In 2022, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[4]
Plot
Youngblood Priest (Ron O'Neal), an African-American cocaine dealer, enjoys a luxurious lifestyle in Harlem. He yearns to go straight, despite the fortune he makes. One day, Priest confronts Fat Freddie, one of his dealers, about money that Freddie owes and threatens to force Freddie's wife into prostitution unless he robs a competitor. Although the timid Freddie abhors violence, he agrees and accompanies another member of Priest's "family" of lower-level dealers to commit the robbery.
Priest discusses his plan to buy thirty kilos of high-quality cocaine with the $300,000 he and his partner Eddie have, which they can sell for $1,000,000 within four months. With such a big score, they can retire comfortably. Eddie argues that crime is the only option left to them by "The Man". That night, Eddie and Priest approach Scatter, a retired dealer who started Priest in the business. Scatter initially refuses to help Priest. Eddie threatens Scatter, demanding that he reveal his source if he will not supply them, but Scatter holds him at gunpoint. Priest defuses the situation and persuades Scatter to help them, although Scatter warns that it will be the last time.
Priest and Eddie are joined by Freddie, who turns over the money he stole. The next day, Freddie is picked up for fighting, and when he is beaten by the police, he reveals when and where Priest and Eddie are to pick up the first kilo of cocaine from Scatter. Freddie attempts to escape and is killed when he runs in front of a car.
That night, after picking up the kilo from Scatter, Priest and Eddie are apprehended by several policemen. The lieutenant reveals that he is Scatter's supplier and that they can have as much "weight," as they want, and will be extended both credit and protection. Eddie is elated by the new situation, claiming that they are set for life, although Priest is still determined to quit after selling the thirty kilos. Soon after, the drugs are sold by Priest and Eddie's "family."
Priest's white mistress, Cynthia, is dismayed to learn that Priest does not return her love and is planning on quitting the business. Their argument is interrupted by the sudden arrival of Scatter who reveals that the real head of the operation is Deputy Commissioner Reardon, who is trying to kill him for quitting. Scatter gives Priest a packet of information on Reardon and his family. Scatter is captured by the corrupt policemen, who give him a fatal overdose of drugs.
Both enraged and scared, Priest gives the information on Reardon and an envelope of cash to two mafia men and takes out a $100,000 contract on "the Man's" life. Priest demands his half of their profits from Eddie. After Priest leaves with the cash, Eddie betrays him by phoning the lieutenant. Priest has anticipated Eddie's duplicity, however, and gives the briefcase carrying the money to a disguised Georgia in exchange for one full of rags. Priest is then picked up by the lieutenant and taken to the waterfront, where he is confronted by Reardon.
Reardon threatens Priest that he must continue selling drugs as long as he is ordered to, but when Priest refuses, the policemen begin to beat him. Priest overcomes his foes using karate, then reveals that he knows exactly who Reardon is. Priest explains that he hired contract killers to murder Reardon and his entire family should anything happen to him. The powerless Reardon then watches as Priest walks away free, giving the policemen one final glare before driving off to join Georgia.
Lucky Scott as Himself (The Curtis Mayfield Experience)
Craig McMullen as Himself (The Curtis Mayfield Experience)
Tyrone McCullough as Himself (The Curtis Mayfield Experience)
Production
Filming took place from January to mid-April 1972 in New York City.[5] The film was financed by two directors: Gordon Parks, who had directed the 1971 film Shaft, and Sig Shore, who produced Super Fly and played Deputy Commissioner Riordan, or "The Man" in the film.[6] Large companies produced many of the blaxploitation films, and Super Fly is no exception. The film was acquired and distributed by Warner Bros. and had a white producer (Shore). African-Americans were a part of the process as well, with Gordon Parks Jr. as director and Phillip Fenty as screenwriter.
Nate Adams coordinated the fashion and wardrobe for the film. He had done several fashion shows prior to Super Fly. He still owns many of the suits, shoes and fedora hats.
Charles McGregor, who plays Fat Freddie, was released from prison before the film's production. The film was shot by director of photography James Signorelli, who later became the film segment director for Saturday Night Live.
Carl Lee, who played Eddie, enjoyed television fame until he abused drugs – in particular, heroin. He died in 1986 of an overdose. The film's soundtrack by Curtis Mayfield was well enough received that he was sought for other soundtracks. The songs "Freddie's Dead" and the title song both shot up the Pop Top Ten chart in late 1972, with each single selling over a million copies.
The movie generated roughly $4 million in profits. Shore received the bulk of the profits since he put up the most money, 40 percent, while the actors, directors, and scriptwriters split the remaining profits. The soundtrack alone generated about $5 million in profits – one of the first film soundtracks to earn such a sizable return – primarily from the biggest singles "Super Fly" and "Freddie's Dead". As the soundtrack's composer, Mayfield was the only other person in the production who earned revenue approaching Shore's.
