They say this cat Shaft is......
This long forgotten TV spin off from the 3 Shaft Movies - Shaft (1971), Shaft's Big Score! (1972) and Shaft In Africa (1973) - comes at last to DVD courtesy of Warner's Archive Collection.
Why long forgotten? Many fans of the movies complained that the TV version of Shaft was toned down too much from the character on the big screen - his prickly relationship with Lt Vic Anderozzi was replaced by a buddy buddy friendship with Lt Al Rossi, his trendy turtleneck sweaters and leather jackets were ditched in favour of conservative shirts, ties, suits and even pullovers!, and worst of all, he was no longer an in-your-face-up-yours tough black private eye, but merely a private eye who happened to be black. The violence was toned right down and the sex was reduced to zero.
Is this, fans asked, really our Shaft?
Well this series was made in 1973 and in those days American TV was ultra-conservative. Richard Roundtree himself, in response to these criticisms,...
Because there's just not enough Shaft in the world
When I first saw the original three Shaft movies I didn't even know these TV movies existed. Finding out they did was like discovering Sean Connery played James Bond in a TV series years ago that had long been forgotten. Admittedly you don't get the same raw appeal of the movies, but still you have Richard Roundtree, still looking great and oozing charisma, in seven new stories! A few of them feel as if they just plugged Shaft into an existing 70's TV mystery that could have been as easily occupied by Cannon or McCloud or any number of TV detectives, but most of them at least come close to the action content of the movies (if on a smaller budget and being careful not to get too bloody). Even the lesser ones are enjoyable if you like the familiarity of 70's TV and all those faces you've seen a million times even if you don't know their names. So I enjoyed the set quite a bit. Oh - and if you miss the use of Isaac Hayes's iconic theme song in the two follow-up movies here they made...
Shaft Gets Neutered
When "Shaft," the TV series, premiered on CBS in 1973, L.A. Times critic Cecil Smith wrote, "On television, Shaft makes Barnaby Jones look like Eldridge Cleaver." Even Isaac Hayes' Oscar-winning theme song sounds like it has been re-recorded by The Lawrence Welk Orchestra...If you enjoy 1970s TV detective series, this program is pretty watchable on that level...But don't expect the original film version of the character.
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