50 Years Later, Shaft—The Film And

The Theme—Stand The Test Of Time

I hadn’t seen Shaft since I brought it to my college campus for two showings on a Saturday night in 1977. Forty-five years is a long time, and I watched it over the weekend to see if it stood the test of time. So many seemingly good films do not, and thus I was delighted to find that it is just as good, gritty, and gutsy as it was back then. Plus, the theme music and the title song by Isaac Hayes is a total marvel, just as cutting-edge now as it was back then. For those who haven’t seen it, the 1971 film— directed by Gordon Parks and written by Ernest Tidyman and John D. F. Black—features private detective John Shaft, who is hired by a Harlem mobster to rescue his daughter from the Italian mobsters who kidnapped her. The film stars Richard Roundtree as Shaft, alongside Moses Gunn, Charles Cioffi, Christopher St. John, and Lawrence Pressman. Driven by themes of Black power, racial tensions, masculinity, and sexuality, Shaft was filmed in Harlem, Greenwich Village, and Times Square. Notable for its crossover success with both white and black audiences, UniWorld—the marketing firm hired by MGM to promote the film—described John Shaft as “a lone, black Superspade—a man of flair and flamboyance who has fun at the expense of the (white) establishment.’” Quite appropriately, Hayes won the 1972 Oscar, Golden Globe, and Grammy Awards for “Theme from Shaft.”

Some Of The Best Songs That

Prove Crime Definitely Doesn’t Pay

Ask anyone who grew up in the rock era which song best typifies the notion that “crime doesn’t pay” and they’ll likely answer “I Fought The Law,” written by Sonny Curtis of The Crickets and first popularized by The Bobby Fuller Four (and later by The Clash). It’s a pretty direct song about a guy who regrets taking on the law, because “I needed money, and I had none” and now he’s in big trouble. He feels guilt for letting his woman down, too, since “she’s the best girl I’ve ever had.” Then again, the first response might be the classic “I Shot The Sheriff,” in whichBob Marley admits to killing Sheriff John Brown, but swears it was in self-defense. Of course, there's "Folsom Prison Blues," in which Johnny Cash acknowledges that he “shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.” Then there’s R. Dean Taylor’s perspective of a man who killed a man who insulted his woman and is now hiding from the police in the 1970 classic “Indiana Wants Me.” Whether it’s cheating, murder, armed robbery, or even horse theft, there’s a song for just about any way the law can be broken—and here’s a list of some of the best, compiled by Ged Richardson for Zing Instruments. Remember: if you can’t do the rhyme, don’t do the crime.

DNA COLD CASE

Headless Body Found In Trunk In 1980

Finally ID'd As Missing NYC Woman

The identity of a woman found without her head and hands in a grisly murder finally has been solved. More than 42 years ago, troopers with the New York State Police responded to a mysterious travel trunk found near a dumpster at the Hudson View apartment complex in Fishkill, New York — about 70 miles north of Manhattan. Little could be ascertained about the body of the woman inside, who became known as “Dutchess County Jane Doe,” because her head and hands were never found. Earlier this year, Othram Inc., a Texas-based company specializing in forensic-grade genome sequencing, was asked by the FBI to take a look at the Jane Doe’s DNA. Experts created a DNA profile, which led federal and state investigators to conclude that the woman was 44-year-old Anne L. Papalardo-Blake, a New York City resident who had been reported missing to the NYPD on March 18, 1980, just two days before the discovery of her remains. “The person or persons responsible for Anne’s death went through great lengths to ensure she would not be identified,” Othram Chief Development Officer Kristen Mittelman told Oxygen.com. “But in the end, she was identified through an amazing collaboration between the NYSP, the FBI, and also the NamUs program, which funded Othram’s laboratory costs so our team could develop a DNA profile.”

The Fearsome Allure Of The Witch

In These Days Of The “Witch Hunt”

With so much blather about political “witch hunts” in the news these days, we forget that—at least in American history—the concept of witch is particularly misogynistic one driven by fear of, and resentment toward, women. As Leanna Renee Hieber and Andrea Janes recently wrote in Crime Reads, “Like all powerful women, [witches] have been maligned, persecuted, hated, desired, feared. They are eternal, mythical subjects, a source of endless fascination. In American history, they occupy a unique place where folklore blurs the lines of reality; we remember the ‘witches’ of Salem, Massachusetts, who were not actually witches. They have become totemic figures in television, movies, books, and pop culture, and their appeal shows no signs of waning….The witch has an interesting relationship to ghost lore; she is both part of it and separate from it. There are a few defining traits when it comes to the ghost-witch: first, she is generally the ghost of a woman who was accused or executed for witchcraft, whether she practiced it or not (usually not), coming back to seek revenge or draw attention to the injustice visited upon her. Second, she is often associated with a curse, and her powers transcend the grave.” Another thing these ghostly witches have in common, the authors say, is rumor. “They probably were never witches at all, and have been so dubbed due to some confluence of coincidence, circumstance, and urban legend.”

15 Crime Noir Books That Will Have

You Reaching For Your Trench Coat

Deception, corruption, self-destructive anti-heroes: the crime noir genre is the dark-minded cousin of the hard-boiled detective novel. Many of the sub-genre's greatest tales focus on the criminals instead of the detectives—and when a detective is present, he's often as morally questionable as the villain he pursues. From James Ellroy to James M. Cain, Mickey Spillane to Graham Greene, the books on this list of 15 crime noir novels compiled by Sarah Mangiola for Novel Suspects will transport you into the black hearts of men and women on either side of the law. Whether it’s 1973 Glasgow, which has slipped into a heroin epidemic amidst a wash of poverty and crime; a dark marriage filled with secrecies and deceptions; or a displaced writer living out of his car with his dog and a gun, these tales immerse us in the grit and grime of true noir.

Coming January 10, 2023:

Greenwich Mean Time

“A globe-spanning, mind-spinning thriller that will delight fans of Jason Bourne. Rōnin Phythian, an assassin with extraordinary powers and a code of his own, deserves a sequel. Make that sequels.” —Joseph Finder, New York Times bestselling author of House on Fire

When photojournalist Monica Cross literally stumbles into the site of an old airplane crash at the edge of a Himalayan glacier, she is exposed to a dark and deadly secret that was meant to remain hidden forever. Unaware that her life is in grave danger, she attempts to get home to New York while the Greenwich Global Group—a dark-web, murder-for-hire outfit—pulls out all stops to make sure she never gets there. Spanning ten time zones, nine countries, and four continents, Greenwich Mean Time is a tightly spun thriller that plays out against a sinister plot designed to change the course of history for all time.