THE SPOOK WHO SAT BY THE DOOR
I miss the days of the so-called blaxploitation movies because dammit some of those movies were first rate experimental films with hard-working casts and crazed directors who had axes to grind. Some people say that Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971) wasn't actually self-exploitive because more than any primarily African-American-oriented film it did not pander to white stereotypes and in fact took on the white establishment from beginning to end. That's perfectly fine with me. Matter of fact, there's an even better reason to think of Sweetback outside that particular category: It can't be strict blaxploitation because it came out a full year before The Godfather and a big part of the black film movement was a reaction to a line in Coppola's film where Don Zaluchi, referring to the idea of the Mafia getting in the drug business, says, "In my city, we would keep the traffic in the dark people, the coloreds. They're animals anyway, so let them lose their souls." But with the financial and extreme artistic success of Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (top grossing indie film of 1972) and the commercial popularity of Shaft, also from 1971, the retroactively amusing concept of amplifying certain aspects of a successful film and running those aspects into the ground caught fire, giving us a lot of genuine blaxploitation flicks, some of which were serious fun and some of which were just tripe.
Sweetback itself remains an amazing work that is nearly all to the credit of Melvin Van Peebles, who starred in, directed, produced, did the stunts and wrote the mother. In the movie, Sweetback is a hung stud with remarkable sexual prowess. When a Black Panther gets offed, the cops ask the whorehouse pimp if they can temporarily blame the deed on Sweet. Beetle the pimp agrees. The cops pick up another brother on the way to the station. The brother, Mu-Mu, gives the cops lip and Sweet breaks loose all hell. We get riots and the Hells Angels led by a long-haired lady, corrupt piggies and a swim across the Mexican border. We also get great lines such as a preacher concerned with the popos finding Sweetback. He says, "Man, you're hotter than little sister's twat." We also get some first rate propaganda against cops, most of which sort of writes itself. We even get the real life Melvin VP catching the clap from the "unsimulated" sex acts performed in the film. Well, hey, it was the age of realism. Speaking of which, Sweetback even impressed the fans of art films with its lighting and with the way the characters would break through the fourth wall by speaking directly about their own roles right into the camera.
The following year saw the release of another truly great blaxploitation film, Superfly. In this dynamite film, Ron O'Neal stars as Youngblood Priest (damn, whadda great name!), a coke dealer and karate expert who just wants to get out of the one business and has to use his fighting skills and brains to make it happen. See, it was kind of getting through to people in a big way at that time that hard drugs were just another tool used by the Man to keep us down and that trips like soda and smack were just another type of shackle. Even though I just wrote those words in a jive manner common to that period, the sentiment is real, folks, and the makers of films like these--and some of their young, white counterparts, such as Coppola--understood in ways that the glorifiers of hooch never would.
If you think I'm wrong about the anti-Mafia sentiment of these films, just consider some of the other hits of this period. In Hit Man, Bernie Casey (yep, the football player) kills a mobster for ruining his sister. In Across 110th Street (a true classic), Yaphet Kotto tries to save some brothers from getting killed for robbing the mob. And in Slaughter, Jim Brown takes on the crime syndicate. A lot of the films carried an anti-dope aroma, but none more so than Coffy, which starred a frequently undressed and active Pam Grier, yet another karate expert with an overdosed relative to avenge.
One of the most innovative aspects of these and other blaxploitation films of the era was the soundtrack. A good score can carry a film along and even enhance it. In some of these, the soundtrack did more than that. In some cases, the songs made commentary on the film itself. In others, it make the film bearable. Sweetback featured a then-unknown group called Earth, Wind and Fire. Superfly had the incredible Curtis Mayfield. And Trouble Man, which would not have otherwise been worth spit, had sweet Marvin Gaye.
If it's genuine exploitation you want, it was there. Black Mama, White Mama (again with Pam Grier) was a female version of The Defiant Ones. Blacula's referent is obvious, as is Black Caesar and Blackenstein.
One of the most fascinating films of this glorious period, however, was blacklisted for years. It was called The Spook Who Sat by the Door, a film we will talk about at long last.
In the interests of full disclosure, I will admit going into this that I am a fan of the late director Ivan Dixon. I liked him as an actor in the otherwise uninteresting TV series "Hogan's Heroes" and I liked him playing alongside Sidney Poitier in the film of A Raisin in the Sun. I knew he had turned director after leaving Hogan and company, and if you're a fan of the TV show "The Rockford Files," you'll see his name pop up on some of that series' better episodes.
Before The Spook Who Sat by the Door, Ivan Dixon directed the troubled Trouble Man, a great soundtrack with a lame movie accompanying it. But then, in 1973, the flood gates and blood gates spilled open and Dixon directed the film of a lifetime, one of the most disturbing and important films of anyone's career--and United Artists, the distributors of the film, yanked it from
theaters and refused to release it on DVD until 2004.
