Continuity mistake: While Shaft and the girl are lowering the boat, a bad guy with a knife approaches. He has an almost intact cigarette in mouth, which burns down an inch in between shots between that time and when he does his bowling-like throw and dies. (01:25:05)
Continuity mistake: The truck from "Dupont" arrived in Paris and the human content can get off. There is one view from inside the building; look at the extra with a reddish sweater. He is inside, but also a few seconds later he is one of those people who still have to walk the path between truck and door with Shaft. (01:28:45)
Continuity mistake: Oyo jumps from the bed onto one of the mobsters, and they begin wrestling. The other mobster hits him in the back of the head with the pistol. Between these two shots there's an obvious continuity error as the bearded goon has his arm over Oyo's upper arm, while in the following shot he has an underhook. (01:33:30)
Continuity mistake: Pushed on the bed, Oyo suddenly is bleeding from the left eye, an injury he did not have before and with the bleeding appearing between shots (being hit in the back and shoulder, it's not exactly a very logical wound to have, either). You can also see his fist on the bed next to a bag, but at the cut the arm changed position. (01:33:35)
Continuity mistake: Shaft grabs Perreau, roughs him up a little in the nearby doorway for a few seconds, and then he is back on the street. Between the two streetviews there's a striking difference in lighting; when Perreau arrived in his little car and stopped before Shaft a big part of the wall had shadows; more light appeared already as Jacques Herlin came out of the car, while when Shaft takes over the whole wall is bathed in sunlight. (01:38:20)
Continuity mistake: When the protagonist dodges the machine gun fire in Amafi's office building, the desk in front of him has a lamp on it in the frontal views, but with the camera placed behind Shaft there is no lamp. (01:39:55)
Continuity mistake: The mafioso who takes forever before shooting Shaft with his Star Z-45 machine gun from the top of the stairs, falls off said stairs in different spots according to the camera angle. He also gives himself quite the noticeable push with his hand to be able to get past the railing. (01:40:00)
Revealing mistake: Shaft and Aleme are looking through different castles in a book. Every page starts with the name of a castle, but the book used as basis for the prop is a french textbook by Jean Secret, Le Perigord, which talks about a region (the modern Dordogne, you can read that specific name and many others recognizable as part of that zone when the camera lingers on the page) which is in the south of the country; definitely not featuring a castle "14 kilometers from Paris" as the prop text inlay says nor is a "one castle every other page" tourist guide-style of book. (01:43:20)
Continuity mistake: When Aleme reads from the book about castles, there's an obvious difference between the close-ups (right hand moving on the page) and the wider shots (she holds the page, then she is moving the left hand on it instead of the right). (01:43:20)
Continuity mistake: Amafi walks into the torture room; Oyo's head is turned in opposite directions as the camera cuts. (01:44:05)
Continuity mistake: The first baddie Shaft runs over with the car as he rushes Castle Montfort falls in two different ways; the body is sideways and the stuntman has a much bigger leap in the first shot. Furthermore, he falls with the head tilted towards the left but in the close-up we see his skull cracked at the right orbital socket. (01:44:45)
Continuity mistake: After leaving behind his exploded car, Shaft is looking for bad guys to frag, and he finds one he mows down with the machine gun. The guy dies with the back of his jacket flipping quite noticeably, leaving a big turquoise area exposed. When Richard Roundtree runs past his sorry carcass, the jacket is showing much less azure flap. (01:45:45)
Revealing mistake: Shaft kills two guys who are climbing the stairs out of the catacombs Amafi is holed in. No bullet holes or blood appear on the clothes, and they both use the railings to help their backward tumble down the stairs in a rather noticeable fashion. (01:46:00)
Revealing mistake: At the end of the movie, the French inspector Cusset (Jacques Marin in his typical role) looks at the mess Shaft made. With a single glance he's able to encompass all the different dead bodies on the large property Shaft covered with his car mowing them down at 60 mph, which already is impressive. Some of the bodies lie down next to each other when they were murdered at distance. Deserving special mention is the second guy Shaft trampled with his car though, with the actor having his hands hidden in the jacket sleeves to suggest that Shaft crushed them under the car tires. (01:50:25)
Plot hole: The Emir wants to test Shaft's ability to resist the desert, since he'll have to cross it in his trip, and so sets him up for a test; a room filled with sand, burning hot from dozens of lamps on the ceiling, that heat it all up to 110F. And they want him to walk for 8 hours in that room. But Shaft finds another solution; he digs a hole in the sand and lies in it. Which impresses the Emir greatly, so he shuts off the lamps and tells him he passed the test. How in the world digging a shallow bed and lying down in burning hot sand, with his head sticking out fully exposed, is any indication of being able to cross the desert, let alone survive it for 8 hours? He would have gotten a terrible sunburn with his head exposed as his body cooks in a sauna, and he is not an inch closer to getting to the other side of the imaginary desert.
Revealing mistake: It's quite common in movies of the era, especially slashers and horror movies who look to get some particular scenic effect, to feature blood with unrealistic color and look, in particular a bright red. This movie though has some of the worst fake blood ever in both color and texture; when Kopo gets clobbered protecting Shaft it really looks like someone squished a tomato on his head, and when Shaft gets bitten, ketchup-like goop oozes from the actor's teeth.
