Much like the barrels and sticks of TNT used as weapons in animated cartoons backfire on the user, Ron O'Neal's work as actor/director in this one blew up in his face- and career.
It's surprising that this film was made for Paramount when the original was a Warner Brothers film. Warner must have wanted to disassociate itself from the drug trade...
What the movie really needed was Curtis Mayfield's songs; nothing like that here. He could have made a good song called "Tain't Nothin' To it" easily, and some of the themes in O'Neal's monologue could also have been made musical, since earlier pieces from him like "(Don't Worry) If There's A Hell Below We're All Going To Go" covered the same ground. Either he didn't want to come back or, more likely, he was otherwise engaged writing the score for the prison drama "Short Eyes" at the time- "Do Do Wap Is Strong In Here", from that film's soundtrack, is a funk master course that could have worked here well.
Much like the barrels and sticks of TNT used as weapons in animated cartoons backfire on the user, Ron O'Neal's work as actor/director in this one blew up in his face- and career.
It's surprising that this film was made for Paramount when the original was a Warner Brothers film. Warner must have wanted to disassociate itself from the drug trade...
What the movie really needed was Curtis Mayfield's songs; nothing like that here. He could have made a good song called "Tain't Nothin' To it" easily, and some of the themes in O'Neal's monologue could also have been made musical, since earlier pieces from him like "(Don't Worry) If There's A Hell Below We're All Going To Go" covered the same ground. Either he didn't want to come back or, more likely, he was otherwise engaged writing the score for the prison drama "Short Eyes" at the time- "Do Do Wap Is Strong In Here", from that film's soundtrack, is a funk master course that could have worked here well.