Ossie Davis's early blaxpoitation pic has clearly been made on a shoestring budget and, despite its excellent source material, fails to deliver a coherent or engaging plot. Probably of more interest as a time capsule of Harlem in the late sixties/early seventies, the plot sees a couple of tough-talking police detectives, Coffin Ed (Godfrey Cambridge)and Gravedigger (Raymond St. Jacques) hunting for a bale of cotton containing $87,000. The money has been swindled from Harlem's poor black people by slick Marthin Luther wannabe Reverend Deke O'Malley (Calvin Lockhart). The film is fairly typical of its genre, although it hasn't really nailed down the street smart characters yet (at times it is played like a comedy, which just doesn't sit right with the material): Women get naked and beaten up by the men, and the white characters are either incidental or stupid.