The Spook Who Sat by the Door

Possibly the most radical of the ?blaxploitation?films of the 70s, this movie was an overnight sucess when it was released in 1973 and then was abruptly taken out of distribution for reasons that are still not entirely clear. A mildmannered social worker (Lawerence 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). Corrosivley ionic and often exciting, this adaption 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 filmaking.