Considered by many to be one of the seeds from which the blaxploitation era sparked, this action-comedy remains a triumph of location shooting and a nuanced snapshot of tensions within the black community in the wake of the civil rights movement. Detectives Coffin Ed Johnson (Raymond St. Jacques) and Gravedigger Jones (Godfrey Cambridge) attempt to thwart a black nationalist preacher who tries to lure Harlem residents to invest in his company with the false promise of a ticket back to Africa.