The Spook Who Sat By The Door
Starring: Lawrence Cook, Paula Kelly, Janet League
Director: Ivan Dixon
Possibly the most radical of the "blaxploitation" films of the 70s, this movie was an overnight sucess
when it released in 1973 and then was taken out of distribution for reasons that are still not entirely clear.
A mild-mannered social worker (Lawrence Cook) is recruited by the CIA as a token black and then
proceeds to learn (and later apply) the techniques of urban guerrilla warfare in Chicago (though most of the filming
was done in Gary, Indiana).
Corrosively ironic and often exciting, this adaptation by Sam Greenlee of his own novel, directed by Ivan Dixon,
remains one of the great missing (or at least unwritten) chapters in Black political filmmaking.
Price: $19.99 [DVD]
