The Spook Who Sat by the Door (1973) User Reviews (21)

An essential slice of revolutionary black cinema

[Coventry · 6/10 · 12 December 2004]

Very intelligent and sublimely scripted film that stars Larry Cook in a truly powerful role. Cook plays Dan Freeman, the first CIA-recruit since the start of the agency. After an intense training and a mind-strong career of 5 years, Freeman returns to the ghetto where he grew up and mobilizes the future-less black youth to stand up for themselves and begin a violent revolution against the white authorities. The message and criticism in the screenplay is so well-elaborated because Sam Greenlee adapted it from his own novel. True, the film contains a little too much talking and some of the sentimental speeches are hard to swallow (like Freeman's supposedly heart-breaking tale of how he taught his grandmother to read), but most of the criticism against America are quite thought-provoking, daring and way ahead of their time. Around the hour, more action kicks in and we're treated to several convincing riot-sequences and atmospheric images of the ghetto under siege. But, perhaps the most fascinating aspect about "The Spook who sat by the Door" is the psychological battle inside the protagonist's head, resulting in a dazzling end-scene. Knowing the controversy a film like "New Jack City" caused, I'm sure that this movie would provoke far worse situations when re-released properly.

It is claimed that this movie was "lost" for over 30 years so it got honored by an immense cult-status. I can only recommend for you to see it yourself.

A big surprise!

[christopher-underwood · 8/10 · 14 October 2005]

A big surprise! I wasn't expecting anything as intelligent or exciting as this. More craft than one would expect of a low budget outing from largely first timers and it barely puts a foot wrong. None of the glam of the more obvious candidates for best black film, this just gets on and does it's job. This being the film's theme in many ways - just do it! There are many, like the writer on the DVD interview, who wonder why so little has been achieved in the US by this community and this marvellous movie is certainly food for thought for many around the world whether they be the oppressed or the oppressor who cannot figure out how the balance of power never seems to change. A really must see film.

Though Dated, Still Fantastic

[bean-d · 8/10 · 16 January 2010]

I can't remember how this ended up on my Netflix (I must have read about it in a book or magazine), but I was incredibly surprised. In my mind this rivals "Do the Right Thing"--without the polish. I've seen numerous "blaxploitation" films (not my favorite term), but this 1) doesn't pull any punches and 2) doesn't degenerate into demeaning sex and violence. Unlike films like "Shaft" that just made a white hero black, "The Spook Who Sat by the Door" probably gave the establishment a severe case of heartburn--I mean, can you consider this with white characters?! No. It's a black film through and through. The establishment can tolerate a "Superfly" or a "Shaft," but a film like this (more akin to "The Battle of Algiers") is borderline dangerous. I used to teach a film class, and if I still did, I may very well have considered showing this. An important film.

Praise for film

[nawtambu · 20 August 2003]

The Spook Who Sat by the Door is a cult classic and named one of the most influential black films of the 70s (by Torriano Berry and Venise Berry in their book The 50 most influential black films). This film holds this title with good reason. The film begins with a senator facing the prospect of losing an election without the pivotal black vote. To win favor he decided to charge the CIA with racism since they have no black agents. The CIA agrees, although those in charge of the training do all that is possible to kick all of the recruits out. Only one survives, Dan Freeman. Freeman finds himself the token black, he is often called to show visitors what progress the CIA is making in race relations, before continuing his menial tasks of copying papers and giving tours. Though he plays his role, one gets the impression he is planning something big. After a few years of service with the CIA he returns home to Chicago and in his capacity as a social worker he organizes local gangs using his knowledge and training from the CIA. Without spoiling the rest of the film there is the classic struggle about how to approach change through the system or to over throw? This is represented by Freeman and a former friend who is now police chief in Chicago. Included is some of the socio-political issues that made the 60s and 70s what it was, making this film one that stands out in a decade of films high on action and low on plot. Taking budget issues into consideration and what director Ivan Dixon had to do to get the film made, it is well worth watching (even again).