Let's see if we can guess why. Based on the Sam Greenlee novel, the story is that of an African-American named Dan Freeman, played with understated elegance by Lawrence Cook, who becomes the first black man to crack the color barrier at the Central Intelligence Agency. Aware that he is being used as a token, he blends in without rocking the boat, only to find himself assigned to the copy room. He stays there for five years until he informs the Director of Central Intelligence that he will be resigning quietly to go into social work back in Chicago. Hyper-paranoid, the Agency has been surveying his activities all along and they have found him to be no threat whatsoever, one of the reasons they agreed to take him on in the first place.
To this point, the movie is no more dangerous than your average 1970s situation comedy. To this point, you may find the lily white character development predictable. To this point, you may be pardoned if you have a good case of the yawns.
And then Dixon smacks you across the face and stomps out your guts.
I'm not going to give away the twist, although you can find out easily enough online. I will tell you that no matter how many period piece blaxploitation films you may have seen, you are not prepared for what happens in this movie. However, when you do watch the film, if you haven't done so already, I guarantee you that you'll be very uncomfortable with the ultra-specific details revealed about the nature of unrest. You may even wonder if this movie is still dangerous all these years later.
I hope it is dangerous. If a film cannot carry over the tension on the screen out onto your own personal sidewalk, then what the hell good is it? Don't get me wrong. This movie does not detail how a home mechanic can construct a hydrogen bomb. For that, there are many web sites. No, what this film reveals is far more dangerous and important than that. This film is about ideas brought into action. This film is a plan, a blue print, a schemata.
As such, I must admit that the editing leaves a bit to be desired. No, it isn't sloppy in the way of some films of the period. On the contrary, one gets the sense right away that this movie has production values far in excess of most films marketed to the black audience, the legitimacy those values give in turn adding to the fear factor. No, the editing issues I have here are with the pacing, which could have been sharper and a bit more urgent. But that's sort of like trying to impose plot constraints onto the writings of Hegel. It's theoretically possible, yet hard to imagine.
Harder to imagine still is that any American film company went along with releasing this movie. If somebody puts out a piece of shit that calls for the overthrow of the capitalist system, nobody gets alarmed because the lousy quality of the movie takes the edge off. If Woody Allen releases Bananas, which is indeed about that very subject, no one gets terribly upset because it's a comedy, and a good one at that. But let Ivan Dixon create a movie that confronts the power structure in this country--which is all I'm going to reveal here--and Bokan (the production company, which only has this one film to its credit) gets to make the movie even though the distributor--United Artists--gets to pull it before it has a chance to find an audience.
Here's my theory: Somebody at UA said to his friends: "Hey, this'll just be another Super Fly or Trouble Man. You know, some shit about dope setting you free and getting out from under The Man. Haw har haha! Them darkies is so predictable." And that turned out to be incorrect.
What is correct is that the FBI suppressed the film and the only reason it's available today is because Dixon kept a copy of the negatives of the film himself. That leads us to a contemporary documentary that I hope you will see. The film is called Infiltrating Hollywood: The Rise and Fall of The Spook Who Sat by the Door.
Why should you see this documentary? Well, from what I hear, you've been upset over SOPA and frantic over PIPL because of their potential for censorship--and rightly so. Given that, I think you deserve to be aware of an important part of American and world history where the agencies charged with providing national security violate that mandate every time they "protect" us from the truth.
Sweetback itself remains an amazing work that is nearly all to the credit of Melvin Van Peebles, who starred in, directed, produced, did the stunts and wrote the mother. In the movie, Sweetback is a hung stud with remarkable sexual prowess. When a Black Panther gets offed, the cops ask the whorehouse pimp if they can temporarily blame the deed on Sweet. Beetle the pimp agrees. The cops pick up another brother on the way to the station. The brother, Mu-Mu, gives the cops lip and Sweet breaks loose all hell. We get riots and the Hells Angels led by a long-haired lady, corrupt piggies and a swim across the Mexican border. We also get great lines such as a preacher concerned with the popos finding Sweetback. He says, "Man, you're hotter than little sister's twat." We also get some first rate propaganda against cops, most of which sort of writes itself. We even get the real life Melvin VP catching the clap from the "unsimulated" sex acts performed in the film. Well, hey, it was the age of realism. Speaking of which, Sweetback even impressed the fans of art films with its lighting and with the way the characters would break through the fourth wall by speaking directly about their own roles right into the camera.
The following year saw the release of another truly great blaxploitation film, Superfly. In this dynamite film, Ron O'Neal stars as Youngblood Priest (damn, whadda great name!), a coke dealer and karate expert who just wants to get out of the one business and has to use his fighting skills and brains to make it happen. See, it was kind of getting through to people in a big way at that time that hard drugs were just another tool used by the Man to keep us down and that trips like soda and smack were just another type of shackle. Even though I just wrote those words in a jive manner common to that period, the sentiment is real, folks, and the makers of films like these--and some of their young, white counterparts, such as Coppola--understood in ways that the glorifiers of hooch never would.
If you think I'm wrong about the anti-Mafia sentiment of these films, just consider some of the other hits of this period. In Hit Man, Bernie Casey (yep, the football player) kills a mobster for ruining his sister. In Across 110th Street (a true classic), Yaphet Kotto tries to save some brothers from getting killed for robbing the mob. And in Slaughter, Jim Brown takes on the crime syndicate. A lot of the films carried an anti-dope aroma, but none more so than Coffy, which starred a frequently undressed and active Pam Grier, yet another karate expert with an overdosed relative to avenge.