Despite the controversy surrounding Super Fly's drug use, the production of the film made significant advances for African-Americans. The Harlem community backed Super Fly financially, and a number of black businesses helped with the production costs. Another quality that distinguishes Super Fly from other blaxploitation films was the technical crew, the majority of which was non-white, constituting the largest non-white technical crew in its time. Altogether, such an independently financed film ultimately had unusually large financial backing.[7]
Reception
Critical reception and box-office
Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reports that 93% of 28 professional film critics gave the film a positive review, with an average rating of 7.3/10.[8] On Metacritic, the film holds a weighted average score of 67 out of 100 based on eight reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[9]
After an initial gross of $24.8 million, the film was re-released in 1973 and earned $2 million in US and Canada rentals.[10] It was the highest-grossing blaxploitation film at the time.[11][12]
Social analysis
At the timeSuperfly was released, there were many African-Americans displeased with the images of black culture portrayed in films such as Super Fly, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadassssss Song, and Shaft. Junius Griffin, the head of the Hollywood branch of the NAACP stated, "we must insist that our children are not exposed to a steady diet of so-called black movies that glorify black males as pimps, dope pushers, gangsters, and super males."[13] The Congress for Racial Equality, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and other organizations attempted to block the film's distribution, and pushed for more African-American involvement in Hollywood's creative process. The Student National Coordinating Committee protested the film as a tool of white oppression.[14] The filmmakers maintained it was their desire to show the negative and empty aspects of the drug subculture. This is evident in the movie from the beginning, as Priest communicates his desire to leave the business. However, nearly every character in the film, with the notable exception of his "main squeeze," tries to dissuade Priest from quitting, with their chief argument being that dealing and drug use are the best he ever could achieve in life.
Super Fly resonated with many of the post-Civil Rights Movement generation of African Americans, who saw Youngblood as a new example of how to rise in the American class system.[14] Several California organized crime veterans, including drug trafficker "Freeway" Rick Ross, have cited the film as an influence upon their personal decision to take up drug dealing and gang violence.[15]
Film scholar Manthiahas Diawara suggested the film's glorification of drug dealers served to subtly critique the civil rights movement's failure to provide better economic opportunities for black America, and that the portrayal of a black community controlled by drug dealers serves to highlight that the initiatives of the civil rights movement were far from fully accomplished.[16]
DVD release
A standard definition DVD was released by Warner Brothers on January 14, 2004—the day its star, Ron O'Neal, died after battling cancer. The original blue and orange Warner logo is replaced by the updated AOL/Warner logo used at the time of DVD release. The end credits on the original film release and video cassette differ from the DVD. On the original release and videocassette, the film end credits roll with a shot of the top of the Empire State Building and the title track ("Superfly") plays.
After "The End" is displayed, the film fades to black, but Mayfield's "Superfly" continues to play for a few minutes until the track ends. In the DVD release, Warner Bros. decided to fade out the track midway right as "The End" is shown, and again brings up the AOL/Warner logo.
In June 2018, The Warner Archive Collection released "Super Fly" on Blu-ray, and has received mostly praise for its video & audio restoration.
Curtis Lee Mayfield was an American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and record producer. Dubbed the "Gentle Genius", he is considered one of the most influential musicians of soul and socially conscious African-American music. Mayfield first achieved success and recognition with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame-inducted vocal group The Impressions during the civil rights movement of the late 1950s and the 1960s, and later worked as a solo artist.
Super Fly is the third studio album by American soul musician Curtis Mayfield, released on July 11, 1972, by Curtom Records. It was released as the soundtrack for the Blaxploitation film of the same name. Widely considered a classic of 1970s soul and funk music, Super Fly was a nearly immediate hit. Its sales were bolstered by two million-selling singles, "Freddie's Dead" and the title track. Super Fly is one of the few soundtracks to out-gross the film it accompanied.
Ron O'Neal was an American actor, director and screenwriter, who rose to fame in his role as Youngblood Priest, a New York City cocaine dealer, in the blaxploitation film Super Fly (1972) and its sequel Super Fly T.N.T. (1973). O'Neal was also a director and writer for the sequel, and for the film Up Against the Wall.
Curtom Records was a record label founded by Curtis Mayfield and Eddie Thomas in March 1968 as an independently distributed music label. It was located at 8541 South Stony Island Boulevard. The name of the label came from a hybrid of the names "Curtis" and "Thomas". Prior to Curtom, Mayfield had started two other labels: Windy C and Mayfield which both had closed down. The company's motto was "We're a Winner", taken from one the hit songs from Mayfield's group The Impressions released by ABC Records. At the inception, Mayfield was the company principal producer and A&R person. Other staff included Johnny Pate and Donny Hathaway. Pate left in 1972. Most of the artists on Curtom did not write their own music, which lead to the studio producers such as LeRoy Hutson, Lowrell Simon, Ed Townsend, Gil Askey and Marvin Yanch and Chuck Jackson to produce and write music. The first release on Curtom was This Is My Country released in 1968.
