After saving a Black Panther from some racist cops, a black male prostitute goes on the run from "the man" with the help of the ghetto community and some disillusioned Hells Angels.
In a daring robbery, some $300,000 is taken from the Italian mob. Several mafiosi are killed, as are two policemen. Lt. Pope and Capt. Mattelli are two New York City cops trying to break the case. Three small-time criminals are on the run with the money. Will the mafia catch them first, or will the police?
Sheba, a Chicago private detective returns back home to Louisville, Kentucky, to help her father fight mobsters.
When fellow operatives and friends disappear during a mission in Hong Kong, Cleopatra Jones comes to help. She discovers the disappearance involves The Dragon Lady, a feared lipstick lesbian who runs a casino and the local drug trade.
A singer returns to her hometown and puts together a team of fighters to go after local gangsters.
Martin is an unscrupulous chap who has never cared about anyone but himself until he meets Irina, a Russian girl.
Two slave brothers, one black, one an albino, discover a treasure map which is taken from them by their foreman. They take it back but are pursued by the foreman. Originally, the foreman seeks the aid of two bounty hunters who pursue the protagonists throughout the film. At the end, both the foreman and the bounty hunters catch up with the two escaped slaves, and the foreman has a change of heart, helping to kill the bounty hunters.
Priest, a suave top-rung New York City drug dealer, decides that he wants to get out of his dangerous trade. Working with his reluctant friend, Eddie, Priest devises a scheme that will allow him to make a big deal and then retire. When a desperate street dealer informs the police of Priest's activities, Priest is forced into an uncomfortable arrangement with corrupt narcotics officers. Setting his plan in motion, he aims to both leave the business and stick it to the man.
A black hairdresser's sexual escapades with married customers lead to a confrontation with a jealous mobster.
Tommy Gibbs is a tough kid, raised in the ghetto, who aspires to be a kingpin criminal. As a young boy, his leg is broken by a bad cop on the take, during a pay-off gone bad. Nursing his vengeance, he rises to power in Harlem, New York. Angry at the racist society around him, both criminal and straight, he sees the acquisition of power as the solution to his rage.
Fred Williamson chop-sockeys his way through this popular blaxploitation adventure as Jefferson Bolt, a Kung Fu expert assigned to deliver a cool $1 million to Mexico City from Hong Kong with a stop in Los Angeles. When Bolt discovers the cash is dirty mob money and his gal has been killed, he heads back to the Far East to get even.
Truck Turner and his partner Jerry, who make their living as bounty hunters in Los Angeles, are hired to hunt down Gator, a pimp who has skipped bail.
Willie Dynamite is a pimp who operates in New York City. Willie was a big success as a pimp, but now, just as fast as he rose to the top, he has hit bottom. A former prostitute who has become a social worker tries to get Willie to clean up his life while it is still possible.
Kicks Carter is a streetwise policeman whose beat is Las Vegas. A crime gang is running guns, selling drugs, loan-sharking, and running a prostitution ring out of an upscale hotel in the city and Kicks is trying to put them out of business. But the interference of a woman reporter is making his job more difficult.
A violent street gang, the Rebels, rule the streets of Gary, Indiana. The Rebels shoot Marvin Bookman, a store-keeper, for giving the police information about a drive-by shooting they committed. Marvin's son, former NFL star John who created the Rebels, returns to Gary to be with his father and, with a little help from his friends, to destroy the Rebels his way.
Two Hustler cousins attempt to get over on an associate of theirs, but after the job they pulled goes wrong, the duo must leave their families and skip town.
Goldie returns from five years at the state pen and winds up king of the pimping game. Trouble comes in the form of two corrupt white cops and a crime lord who wants him to return to the small time.
A corrupt General plans on smuggling one million US dollars out of the Banana Republic he dominates. Local revolutionaries plan on stealing the cash but are thwarted when a bandit leader they are working with double crosses them. A tough cop and her boyfriend help two of the female revolutionaries escape from prison hoping that they will lead them to the cash, which they plan on keeping for themselves.
Sunset Boulevard is a lucrative place to work for the Black Baron, a pimp with a distinctive red and yellow Rolls Royce and plenty of girls on his books. He don't take no mess from his girls, his madam or his competitors and viciously defends his patch. First, he clobbers the Mob who attempt to move in on his patch. Second, he tracks down one of his girls who runs off with a suitcase full of his cash. Third, he disposes of two policemen. But by now he knows his pimping days are numbered, so after a final explosive gun battle he switches to being his alter ego, mild-mannered businessman Ron who lives out in the leafy suburbs with an unsuspecting wife and family.
This production was originally staged for the Pepsico Summerfare Festival, The International Performing Arts Festival of the State University of New York at Purchase. Leaving the lyrics in their original Italian, acclaimed American director Peter Sellars transports Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's "Don Giovanni" to a modern-day metropolis, nestling the opera's beloved characters among the brownstones of New York City's Harlem. Sellars's contemporary retelling of a classic musical tale is one of three performances in a Mozart series that also includes "Le Nozze di Figaro" and "'Così Fan Tutte."