Gus Mascola

Gus Mascola was a merciless mobster trying to take over many black neighborhoods in Queens in Shaft's Big Score (1972), the first sequel of the Shaft series.

He was played by Joseph Mascolo.

As far as villains are concerned, he doesn't do much and is actually quite merciful to those who owe his family money, although it's only if things goes well. He tells Andrew, his pal and partner, to spare Kelly (a traitor claiming to be on John's side). He even chastizes him when he gets nasty with Kelly. However, when it was time for business, he could be extremely merciless, and we see his ugly side in three scenes. The first is when Mascola has his men beat John up, when Kelly lies claims, wrongly, he's working for Bumpy. The second is in a nasty fight he has with John and Willy, in which he racistly belittles John by calling him a "boy". But even then it can get personal. He is shown to abusive to his wife. The last is when he shoots Kelly. The next time we see him is right after in an exciting chase sequence that takes us from a graveyard to a ship deck, both in Queens. We see one final fight between him and John and John leaves him to explode.