Superfly or Super fly may refer to:
BaadAsssss Cinema is a 2002 TV documentary film directed by Isaac Julien. Julien looks at the Blaxploitation era of the 1970s in this hour-long documentary.
"Doggy Dogg World" is the third and final single from American rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg's debut album, Doggystyle (1993). It is the first European-only release with an American video TV-play. It features 1970s-era classic R&B and soul group The Dramatics, with guest rap verses from Kurupt and Daz Dillinger.
Sig Shore was an American film director and producer. His 1972 film Super Fly is considered one of the first blaxploitation films.
John William Pate is an American former musician, a jazz bassist who became a producer, arranger, and leading figure in Chicago soul, pop, and rhythm and blues.
"Freddie's Dead" is a song by Curtis Mayfield. It was the first single from his 1972 soundtrack album for the film Super Fly. The single was released before the Super Fly album, and before the film was in theaters. The song peaked at #4 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and #2 on the R&B chart. Billboard ranked it as the No. 82 song for 1972.
"Superfly" is a song by Curtis Mayfield, the title track from his 1972 soundtrack album for the film of the same name. It was the second single released from the album, following "Freddie's Dead ", and reached #8 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #5 on the Best Selling Soul Singles chart. The lyrics celebrate the craftiness and determination of the film's main character. The song plays over the film's closing credits.
In US cinema, Blaxploitation is the film subgenre of action movie derived from the exploitation film genre in the early 1970s, consequent to the combined cultural momentum of the Black civil rights movement, the black power movement, and the Black Panther Party, political and sociological circumstances that facilitated Black artists reclaiming their power of the Representation of the Black ethnic identity in the arts. The term blaxploitation is a portmanteau of the words Black and exploitation, coined by Junius Griffin, president of the Beverly Hills–Hollywood branch of the NAACP in 1972. In criticizing the Hollywood portrayal of the multiracial society of the US, Griffin said that the blaxploitation genre was "proliferating offenses" to and against the Black community, by perpetuating racist stereotypes of inherent criminlality.
The Return of Superfly is a 1990 American crime drama film directed by Sig Shore. The film is a sequel to the 1973 film Super Fly T.N.T.. It stars Nathan Purdee as Youngblood Priest and Margaret Avery.
Return of Superfly (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) is the original soundtrack to Sig Shore's 1990 film The Return of Superfly. It was released on August 13, 1990, via Capitol Records, and consisted of soul music songs by Curtis Mayfield and hip hop tracks by various rappers, including Capital Punishment Organization, Def Jef, Eazy-E, Ice-T, King Tee, Mellow Man Ace, Tone Lōc and Uzi Bros. The soundtrack wasn't much of a success, only making it to 72 on the US Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart.
Carl Lee was an American actor. His father was actor/professional boxer Canada Lee.
Super Fly T.N.T. is a 1973 American blaxploitation crime drama film directed by and starring Ron O'Neal. O'Neal reprises his role of Youngblood Priest from the 1972 film Super Fly. The film was both a critical and commercial failure.
"Sexy, Sexy, Sexy" is a 1973 song written and recorded by James Brown, for the film Slaughter's Big Rip-Off. The song appeared on the film's soundtrack, and was released as a single in 1973. The song, and wider album, emerged from an era which saw the rise of Blaxploitation films. Such films represented the struggle of African Americans against poverty and crime under a white-dominated society. While Sexy, Sexy, Sexy was received well by contemporary and modern audiences alike, it received negative reviews from critics. Brown used the same backing track and chord progression from his 1966 hit Money Won't Change You when composing the song, which prompted such a poor critical response. Despite Brown's Plagiarism of his earlier work, Sexy, Sexy, Sexy showcased the typical funk hallmarks of his more popular work. The song performed strongly on three separate Billboard charts as well as the Cashbox chart. It appeared in three separate releases under music label Polydor Records and reissued in 2020.
Superfly is a 2018 American action crime thriller film and a remake of the 1972 blaxploitation film Super Fly. The film was directed by Director X, written by Alex Tse and stars Trevor Jackson, Jason Mitchell, Michael K. Williams, Lex Scott Davis, and Jennifer Morrison. Rapper Future produced alongside Joel Silver, as well as writing the film's original songs.
"Super Fly Meets Shaft" is a break-in record co-written by Dickie Goodman and recorded by John & Ernest. It consists of lines from popular R&B/soul songs of the day, which tell a story about the main characters from the films Super Fly (1972) and Shaft (1971).
1 2 Vincent L. Barnett (2020) Super Fly (1972), Coffy (1973) and The Mack (1973): Under- and Over-Estimating Blaxploitation Box Office, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 40:2, 373-388, DOI: 10.1080/01439685.2019.1697036
↑ Bogle, Donald (1973). Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks; an Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films. New York: Viking Press. pp.231–266.
1 2 Lehman, Christopher P. (2014) Power, Politics, and the Decline of the Civil Rights Movement
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