Juice fresh 20 years on

Juice wasn't supposed to taste so fresh. A morality tale featuring a quartet of Harlem teens – aspiring DJ Q, ladies' man Raheem, comic foil Steel and hothead Bishop – Ernest Dickerson's 1992 directorial debut was initially filed by many critics as a rapsploitation retread of the previous year's Boyz n the Hood.

But nearly 20 years after its release, Juice is still making noise. From dance maestro Sidney Samson sampling a Bishop quote to Soulja Boy hyping up an ill-advised remake, Dickerson's movie has quietly become a hip-hop classic. Dickerson had paid his dues as Spike Lee's go-to cinematographer (he shot She's Gotta Have It, Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X, among others) and Juice, despite ticking all the early 90s hood-movie boxes, also turned out to be buoyant celebration of hip-hop culture, feeding off seminal 80s B-boy flicks, such as Beat Street and Wild Style.

"I'm genuinely surprised," says Dickerson. "My daughter told me that her friends had Juice parties where they would watch the movie and recite the dialogue. Our little story still seems to resonate with so many young people today and I am very happy about that."

Its shadowy cinematography and conflicted characters meant Juice – written by Dickerson with co-scripter Gerard Brown eight years before production – recalled an earlier genre of street-savvy cinema. "We really considered Juice a film noir with teenagers," says Dickerson. "The hip-hop came from the fact that that was the cultural context of their lives. Personally, I'm more of a jazz man, but we wanted the milieu of our film noir to be correct and that was hip-hop. My original idea for the story actually came from an old 50s noir, juvenile delinquent movie called City Across the River. Other influences were the noir films of Anthony Mann, Don Siegel and Samuel Fuller."

The progressively villainous Bishop takes his trigger-happy cues from another classic noir: Cody Jarrett, James Cagney's mother-loving killer from 1949's White Heat. In a mesmerising debut, Tupac Shakur showed a suitably Cagneyesque ability to get beneath his character's wild-eyed swagger.

"The character of Bishop was one that, on the surface, seemed easy to play," says Dickerson. "All you had to do was put in the rage. But most actors missed that the rage comes from a deep hurt and insecurity. Tupac understood that. He, more than any of the hundreds of actors who auditioned, understood Bishop's vulnerability."

Dickerson admits to one frustration with the film, namely the climactic showdown in which the protagonist Q (Omar Epps) loses his grip of Bishop, who's dangling from a rooftop. The director's original, "chilling and sad" ending had Bishop deliberately letting go of Q's hand to avoid jail.

"The focus groups rebelled against the 'bad guy' deciding his own fate," says Dickerson. "Paramount made me recut it so that Bishop just slides out of Q's hand, screaming as he falls. In my original ending, Bishop silently falls into the black abyss."

Though Shakur was just embarking on a turbulent, tragic rap career that would ultimately bolster the movie's mystique, a Hank Shocklee-compiled soundtrack gave Juice hip-hop cachet. "It was such a classic soundtrack," says producer DJ Yoda. "Even the cheesier R&B joints by Teddy Riley and Aaron Hall were amazing, and the Eric B & Rakim title track is still a club banger in 2011."

Beyond the soundtrack, though, positive publicity proved elusive. Fearing reprisals of the gun violence that had marred screenings of Boyz and New Jack City, US cinemas stepped up security for Juice, while the Hollywood Reporter pressured Paramount into removing a revolver from its poster.

"It was frustrating," says Dickerson. "There was only one incident, at a theatre in Philadelphia, where someone was shot standing in line to see the film. The people involved hadn't even seen the film but the press touted the incident as having been caused by the content of the movie.

"But there were many community and church groups who recognised our true message. There was a mentoring group in Washington called 100 Black Men that sponsored trips to see the film for their students. They felt we accurately portrayed the forces  they faced."

Juice is released on DVD on 3 October.