Back during the early 1970’s, after Shaft and Shaft’s Big Score, aside from Melvin Van Peebles, Gordon Parks just might have been the biggest black film director working at the time. As a result, he branched out into doing other types of films and his 1974 MGM action/comedy cop movie The Super Cops is a prime example.

The film was a heavily-fictionalized movie based on the real life carrers of two white Jewish New York City cops, David Greenberg and Robert Hantz whose crazy and dangerous exploits to catch bad guys earned them the nicknames of “Batman & Robin”.

I still remmeber seeing the film when it came out, but being disappointed since I didn’t think the film lived up to the impression given by the poster (above). But I was eager to see since it proved that things were moving ahead for black directors, and this wasn’t a “black” film. (Hey, back then in 1974 it didn’t take a whole lot to impress people). Nevertheless because of that, the film did get a whole lot of notice when it came out. Still I would like to see it again just for old times sake.

Now the film, which has never been available on DVD, is coming out this week on the Warners DVD-on-demand speciality Warner Archive label.

As an extra bonus, also coming out this week as well on the WA label is Warner’s not-half-bad, efficently made 1974 blaxploitation/neo-noirish detective mystety Black Eye, starring Fred Williamson as a private eye out to solve a series of murders connected to a drug ring.