Director/actor Melvin Van Peebles appears in several real (unsimulated) sex scenes, but genital contact is never seen, nor erections except for one prosthetic strap-on.

A 13 year old boy, played by Peebles' son Mario, makes love with a hooker. This scene runs 3 1/2 minutes.The boy is shown nude primarily from the rear, much of this time on top of the woman. Split-second views of male frontal nudity occurs a couple of times.The hooker is shown fully nude, front and back, but her pubic hair is visible only briefly.

Four sex scenes include full frontal female nudity, and two include frontal male nudity lasting several seconds. The others almost always include side nudity by both men and women.

One of the scenes is a sex show between two women, one with a strap-on. Then (with close-up on the crotch) the strap-on is partially removed revealing a (flaccid) penis inside it to imply that the performer was a man, a ruse made possible by switching the performers in a darkened room.

Two of the scenes involve a black man and white woman. This is important because race figures prominently in the film.

There are several unprovoked beatings with punching and kicking drawing blood. One ends with one man beating two others to death with an open metal handcuff; only blood on the cuff is visible, not the impacts.

A brawl includes a man being blinded and strangled. It also includes a man being stabbed with a pool cue. Cuts, bruises, and some blood are visible on several characters throughout the film.

A man holds another man and shoots a pistol next to his ears to deafen him. We see blood spilling from his ears.

A fish is shown being cleaned.

A man's infected wound is shown in close-up. He then dresses it in dirt mixed with urine before bandaging it.

A man kills and eats a real lizard. The bloody left-overs are shown.

The bloody carcasses of dogs are shown floating in a river.

The N-word is used eight times. The F-word is used seven times. The S-word is used six times. There are occasional religious profanities.

A woman offers her arms to show that she has not be injecting drugs.

A few people smoke. People are also shown drinking and/or drunk.