Greatest guerrilla movie ever made

[fox_orvngs · 10/10 · 26 March 2006]

This is one of the undiscovered treasures of cinema people, if you haven't seen it you need to. They never paid for one permit and they did this movie for about $90,000USD, but they don't skip a beat. Same editor as Schindler's List; if you watch the movie you can tell why Spielberg uses this guy, he is a master.

Even if you don't agree with the films message you have to agree that this is one of thee finest made independent films in existence, and considering the subject matter it is a surprise this film was ever shot, because the book had a pretty hard time getting published too.

I think this film is everything Melvin Van Peebles wanted SweetBack to be.

I'm still waiting for a great film about Black revolutionaries

[frankenbenz · 6/10 · 18 July 2008]

I'll always remember Ivan Dixon as "Kinch" on my favorite after school TV show growing up: Hogan's Heroes. Despite the show making Dixon a household name, he walked away from it (the only cast original cast member to do so), a decision motivated by his lack of creative fulfillment. In Dixon's mind, playing a token black on a silly sit-com was wasted time, an unwelcome departure from his serious work as a stage actor and second fiddle to Sydney Poitier in films like Porgy and Bess and A Raisin in the Sun. In addition to Dixon's creative integrity he also had ambition, a trait white Hollywood afforded very few blacks.

With Gordon Park's blaxploitation masterpiece Shaft tearing up the box-office, Dixon seized the opportunity to direct by helming Trouble Man, itself a prototypical blaxploitation pic. A year later Dixon used his momentum to get back behind the lens to direct Sam Greenlee's underground hit novel The Spook Who Sat by the Door. With Spook, Dixon was able to break the chains shackling Blacks within Hollywood by bringing to the silver screen the politically taboo story of a Black revolutionary declaring war on White society. Lawrence Cook is perfectly cast as the cunning Dan Freeman who infiltrates the White power structure by gaining entrance to the CIA before quitting to form a inner-city Chicago leftist group of revolutionaries. If art imitates life, then you have to consider what it took for a Black director to not only get a film like TSWSBTD financed, but to get White Hollywood to distribute it. While the film itself is sloppily and artlessly made, it remains important because of both its content and the fact that a film with such an anti-social message would even see the light of day during the political climate of the conservative Nixon administration. If he wasn't already on it, it's a safe bet Dixon was on Nixon's black list after Spook was released.

Dixon's career as a feature film director practically stalled after Spook, but he went on to direct some of the best TV in the 70's and 80's, most notably on The Rockford Files and Magnum, P.I.. One could speculate his opportunities to continue directing controversial feature films was curtailed by the forces that be --which would make for an interesting theory-- but after seeing Spook it is safe to say Dixon's talents were simply better suited for the small screen. Nevertheless, The Spook Who Sat by the Door is required viewing for every student of African-American Cinema.

http://eattheblinds.blogspot.com/

Too powerful to be dismissed

[Baroque · 10/10 · 17 October 2000]

Dan Freeman (played by Lawrence Cook) is a token black CIA operative. Trained in all sorts of espionage, he is relegated to working in the copying department as a "showcase" employee of integration. As the title suggests, he's placed by the door of the office so he's the first person everyone sees. Incensed by his mistreatment (and the racial stereotyping of his superiors), he resigns to his native Chicago as a social services worker.

Secretly, he is training a street gang into a guerrilla army to be the vanguard in a race war, using all of his training by "the man" against "the man".

The details are impressive. Freeman explains how to establish a hierarchy in an underground movement, how to recruit new members, living on the street, and forming new cells. He also details how racial stereotypes can be used to one's advantage, citing how no one ever notices a smiling black man in an office carrying a mop.

The film is a faithful adaptation of Sam Greenlee's controversial novel of the same title, and a haunting look at what MIGHT have (and maybe damned near) happened in the USA during that turbulent period of history. The film was quickly followed by a long line of "blaxploitation" films, often made with little regard for content and style. But "Spook", shot on a small budget, has a powerful message: Never underestimate anyone! Not even "the spook who sat by the door"!

As a motion picture, it does have technical weaknesses, but the drama is well-played, the plot is very tight and the characters are believable. The language, however, is very harsh. A white man (like myself) may find the diatribes against "whitey" shocking, but this film was made during a time of great racial strife, and it echos those times.

