Across 110th Street
Across 110th Street is a 1972 film from the USA, directed by Barry Shear, running 102 minutes. reelscum files it under blaxploitation and vigilante.
- Year
- 1972 · 1970s films
- Country
- USA
- Runtime
- 102 min
- Director
- Barry Shear
- Updated
- 10 Aug 2026
- Obscurity
- cult (37/100)
- Also known as
- Across 110th Street
Defined in the glossary: Blaxploitation, Vigilante
Grim, well acted, and the best film in the cycle by some distance.
The grimmest and best-made film in the cycle, closer to a hard crime drama than an exploitation picture. Small-timers rob the mob and both the gangsters and a pair of mismatched cops hunt them across a brutal Harlem. Anthony Quinn and Yaphet Kotto play the cops; nobody comes out clean.
It is bleak, violent and angry about the city it depicts, and Bobby Womack's title song is one of the great pieces of soul-movie music, later borrowed by Tarantino. There are no heroes here.
The point where blaxploitation becomes serious cinema.
Trailer
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Written about
- Exploitation film examples, cycle by cycle
Exploitation film examples grouped cycle by cycle, from Freaks in 1932 to the video nasties, with the real dates, cut durations and censorship rulings.
- Blaxploitation, 1971 to 1975
Melvin Van Peebles caught gonorrhea on his own set, filed a workers' comp claim, and bought more film stock with the settlement. Four years later the studios had mined the audience out and moved on.
Filed alongside
Coffy
Pam Grier's arrival. Jack Hill knows exactly what he has.
Cleopatra Jones
Tamara Dobson, six feet two, government agent. Shelley Winters overacts gloriously.
Black Caesar
Larry Cohen shooting Harlem guerrilla-style. James Brown scores it.
Super Fly
Curtis Mayfield's score critiques the film it's in. Remarkable object.
Black Mama White Mama
The Defiant Ones with Pam Grier, shot in the Philippines by a Filipino who actually knew the terrain.
Cotton Comes to Harlem
Two Harlem detectives chase a stolen fortune hidden in a bale of cotton. The one that opened the door.
Vigilante
Lustig doing it straight. Robert Forster deserves better and knows it.
Hell Up in Harlem
Larry Cohen's weekend sequel to Black Caesar, rougher and more berserk than the original.
Black Belt Jones
Jim Kelly karate-chops the mob to save a Watts dojo. Blaxploitation meets kung fu, joyfully.
Street Law
Castellari's Death Wish. An ordinary engineer, brutalised and ignored, arms himself.
The Spook Who Sat by the Door
The most political film the blaxploitation boom made, pulled from cinemas and buried for thirty years.
Rolling Thunder
Paul Schrader script, and the last twenty minutes are perfect.