6.9 | / 10 |
Users | 4.5 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Big, bad Youngblood Priest is a cocaine dealer who realizes the thug life isn't for him and puts together one last deal that will net him enough money so he can start over. But he knows his "colleagues" won't quite agree with his escape plan, so he must find a way to save his soul and come out of the mayhem alive.
Starring: Ron O'Neal, Carl Lee, Sheila Frazier, Julius Harris, Charles McGregorCrime | Insignificant |
Drama | Insignificant |
Action | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
English SDH
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A, B (C untested)
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
What a difference a year makes! Thirteen months after detective John
Shaft was first seen
striding through Times Square in his signature leather coat, a different kind of African-American
hero seized moviegoers' imagination. Super Fly's Youngblood Priest was the polar opposite of
Shaft's crime fighter, who may have been (in the words of the song) a bad motherf***er, but he
always stood for right and justice. Priest was a different kind of hero, a precursor to the urban
gangstas of the future. A child of the street (in the words of his song), Priest rose
to fame and fortune as a successful coke entrepreneur with fifty street dealers, a lavishly outfitted
apartment and a customized El Dorado in which he took care of business while shuttling back
and forth between his black lady uptown and his white girlfriend on Park Avenue.
Far more than Shaft, Priest was the natural successor to Melvin Van Peebles' Sweetback, who had
blazed the blaxploitation trail two years earlier. But Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song never
played widely or became a national sensation. Super Fly was everywhere, propelled by a Warner
Bros. distribution deal and a soundtrack by the late Curtis Mayfield that quickly climbed to the
top of the charts. (So did the title track and a second single from the album, "Freddie's Dead".)
The movie that created this sensation was an independent production made for under $100,000,
but it had great passion behind it. Its director, Gordon Parks, Jr., was inspired by his father's
success with Shaft. Its writer, Phillip Fenty, was an advertising man eager to stretch his talents.
Its producer, Sig Shore, was a small-time importer of dubbed foreign films eager to break into the
big-time. And its star, Ron O'Neal, was an award-winning theater actor, with only a few small
film roles to his credit, who tore into the role of Priest with the same gusto he brought to
Shakespeare and Tennessee Williams.
The Warner Archive Collection has remastered Super Fly for Blu-ray in a new transfer that fully
captures the film's raw, urban texture at a time when New York City wasn't the tourist magnet
that it is today (the original Death
Wish came
two years later). The film isn't beautiful, never was
and never will be, but it's timelessly authentic. At a time when the Hollywood mavericks of the
Seventies were just getting started, Parks, Jr. and his team had already made one of the decade's
essential films.
The cinematographer on Super Fly was James Signorelli, who had shot the documentary
Moonwalk One about the Apollo 11 mission and would shortly be devoting most of his
professional life to producing and directing for
Saturday Night Live. As noted in the introduction,
the film was made for less than $100,000, and it looks it—shot on the run, usually with available
light, with less-than-optimal equipment and film stock. Even more than with Shaft, the result is a
gritty, grainy documentary style that captured an evocative portrait of the dangerous, drug-ridden
Harlem of the Seventies and the decaying city around it—the same grim landscape that, a few
years later, would inspire Taxi
Driver's Travis Bickle to arm himself for war.
The source for this 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray from the Warner Archive Collection was a
recently minted interpositive struck from the original camera negative. Warner's MPI facility
scanned the IP at 2K, followed by color-correction and WAC's customarily thorough cleanup to
remove thousands of instances of dirt, scratches and age-related damage. The resulting Blu-ray
image accurately reflects Super Fly's low-budget origins, which means that it's grainy, gritty and
soft overall, but once you look past those qualities, you can see that Parks and his DP managed to
capture an impressively detailed portrait of the mean streets and crumbling buildings that are
Priest's theater of operation. The faded, graying landscape provides an ideal contrast for the
bright colors of its characters' flamboyant wardrobes, especially the men, whose "dress for
success" code is peacock rather than pinstripe. Nighttime blacks are deep and solid, and the
film's grain structure is thick but moves naturally.
I saw Super Fly in its original theatrical release, and while I can't pretend to remember details
from a projected image I experienced nearly fifty years ago, I vividly recall the sense of raw
urban realism that was unlike anything one was used to seeing in studio films. The Blu-ray has that
same feel, and its high video score reflects the accuracy of WAC's presentation, not the beauty of
the result. WAC hasn't tried to sanitize Super Fly for modern eyes, and for that it should be
commended.
Super Fly's original mono audio has been taken from the original magnetic printmaster, which required minimal cleanup (mostly to remove hiss), and encoded on Blu-ray in lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0. Curtis Mayfield's score comes out the best, because it was created in a studio with the era's best recording technology. The film's dialogue and most of its effects are production sound from the original shoot (with a few obvious instances of ADR), and as a result the fidelity is not the best. Dynamic range is compressed, and the high end can sometimes be shrill, but these limitations are inherent to the source. Nevertheless, the dialogue remains clear, and Mayfield's music expands the sonic presence and elevates the mix, just as it energizes the movie.
The extras have been ported over from Warner's 2004 DVD of Super Fly. The trailer has been
remastered in 1080p.
It's fitting (and no doubt intentional) that David Simon and George Pelecanos chose a Curtis
Mayfield song as the opening theme for their HBO series The Deuce, which is set in the same
time period as Super Fly and whose pimps and working girls would be right at home in Priest's
world. Mayfield's "(Don't Worry) If There's a Hell Down Below, We're All Going to Go" could
just as easily have been the theme for Super Fly and its hero's struggle to claw his way out of the
drug trade and find a second chance. The Deuce has the polish of a contemporary digital
production with an HBO budget, but it had to re-create the Seventies with
detailed research, meticulous production and costume design, and extensive CGI assistance.
Super Fly is the real thing, and WAC has brought it to Blu-ray with its gritty texture fully intact.
Highly recommended (but grain-o-phobes should beware).
1972
1971
2020
1974
1979
1977
Black Valor
1973
1975
Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum
1975
2015
Rome Armed to the Teeth / Roma a Mano Armata
1976
Black Enforcers / Ghetto Warriors
1975
2018
How to Get the Man's Foot Outta Your Ass
2003
1973
Limited Edition to 3000
1972
1971
2K Remaster
1974
1978
Collector's Edition
1972