Made in 1973, it still packs a punch, and is worth tracking down and buying (Do a web-search! That's how I got my copy!).

A ground-breaking film! (Does anyone but me catch the irony of the main character's name? "Free Man"?)

For it's time it was a good movie

[mojo2004 · 7/10 · 2 July 2006]

I agree this movie could have been better but looking back now I'd say it was exactly what people were looking to see on the screen.All the films with Black cast had the same feel to them and we ate it up.Two of the best that strayed from all that were not talked about as much as the action pictures."Sounder" and "The Learning Tree" which also need to be shown more on TV.As for this film I liked the actor who played the lead.Lawrence Cook who I see died 3 yrs ago was exactly what I pictured Dan Freeman to be like.I recommend this film and i'd love to see a Black film channel that gives you some commentary along with the films as TCM does.Where's Max Julien? How about all the black actresses who paved the way for those working now.Not Hattie McDaniel but Gloria Hendry,Brenda Sykes,Shelia Frazier and Judy Pace just to name a few.I know Vonetta McGee who was with Max Julien on screen and in real life for a time ,married Carl Lumbly.Lonette McKee was on TV often at one time and Rosalind Cash has passed away.Anyhoo see this movie and then see another black film and another.Then pick up a book.Or do both read the book "Native Son" then watch the film "Native Son"-any version."The River Niger" is on DVD in the dollar bin but it's good.If only because James Earl Jones and Glen Turman are in it.

The greatest of all African-American movies.

[BookerII · 10/10 · 31 July 1999]

I viewed this film in a Pan African Studies class at California State University, Northridge in 1993. Professor James Dennis who was a Civil Rights activist who made the Mississippi Freedom Rides told us this was the best film about and by African-Americans, and I agree with him wholeheartedly! I would like to get this video and show it in the classes I teach in history. This film was ahead of its time. Sam Greenelee is a very good writer and captures the essence of the struggle for African-Americans.

Good But Coulda Been So Much Better

[strausbaugh · 6/10 · 27 August 2005]

I have to join the dissenting side. "Spook" starts out like a satire of early-70s race relations, with all sorts of possibilities as the protagonist becomes the first black CIA agent. The first half-hour or so is great, funny, different. It had me thinking that "Spook" was going to turn into a kind of Watermelon Man Joins the CIA. There are all sorts of interesting ways the story could've developed from this wonderful set-up, but the writers lose heart and fall back on a very typical blaxploitation plot. For the last hour the movie trudges sluggishly through a bog of genre clichés and stereotypes, to a most unexciting and unsatisfying climax. It has its moments--the blackface-on-a-bicycle scene is very funny--but they're lost in all the so-so usual business you can find in most any other blaxploitation flick. "Spook" is probably the best *title* for a blaxploitation movie ever, but its cult reputation as "the greatest blaxploitation film ever" is highly exaggerated. It's good, but it coulda been so much better if it had been more adventurous and playful. Too bad Melvin Van Peebles didn't direct it. He woulda kicked it up a few hundred notches.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

[nikitalinivenko · 4/10 · 29 February 2020]

The movie was ok, if visually as cheap and unappealing as the rest of its stock (though perhaps with some slightly more competent direction), and as far as Blaxploitation goes, this was one of the more decent flicks of that era, and was at least more coherent than many of them. It takes forever to actually get going, the first half-hour is pure boredom, interspersed thru-out are a couple...OK action scenes that crop up sparsely between all the non-stop scenes of people standing/sitting around conspiring and blabbering on and on and on as the intelligent, determined soul brotha does all he can to lead his revolution against the man (a la founding a strikingly Project Mayhem-esque cell) (the one white member of the group who thinks he's black was a highlight)... After watching the movie, I read Sam Greenlee's novel, which was far, far better than the cheap, boring movie adaptation (though again, the movie does briefly start to pull itself together now and then in scenes of civil unrest that make you want to join in the black rallying cry), and is more worth your time. You're better off reading the novel, and I'd say the movie is optional for fans of it. In spite of all this film's flaws, as a side note, it is included in the Library if Congress's National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant", and I, at the very least, can see why.

