Shaft's Big Score! is a 1972 American blaxploitation action-crime film starring Richard Roundtree as private detective John Shaft. It is the second entry in the Shaft film series, with both director Gordon Parks and screenwriter Ernest Tidyman reprising their roles from the first film. Moses Gunn and Drew Bundini Brown also return from the previous film, alongside new appearances from acting veterans Joseph Mascolo, Julius Harris and Joe Santos. Composer Isaac Hayes turned down an offer to score the film (though he did contribute the song "Type Thang" to the film), so Parks, himself a musician, composed and performed the score himself. The film was produced on a budget of $1,978,000, over three times that of its predecessor. It received mixed reviews, with critics praising the improved production values and direction, but criticizing it as lacking the charm and appeal of the original. It was followed by Shaft in Africa one year later. Plot Queens private detective John Shaft is contacted by his old friend Cal Asby, an insurance salesman and mortician, who tells him he's in trouble and asks him to come immediately. As soon as Shaft arrives, Asby is killed by a bomb planted inside of his house. Shaft is questioned by a suspicious police Captain Bollin, but is quickly released due to a lack of evidence. Asby's business partner Johnny Kelly owes mob boss Gus Mascola $250,000 in past gambling debts, money he had planned to take from his partner but had been moved and hidden before his death. Asby's house is ransacked before Shaft, Kelly, and Asby's sister Arna can investigate. When the perpetrator runs out, Kelly blocks Shaft from chasing him while pretending to help. Suspicious, Shaft tells Arna that he wants to inspect Asby and Kelly’s partnership papers, warning Kelly he intends to protect Arna. Bollin reveals to Shaft that Asby and Kelly were running a numbers racket with the insurance company and funeral parlor as profitable fronts but because they agreed to keep the scam clean, he looked the other way. Now that Asby is dead, however, Bollin fears that the mob will move in to take over their businesses. Although Bollin suspects that Shaft may be involved with one of the gangsters, he asks him to help, and Shaft coolly agrees. Shaft forces one of Kelly's numbers runners to reveal the location of the operation's headquarters. Upon arriving, he is seduced by