The Criterion Collection has restored Gordon Parks’s 1971 film Shaft for release on 4k Ultra HD Blu-ray and Blu-ray Disc. The 4k restoration on UHD BD features Dolby Vision HDR, the uncompressed monaural soundtrack, and remastered alternate uncompressed stereo soundtrack.
The 3-disc 4k Blu-ray edition includes the film on 4k Blu-ray and Blu-ray Disc along with a second Blu-ray disc with special features. The 2-disc Blu-ray edition includes the restored film on 1080p Blu-ray and the special features Blu-ray. Both editions release on Jun 21, 2022.
Shaft on 4k Blu-ray (3-disc edition) has a list price of $49.99 and the 2-disc Blu-ray (2-disc edition) $39.99. Order on Amazon
4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- Alternate uncompressed stereo soundtrack remastered with creative input from Isaac Hayes III
- One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and two Blu-rays with the film and special features
- Shaft’s Big Score!, the 1972 follow-up to Shaft by director Gordon Parks
- New documentary on the making of Shaft featuring curator Rhea L. Combs, film scholar Racquel J. Gates, filmmaker Nelson George, and music scholar Shana L. Redmond
- Behind-the-scenes program featuring Parks, actor Richard Roundtree, and musician Isaac Hayes
- Archival interviews with Hayes, Parks, and Roundtree
- New interview with costume designer Joseph G. Aulisi
- New program on the Black detective and the legacy of John Shaft, featuring scholar Kinohi Nishikawa and novelist Walter Mosley
- A Complicated Man: The “Shaft” Legacy (2019)
- Behind-the-scenes footage from Shaft’s Big Score!
- Trailers
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by film scholar Amy Abugo Ongiri
Product Description: While the Black Power movement was reshaping America, trailblazing director Gordon Parks made this groundbreaking blockbuster, which helped launch the blaxploitation era and gave the screen a new kind of badder-than-bad action hero in John Shaft (Richard Roundtree, in a career-defining role), a streetwise New York City private eye who is as tough with criminals as he is tender with his lovers. After Shaft is recruited to rescue the kidnapped daughter of a Harlem mob boss (Moses Gunn) from Italian gangsters, he finds himself in the middle of a rapidly escalating uptown vs. downtown turf war. A vivid time capsule of seventies Manhattan in all its gritty glory that has inspired sequels and multimedia reboots galore, the original Shaft is studded with indelible elements—from Roundtree’s sleek leather fashions to the iconic funk and soul score by Isaac Hayes.