I don't do this.

[treywillwest · 9/10 · 13 September 2014]

Of course the first thing people talk about is this film's politics- and they are some of the most militant in any film to ever get fairly mainstream, American distribution. I think it could only have played mainstream cinemas in the early 1970s. But the politics are far from the only thing that is remarkable about this work. I don't know how to label it with the vocabulary of genre- its a thing unto itself. A completely unique narrative tone that oscillates between satire, legitimate, hard-nosed agit-prop and even moments of (I think) self-deprecation. Its at once assertive and yet it questions everything, even its own place as an object of the culture industry. As legitimate as its Nationalist message is, its still only a message, and in this way the work is as much an exploitation of Black Rage as it is a vehicle for it. I think the filmmakers understand this, and want to live up to it. Because it is not ultimately a Messianic narrative. The protagonist only brings a message of unity and revolt and suggests, through the narrative, a possible course of study and action. The protagonist does not replace, or even lead, the masses. He is left to narrative space, and he can only toast the potential revolutionary actors, the audience.

A Vastly underrated and under-viewed Black Film !

[tmpj · 22 May 2002]

I have seen this film on several occasions ( though not lately), have spoken to its author , and have known several of its cast members, the most notable of which would be Lawrence Cook and Paula Kelly. For a time the film was withdrawn from circulation, though it was briefly brought back in a limited release in the late 1980s. It was made on a shoestring budget. The subject matter was so controversial that the then Mayor of Chicago would not allow it to be filmed in the city, which is where Greenlee had sought to film it. Gary, Indiana had to be the stage, instead. Despite the obvious budget ( and therefore technical) limitations--not to mention the dearth of then well known names--the film is highly effective. Many a movie patron who sat through it went home feeling somewhat--perhaps considerably--less secure about himself and the world around him. I loved the film.

An all-time favorite of mine.

[Killakai · 9/10 · 15 September 2006]

This film is what it is because of its story (which it owes to the novel) and overall good acting, especially by the main character. In addition, there are some great lines in he movie that display and respond to the racism of the times. In so many ways this film is still relevant today. The plot, more than anything else makes this movie a classic. Few films of that era, or any other, captured any meaningful part of the essence of a black revolutionary struggle. Most were full of 'getting the man' or 'paying back whitey' and that really isn't much a political agenda. One of my favorite parts is when the main character says:

"this ain't about hating white folks, because its gonna take way more than hating to sustain you. This is about wanting to be free..." and I can't remember the rest, but it was an important thing to put inside the movie.

Lastly, one of my favorite things about the movie is the ignorance of the white mayor, which is mirrored in real life today. They are so absorbed in their upper-class, ultra-white view of the world, they can never see an alternative view of things especially as it relates to how people of color see themselves, their lives and their respective governments.

Regardless of your political stance on things, you'd have to admit: Iraqi's did not greet us as liberators. The Vietnamese largely did not want American politics or interference. Cubans have not largely rebelled against Fidel Castro in spite of all of the pr4ssures placed on them by the US. Part of it is, that the US gov't is oblivious to what people really want and the other part is that they really don't care what people want, they care about their own interests.

This was shown throughout the film when the CIA director and the mayor made any number of condescending and overtly racist remarks about and directly to black people.

lots of great sound-bites in this. I love this film, its one for the collection.

And I was told when I viewed it in college, that it was played to all CIA recruits, I guess as a deterrent.

My Favorite Movie of All Times

[duckapoo18 · 10/10 · 2 September 2005]

This movie will make you think. What if an ordinary citizen joined the CIA with an agenda and was then able to carry it out? The believability of the storyline is what makes this so chilling. Even though the movie was released 31 years ago the idea is still fresh. Lawrence Cook was a one man show, playing an intelligent, accomplished and intense individual who becomes the first African American to join the CIA. There was not a hint of flash or style with him. Instead, he was like your brother or next door neighbor, the last person you would expect to start a revolution. The last line of the movie says it all.

When I read this book in High School, it quickly became one of my favorites. Now, as a movie it is an even more vivid reminder of the importance of never underestimating your opponent. When a motive is strong enough and that motive meets opportunity, watch out!

