When a US senator realizes that he’s starting to lose the Black vote he calls out the CIA for their lack of any Black agents as a cynical ploy in the name of racial equality. As his fellow candidates fall away Dan Freeman positions himself as an incredibly curious student and quick learner who is more than happy to perform as the smiling token for his white bosses and the US government. Playing the long game, he puts his time in at the CIA only to retire under the pretense of becoming a social worker in Chicago. But when he gets there he can finally begin the plan he had all along: use his CIA training to convert street gangs into urban guerillas and enact a Black nationalist armed revolution.

Easily the most politically incendiary film of the blacksploitation film cycle, The Spook Who Sat By The Door still has the power to shock. Based on the novel of the same name by Sam Greenlee (who wrote the screenplay), the film is a blatant revolutionary polemic that subverts all conventions and expectations of blacksploitation by essentially not being one, just simply playing with its symbols and styles. Incredibly frank and upfront about race, power, politics, violence, gender, the film isn’t just an artistic call to arms but basically a blueprint on how to make a Black revolution happen in America. 

And according to legend the authorities knew this too.

Though set in Chicago, most of it was filmed in Gary, IN due to the inability to get permits from the city. Once completed United Artists, who agreed to distribute the film based on two scenes that made it look like a stereotypical blacksploitation film, freaked out. According to Sam Greenlee the film was in theaters for a couple of weeks and then mysteriously vanished, 50 film prints disappeared, and the negatives were saved only because Ivan Dixon hid them in a vault under a different name. 

Whether or not that tale is true, The Spook Who Sat By The Door was long relegated to only being seen via the few beat up 35mm prints that have survived or as a bootleg VHS for a criminally long period of time. It was finally issued an official home release in 2004. Since then it has slowly regained the respect and audience it always deserved. It was added to the National Film Registry for being “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” in 2012 and just recently had a 4K restoration via the Library of Congress and the Film Foundation.

Half a century after its initial release, this film still hits hard. In Donald Trump’s post-Obama, post-Black Lives Matter, white nationalist America, The Spook Who Sat By The Door feels like walking into a movie theater and being handed a loaded gun and getting a two hour course in how to use it. And why you should.