A Warner Brothers hit with Richard   Roundtree starring in the third epic of his 70’s trilogy---Richard is amazing as the “Brother in the Motherland”.  A Movie club classic, this film will stand forever as the standard for the virtues and vices we expect as discerning viewers of the absolute dregs of the film industry.  It has a respected actor with a cause, the worst script ever written, and  a combination of technical, locational ( where are we?  Ethiopia, Busch Gardens, or whatever) and contextual errors ever viewed by this esteemed body.  We have yet to reach again and my never reach this pinnacle ( or nadir) of film making.

 From the stick fights—euphemism for what—to naked Shaft getting the woman before her dreaded clitoridectomy, at every turn we are treated to yet another excess of badness as he plays slave to rescue his brothers who closely resemble lobbyists for the ragged loincloth industry.  Shaft’s rapid wardrobe changes—pressed jeans and L.L. Bean jungle jacket out of the hold of the ship, the horrible makeup job on the villainous rat fink “con the black kids into thinking they are going to love Paris” character and the final glorious ending when all are killed but not finally.  One of the idiot actors actually tries to escape responsibility and ownership of this awful movie by rising like Lazarus out of a fountain where he had been drowned by at least thirty of the loincloth types.  Four stars for this film of the how bad can they get genre.

Nancy D.