Just one year after his father helped kick off the Blaxploitation craze with SHAFT, first-time director Gordon Parks Jr solidified the genre’s commercial prominence with this down-and-dirty “one last score” saga set to an all-timer soundtrack by Curtis Mayfield. (Screening as the front half of a May Is For Mobsters double feature with NEW JACK CITY; click the showtime below for standalone tickets or here for discounted two-film passes.)

Priest (Ron O’Neal), a suave top-rung New York City drug dealer, decides that he wants to get out of his dangerous trade. Working with his reluctant friend, Eddie (Carl Lee), Priest devises a scheme that will allow him make a big deal and then retire. When a desperate street dealer informs the police of Priest’s activities, Priest is forced into an uncomfortable arrangement with corrupt narcotics officers. Setting his plan in motion, he aims to both leave the business and stick it to the man.

“One of the most successful of the early ’70s blaxploitation cycle.” – Time Out

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