Super Fly (1972 film)


Super Fly is a 1972 American blaxploitation crime drama film directed by Gordon Parks Jr. and starring Ron O'Neal as Youngblood Priest, an African American pimp and cocaine dealer who is trying to quit the underworld drug business. The film is well known for its soundtrack, written and produced by soul musician Curtis Mayfield. It was released on August 4, 1972.
O'Neal reprised his role as Youngblood Priest in the 1973 film Super Fly T.N.T., which he also directed. Producer Sig Shore directed a second sequel, The Return of Superfly, released in 1990, with Nathan Purdee as Priest. A remake was released in 2018.

Plot summary

Priest, a suave top-rung New York City drug dealer, decides that he wants to get out of his dangerous trade. Working with his reluctant friend, Eddie, Priest devises a scheme that will allow him to make a big deal and then retire. When a desperate street dealer informs the police of Priest's activities, Priest is forced into an uncomfortable arrangement with corrupt narcotics officers. Setting his plan in motion, he aims to both leave the business and stick it to the man.

Cast

The film was financed by two directors and Gordon Parks, who had directed the 1971 film Shaft.
Sig Shore, who produced Super Fly, plays Deputy Commissioner Riordan, or "The Man".
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 would go on to become the film segment director for Saturday Night Live.
Of the people who acted in Super Fly, actor Carl Lee, who played Eddie, enjoyed great 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.
Large white 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, Sigissmund Shore. African-Americans were a part of the process as well, with Gordon Parks, Jr. as director and Phillip Fenty the screenwriter. The movie generated roughly $4 million in profits. Shore received the bulk of the profits, 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 Flys 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.

Reception

At the time of its release, there were many African-Americans that were displeased with the images of themselves portrayed in films such as Super Fly, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadassssss Song, and Shaft. African-Americans voiced their opinions on the matter. 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.”
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. Several California organized crime veterans, including drug trafficker "Freeway" Rick Ross, have cited the film as an influence in their decision to take up drug dealing and gang violence. 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 also protested the film as a tool of white oppression.
Manthiahas Diawara suggested that 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. The filmmakers maintain that 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. Nearly every character in the film, with the notable exception of his "," tries to dissuade Priest from quitting; their chief argument being that dealing and snorting are the best he ever could achieve in life.
On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 92% based on 24 reviews, and an average rating of 7.3/10.

Box office

After an initial gross of $24.8 million, the film was re-released in 1973 and earned $2 million in US and Canada rentals. It was the highest-grossing blaxploitation film at the time.

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 red and black Warner logo is replaced by the updated AOL/Warner logo used at the time of DVD release. Additionally, 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 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.
On June 26, 2018 The Warner Archive Collection Released "Super Fly" on Blu-ray and has received mostly praise for its Video & Audio Restoration.

Remake

, Director X was remaking Superfly, with a cast that includes Trevor Jackson and Jason Mitchell.