way through an action scene—or even just strolls through the city to the accompaniment of Hayes’ pulsating music—he’s such an appealing vision of African-American empowerment that he gives the movie more vitality than it probably deserves. Excepting the tasty ’70s lingo and atmospheric Harlem settings, Ernest Tidyman’s script is quite old-fashioned, the sort of convoluted crime story Hollywood has cranked out since time immemorial, so the granddaddy of blaxploitation films doesn’t really have all that much kitschy flava: It’s merely a conventional thriller that happens to feature an memorable lead character and a predominantly black cast.
          The ordinariness is even more evident in the first sequel, Shaft’s Big Score, which finds our hero stuck in the middle of a war for control over a lucrative numbers racket. Shaft gets laid, kills a few people, and lays on the ’tude, but the narrative is so utilitarian that it’s more like a run-of-the-mill TV episode than a theatrical sequel. About the only novelty is that director Parks took over as composer for Shaft’s Big Score, copying Hayes’ style down to the theme song “Blowin’ Your Mind,” which is a shameless rip of the original film’s unforgettable “Theme from Shaft.” Shaft’s Big Score is solid meat-and-potatoes ’70s action, but nothing more.
          The franchise’s last ’70s theatrical entry, before Roundtree took the Shaft character to the small screen for a brief run of telefilms, is the energetic Shaft in Africa. Boasting the most interesting (and logic-defying) storyline of the series, Shaft in Africa gets the main character out of his Harlem comfort zone for a 007-style international adventure in which he busts up a modern-day slavery ring—and with all due respect to the venerable Parks, Shaft in Africa helmer John Guillermin has a more polished approach to action and storytelling, using slick widescreen photography to give the modestly budgeted threequel more lush imagery than its predecessors. Shaft in Africa is also considerably more violent than the other two pictures, including some brutal hand-to-hand combat, so it’s the most intense entry, and Frank Finlay (The Three Musketeers) is an effectively perverse villain.
          Roundtree’s charismatic portrayal is consistently watchable throughout all three movies, so checking out at least one of the Shaft pictures is a necessity for any ’70s completist, but many of the outrageous blaxploitation flicks that followed in Shaft’s wake improved on the prototype.

Shaft: FUNKY

Shaft’s Big Score: FUNKY

Shaft in Africa: FUNKY

Super Fly (1972) & Super Fly T.N.T. (1973)

          Blaxploitation drama Super Fly has so much flavor and grit that it’s tempting to cut the picture slack despite its shortcomings. Vividly photographed on the streets of Harlem, the movie has atmosphere to spare, and the dialogue is so frozen-in-amber ’70s that almost every scene captures the period’s singular patois: “I got somethin’ real heavy to lay on you, man,” or “You don’t own me, pig, and no motherfucker tells me when I can split.” The storyline is nervy as hell, because the protagonist, Priest (Ron O’Neal), is an unapologetic coke dealer looking to make a giant score so he can leave hustling behind; whereas many blaxploitation flicks feature righteous dudes trying to keep drugs off the streets, Super Fly makes a provocative sympathy-for-the-devil statement. As Priest’s partner says in one of the picture’s best exchanges about the drug trade, “I know it’s a rotten game—it’s the only one the man left us to play, and that’s the stone cold truth.”
          The movie’s strongest elements are several driving funk/soul tunes by Curtis Mayfield, who performs onscreen in one sequence, and Priest’s pimp couture: silky mane, giant sideburns, Fu Manchu moustache, wide-brimmed hats, garish leisure suits, floor-length coats. But even with such vivid flourishes, Super Fly is slow going. O’Neal isn’t particularly charismatic or skillful, and director Gordon Parks Jr.’s style is amateurish: He spaces action scenes too far apart, employs utilitarian camerawork, and lingers on aimless bits like a poorly shot sex scene and a long montage of still photographs taken by his famous dad, Gordon Parks Sr., who kick-started the blaxploitation craze by directing Shaft (1971).
          A year after Super Fly scored at the box office, O’Neal returned to the character, and took over as director, for Super Fly T.N.T., which boasts some thoughtful dialogue by screenwriter Alex Haley but can’t overcome a sluggish storyline and dirt-cheap production values. The dull first half of the picture is set in Rome, and the slightly less dull second half is set in Africa, where Priest takes up a new trade as gunrunner. Random highlight of the sequel: Future Benson star Robert Guillaume belting out a full-length rendition of the operatic aria “O Sole Mio” in a Roman café. Go figure.

Super Fly: FUNKY

Super Fly T.N.T.: LAME