Excellent

[realredundant · 9/10 · 20 January 2007]

I took the message of self determination and exploiting the exploitative system to take skills and knowledge back to ones own community. Inspiring. Using counter terrorism tactics to teach the street gangs guerrilla warfare is just an example of this but it's handled well in the movie. I like that they don't throw in a tacky ending but leave it out there.

The scenes with Dan training in the CIA are confusing at first because you don't quite know where the movie is going and it did seem a little too easy for him to convince a street gang to follow him into urban revolution but that aside the sub plots like the friend who turns him in and the middle class black woman of his being scared by the revolutionary blacks make for a brilliant film.

Deceptively cheap looking at first.. but.. gets much better.

[thomas-korn · 9/10 · 11 March 2021]

This movie starts off as a cheap 1970s Made for TV show. This is highly deceptive because about 15 or 20 minutes in, Right away, we are shown (and told) that the CIA is starting an "affirmative action" program to recruit Negros into their organization. The training/elimination process is a bit stiff and stilted But again, soon as the main character gets the job as the Head replication processing division" (Photo copy boy) This is where the script really kicks in (the editing helps too) They pour on the genuine racism from whitiey pretty heavy. This helps to contrast the protagonist (honestly, I think he's an anti hero) having to swallow his pride while getting earfuls of crap from whitey and his brothers.

It goes places you would not expect..but glad it does take you on the journey it does.

All POWER TO the PEOPLE!!

[nuport · 30 July 2002]

This interesting drama hits dead on point for those of who dream of a better government and a better America .In the film ,a racist politician losing in the polls and fearing the loss of the so-called Negro vote decides to give the people a few crumbs off the table by allowing some black men to be recruited into the CIA. Certain under handed deals are made to insure none of these men will succeed ,however one guy makes it through all the rigorous training and educating. And in an incredible graduation scene (see it to believe it!)is congratulated for being the 1st of his race into the CIA. The films budgetary restraints are apparent throughout, but the entire cast deliver good performances most convincingly the main character.I won't spoil it suffice to say the guy gets to put all the training to very good use,as he resigns from the racist system and sets out to make real change for his community. I would give this 15*s

The Spook Who Sat by the Door makes you think nearly 40 years later

[tavm · 8/10 · 10 February 2012]

Just watched this long-banned film on YouTube. Author Sam Greenlee co-wrote and co-produced with director Ivan Dixon this quite controversial movie based on his book about Dan Freeman (Lawrence Cook) who becomes a token black C.I.A. employee before returning to his Chicago home in order to get an organization of many poor blacks to fight for black nationalism. For me personally, I was both excited and maybe a little appalled at what violent means were used to get their ends but I certainly was never bored. And Freeman really gets into the skin of his character. I especially liked his conversations with Pretty Willie (David Lemieux) about that character's "whiteness" (despite the way he looks, he really considers himself black) and J.A. Preston-as former college classmate Dawson who's now a police officer-about how he's not believing of the system. Really, all I'll now say is I highly recommend The Spook Who Sat by the Door. Oh, and the music score by Herbie Hancock is way cool! P.S. Both Greenlee and Hancock are natives of my birthtown of Chicago but you probably figured that out. And another player named Paula Kelly was born in Jacksonville, FL, which is where I once lived from 1987-2003.

Powerful!

[toni-78945 · 10/10 · 17 June 2020]

The blackface cop riding the bike on acid is priceless!

Let's not get carried away here

[mgmax · 4 November 2002]

Okay, by the low budget standards of blaxploitation films-- say, Three The Hard Way, which also deals with revolution on a cartoon level-- this is relatively intelligent, even witty (the idea that black men can sneak in anywhere-- as long as they look like janitors), and not full of howlingly silly things. That said, like Ganja and Hess it has been wildly overrated just because it's not ridiculous; it still has the snail's pace, relative lack of action and just-better-than-Oscar- Micheaux production values that mark the 70s genre. Say what you will about today's gangsta exploitation movies, they've got film-school style and a snappy pace even when they have nothing else.