River Oaks Theatre Friday Midnight Movie: Shaft

Every Friday and Saturday night at 11:55pm, it’s another Midnight Movie Classic at the Landmark River Oaks Theatre.

Friday, July 8:  Shaft

SHAFT (R)
1 hrs, 40 mins

RELEASE:
07/02/1971

CAST:
Richard Roundtree, Moses Gunn, Christopher St. John, Charles Cioffi, Gwenn Mitchell, Lawrence Pressman

DIRECTOR:
Gordon Parks

John Shaft is an icon of change from an era of change. Today, Shaft still tells it like it is. The “shut-your-mouth” detective is someone to reckon with, a fact emphasized from the film’s start by Isaac Hayes’ Academy Award-winning Best Original Song and Oscar-nominated score.

Richard Roundtree plays the smart, tough, confident lead, a private investigator whose hunt for a kidnapped woman puts him in the middle of feuding syndicates.

Gordon Parks (The Learning Tree, Shaft’s Big Score) directs from a screenplay that Ernest Tidyman (that same year’s Oscar winner for The French Connection) co-scripted from his own novel.