Word: shafted
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Shaft in Africa finds the priapic private investigator John Shaft (Richard Roundtree) on the trail of a ring of modern-day slave traders, who railroad unsuspecting blacks from Africa to Paris and put them to work at menial tasks for starvation wages. This sorry situation is brought to Shaft's attention in an unlikely manner: a large black fellow with a big stick chases the startled detective around his Greenwich Village apartment, brains him and bears him off to the suburban residence of an African diplomat, where he is tested, cajoled and finally hired to hunt down the slavers...
...slave racket is a Caucasian pervert named Amafi (Frank Finlay), whose line of chatter runs to things like "Luck can run out even for you, my black brother." It is difficult to imagine how he rose to such a position of prominence, but his henchmen seem impressed. They chase Shaft all over Ethiopia, from desert to village and even across the water to Paris. But he eventually dispatches them all, even taking time out to discuss a clitoridectomy with Aleme...
...diamonds, and the chance to do a little something constructive for a change, Priest gets the rebels a large shipment of guns. Superfly rambles. But O'Neal, irreproachably cool as Priest, also directed, and provides several tough, inelegantly effective sequences. That puts him a couple up on Shaft. *Jay Cocks
...evening, and Bridget's continued presence, the programmers figured, was endangering CBS's ratings for all of Saturday night, which the network now dominates. In keeping with the overall trend, CBS will introduce two new half-hour comedies and four crime shows. The thrillers will include Shaft, with Richard Roundtree repeating his movie role as a flamboyant black private eye, and Cojack, starring Telly Savalas as "a tough but compassionate" cop. Savalas won acclaim this year in a similar role in CBS's The Marcus-Nelson Murders. Another thriller will bring Perry Mason back...
...company of Plaza Suite, who resolves to give her former spouse another tumble when she gets word of his criminal exploits. As a big businessman in the process of being blackmailed by O'Neal, Charles Cioffi, who appeared as the,villain in Klute and the beleaguered cop in Shaft, continues to display a chameleon-like facility. Austin Pendelton as a chess master driven to fits of impotent violence by O'Neal's computerized skill at the game, Ned Beatty as a fast-talking fence and rabid family man ("My boys are gonna grow up goddam fine...