JunkMonkey
Lord High Vizier of Nowt
I love this film.![]()
I wish I did. It's such an important piece of trash movie history I just wanted it to be so much better.
I got irritated by the uncertain camerawork in some places. The first scene between Shaft and the Harlem boss is full of odd little zooms in and out that just don't seem to make much sense and don't really appear anywhere else in the movie (that I noticed). I got totally distracted by the fact that Rowntree was wearing a radio mic in that scene. (Note to future movie director self: Tight fitting jumpers - even sexy roll necks on hunky bods - are not a good place to try and hide recording equipment.)
Though I did admire the virtuoso way the director managed to make his obviously tiny studio sets look bigger by shooting diagonally across the space into the corner whenever possible. And why did the quality of the film degrade so much in the wide shot of the café where Shaft drinks the espresso? It looks like a second or third generation dupe. Almost as if they'd lost the negative, which is possible I suppose, and had to cut in the workprint. (Which, thinking about it, makes loosing the negative a less likely option. When the lab lost half of a Russ Meyer film - I forget which one, does it matter?they're all pretty interchangeable), they lost it before they developed it and made a dupe.)
And why was Shaft's bed just inside his front door? Is this normal in two storey New York apartments? And why did he have that GODAWFUL painting of a clown over it? I spent far too much of the movie in over-analytical mode asking myself things like that. (It really is a terrible painting.) This is what happens when I watch a really bad film. But this wasn't a really bad film It just didn't give me enough. So I started spotting the cracks.
On the up side the minor gay character was (for the era, and the type of movie) pretty sympathetic and underplayed. The guerilla style shooting on the streets gave it a rough edginess that worked at times - pity they didn't do a Larry Cohen and play out some dramatic scenes on the streets. And the opening theme is still one of my favourite pieces of movie music.