Blaxploitation Education: Super Fly T.N.T.

One of the big dogs of Blaxploitation gets neutered.

Super Fly T.N.T.
Written by Alex Haley
Story by Sig Shore and Ron O’Neal
Directed by Ron O’Neal
1973

The Blaxploitation genre was not without its detractors. Many of these movies were pretty controversial, sparking complaints from organizations like the NAACP, who felt that their portrayal of Black people was detrimental to the ongoing fight to achieve racial equality. While I for one would disagree with these assertions, since I think the genre provided a fascinating look at the issues and concerns affecting Black people at the time (and continuing into the modern day in many cases), it’s not hard to see how some people would view these stories as a celebration of criminal activity.

Of the first wave of Blaxploitation films, it does seem like Super Fly would be the most objectionable, due to its seeming celebration of an amoral figure who has no remorse about the years he has spent pushing drugs on his community and whose sole ambition is to make enough money that he’ll be set for life. (Actually, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song might seem to be even worse, but that was an independent production, whereas Super Fly was released by Warner Bros., making it a bigger target for criticism.) It received a great deal of criticism, which seems to have gotten to star Ron O’Neal, leading him to create a sequel that attempted to go in the opposite direction.

Unfortunately, as a director, O’Neal has none of the style that Gordon Parks, Jr. brought to the first film, and he doesn’t have Curtis Mayfield to provide a killer soundtrack (instead, the score is by the band Osibisa, and it mostly consists of jam band guitar noodling and some occasional jazz-style interludes). He tries to provide something of a redemption narrative for his character, Youngblood Priest, but while it’s possible that this might have worked, the movie commits the cardinal sin of being really, really boring.

Priest’s story picks up a few years after the first film while he and his girlfriend Georgia (Sheila Frazier, who was also in the first movie and will show up in at least one more notable Blaxploitation film) are touring Europe and not getting much enjoyment out of it. Most of the movie takes place in Rome, where Priest’s main activity seems to be playing poker with some other disreputable figures and coming home to tell Georgia how much he loves and appreciates her. But mostly, he seems disconsolate, with nothing much to do with his life and nothing to live for aside from cruising around in his Lamborghini and heading to some other city when he gets bored of the current one.

This certainly doesn’t seem to be a very interesting setup for the further adventures of a badass thug who got out of the game just in time to avoid being killed, and eventually, the movie has to manufacture a reason for him to care about something. But first, a bunch of time is spent with a random American Black guy that Georgia meets on the street (Robert Guillaume, who was most famous for the TV show Benson or as the voice of Rafiki in The Lion King; it looks like this was the only Blaxploitation movie he appeared in). For some reason, the movie spends a lot of time on a scene in which Priest and Georgia meet him and his girlfriend at a cafe, culminating in Guillaume joining a band to sing “O Sole Mio.”

Why is this character in the movie? I’m not sure, since he disappears after a couple scenes, although there is one moment where he has a conversation with Priest and asks him what things are like in the U.S. these days. This provides Priest the chance to deliver a monologue on the state of Black people in America, saying, “Average Black cat just struggling to survive, putting one day after another…Everybody trying to get them some money. Nobody believing in nothing, except a few nuts who believe they know every damn thing. Half the n****s sitting around blaming each other and the other half sitting around blaming Whitey. White folks still listening, still watching out the corner of they eye. Except they don’t laugh much anymore; they shoot.” This is overly introspective and philosophical given what we know about the character, but it’s also saying absolutely nothing insightful or interesting. O’Neal seems to have been trying so hard to avoid controversy that he watered down his character to the point of complete blandness.

The actual plot of the movie, once it kicks in, has to do with the fictional African country of Umbria, which is struggling against the white colonial powers that are continuing to keep it in check. The rebels in the country keep trying to rise up against their oppressors, but the powers-that-be have hired mercenaries who intercept any weapons that they try to smuggle in. So Umbria’s leaders have sent a diplomat named Dr. Sonko (Roscoe Lee Browne, who was in UpTight and The Liberation of L.B. Jones, another movie I should probably get to at some point), hoping he can sell some diamonds and raise enough cash to buy more weapons. Sonko runs into Priest at a poker game with an associate who happens to be an arms dealer, and he decides that Priest is the answer to his country’s problems, someone who can help him get around the problems he has selling the diamonds due to a cartel’s stranglehold on the international precious gems market.

At first, Priest refuses, but he struggles with the idea that he’s done nothing positive with his life, so he takes a side trip to Umbria. He’s there just long enough to see some stock footage of people living in poverty, which is apparently enough to convince him that he needs to do something. So he heads back to Italy and gets to work helping Sonko. Rather than worrying about selling the diamonds, his plan seems to involve winning an interminably long poker game that puts the arms dealer in debt to him, then forcing him to pay off that debt by sending weapons to Umbria. Priest also arranges to have the weapons smuggled there by paying off some Italian customs inspectors, and when he informs Sonko that he’s taken care of that problem, he reveals the reason for the movie’s subtitle by saying “T.N.T., ‘tain’t nothin’ to it,” which is a catchphrase that somehow failed to catch on.

The smuggling operation seems like an opportunity for the movie to deliver some action, or at least have something interesting happen, but after landing his plane on a secret airstrip, Priest is immediately captured by the mercenaries. He pulls off some sort of switcheroo by first unloading some empty crates and then having the plane drop off the real delivery later, but all we see is him being questioned and tortured (including an uncomfortable moment in which he is whipped) as the mercenaries try to make him reveal that he’s working for Sonko and the rebels. But after they leave him alone in a cell, he manages to turn the tables by coming up with a way to electrocute one guard and stab another. At least, that seems like what happened, but the lighting was so dim during these scenes that it mostly seemed like he was crawling around in the shadows for a really long time until he suddenly killed the guards. Excitement and fast-paced action are not among this movie’s strengths.

And that’s pretty much where the movie ends. We don’t really see what happens with the rebels, and Priest apparently goes on to live happily ever after with Georgia. Yawn. While I didn’t especially like the original Super Fly (outside of the amazing music, which served as a counterpoint to the character’s self-centered actions and highlighted the harm he was doing to society), this is a pretty huge step down in quality. It’s not only completely wrongheaded in its attempt to redeem a character who didn’t seem to have much interest in redemption, but it’s ham-handed in its attempts to try to make a statement, and worst of all, it’s interminably boring. A movie about an international arms deal and a rebel uprising against oppressive colonial powers facilitated by a jet-setting former drug dealer who is also an incredible gambler should not be this sleep-inducing. If there’s any movie in this series that should be skipped entirely by anyone except the most ardent Blaxploitation completist, it’s this one.

Blaxploitation Education index:

UpTight
Cotton Comes to Harlem
Watermelon Man
The Big Doll House
Shaft
Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song
Super Fly
Buck and the Preacher
Blacula
Cool Breeze
Melinda
Slaughter
Hammer
Trouble Man
Hit Man
Black Gunn
Bone
Top of the Heap
Across 110th Street
The Legend of N***** Charley
Don’t Play Us Cheap
Shaft’s Big Score!
Non-Blaxploitation: Sounder and Lady Sings the Blues
Trick Baby
The Harder They Come
Black Mama, White Mama
Black Caesar
The Mack
Book of Numbers
Charley One-Eye
Ganja & Hess
Savage!
Coffy
Shaft in Africa