One of the most innovative aspects of these and other blaxploitation films of the era was the soundtrack. A good score can carry a film along and even enhance it. In some of these, the soundtrack did more than that. In some cases, the songs made commentary on the film itself. In others, it make the film bearable. Sweetback featured a then-unknown group called Earth, Wind and Fire. Superfly had the incredible Curtis Mayfield. And Trouble Man, which would not have otherwise been worth spit, had sweet Marvin Gaye.
If it's genuine exploitation you want, it was there. Black Mama, White Mama (again with Pam Grier) was a female version of The Defiant Ones. Blacula's referent is obvious, as is Black Caesar and Blackenstein.
One of the most fascinating films of this glorious period, however, was blacklisted for years. It was called The Spook Who Sat by the Door, a film we will talk about at long last.
In the interests of full disclosure, I will admit going into this that I am a fan of the late director Ivan Dixon. I liked him as an actor in the otherwise uninteresting TV series "Hogan's Heroes" and I liked him playing alongside Sidney Poitier in the film of A Raisin in the Sun. I knew he had turned director after leaving Hogan and company, and if you're a fan of the TV show "The Rockford Files," you'll see his name pop up on some of that series' better episodes.
Before The Spook Who Sat by the Door, Ivan Dixon directed the troubled Trouble Man, a great soundtrack with a lame movie accompanying it. But then, in 1973, the flood gates and blood gates spilled open and Dixon directed the film of a lifetime, one of the most disturbing and important films of anyone's career--and United Artists, the distributors of the film, yanked it from
theaters and refused to release it on DVD until 2004.
Let's see if we can guess why. Based on the Sam Greenlee novel, the story is that of an African-American named Dan Freeman, played with understated elegance by Lawrence Cook, who becomes the first black man to crack the color barrier at the Central Intelligence Agency. Aware that he is being used as a token, he blends in without rocking the boat, only to find himself assigned to the copy room. He stays there for five years until he informs the Director of Central Intelligence that he will be resigning quietly to go into social work back in Chicago. Hyper-paranoid, the Agency has been surveying his activities all along and they have found him to be no threat whatsoever, one of the reasons they agreed to take him on in the first place.
To this point, the movie is no more dangerous than your average 1970s situation comedy. To this point, you may find the lily white character development predictable. To this point, you may be pardoned if you have a good case of the yawns.
And then Dixon smacks you across the face and stomps out your guts.
I'm not going to give away the twist, although you can find out easily enough online. I will tell you that no matter how many period piece blaxploitation films you may have seen, you are not prepared for what happens in this movie. However, when you do watch the film, if you haven't done so already, I guarantee you that you'll be very uncomfortable with the ultra-specific details revealed about the nature of unrest. You may even wonder if this movie is still dangerous all these years later.
I hope it is dangerous. If a film cannot carry over the tension on the screen out onto your own personal sidewalk, then what the hell good is it? Don't get me wrong. This movie does not detail how a home mechanic can construct a hydrogen bomb. For that, there are many web sites. No, what this film reveals is far more dangerous and important than that. This film is about ideas brought into action. This film is a plan, a blue print, a schemata.
As such, I must admit that the editing leaves a bit to be desired. No, it isn't sloppy in the way of some films of the period. On the contrary, one gets the sense right away that this movie has production values far in excess of most films marketed to the black audience, the legitimacy those values give in turn adding to the fear factor. No, the editing issues I have here are with the pacing, which could have been sharper and a bit more urgent. But that's sort of like trying to impose plot constraints onto the writings of Hegel. It's theoretically possible, yet hard to imagine.
Harder to imagine still is that any American film company went along with releasing this movie. If somebody puts out a piece of shit that calls for the overthrow of the capitalist system, nobody gets alarmed because the lousy quality of the movie takes the edge off. If Woody Allen releases Bananas, which is indeed about that very subject, no one gets terribly upset because it's a comedy, and a good one at that. But let Ivan Dixon create a movie that confronts the power structure in this country--which is all I'm going to reveal here--and Bokan (the production company, which only has this one film to its credit) gets to make the movie even though the distributor--United Artists--gets to pull it before it has a chance to find an audience.
Here's my theory: Somebody at UA said to his friends: "Hey, this'll just be another Super Fly or Trouble Man. You know, some shit about dope setting you free and getting out from under The Man. Haw har haha! Them darkies is so predictable." And that turned out to be incorrect.
What is correct is that the FBI suppressed the film and the only reason it's available today is because Dixon kept a copy of the negatives of the film himself. That leads us to a contemporary documentary that I hope you will see. The film is called Infiltrating Hollywood: The Rise and Fall of The Spook Who Sat by the Door.
Why should you see this documentary? Well, from what I hear, you've been upset over SOPA and frantic over PIPL because of their potential for censorship--and rightly so. Given that, I think you deserve to be aware of an important part of American and world history where the agencies charged with providing national security violate that mandate every time they "protect" us from the truth.
