Spook Who Sat By The Door, The (1973) Rating: Starring: Jack Aaron, Don Blakely, Paul Butler, Lawrence Cook, Paula Kelly Director: Ivan Dixon Category: Drama Studio: Monarch Home Video Subtitles: Length: 102 mins     "The film transcends the 'action' genre." - Boxoffice The Spook Who Sat by the Door is a cult classic and named one of the most influential black films of the 1970's (by Torriano Berry and Venise Berry in their book The 50 Most Influential Black Films). Dan Freeman, the "spook who sat by the door" is enlisted in the CIA's elitist espionage program as its first black agent. Upon mastering agency tactics, he returns home to Chicago with a mission to train street gangs as "Freedom Fighters." Quickly, they become experts in urban guerrilla warfare and plan to launch a war against the white power structure in every major US city. The Spook Who Sat By The Door is the first release in the new Obsidian Gold Series which is devoted to restoring forgotten Black movie classics. It was an overnight success when it was released in 1973, but every print mysteriously disappeared. The filmmakers say it was repressed by the government. Driven underground and available only on bootleg video, this controversial political thriller was nearly lost. Obsidian Home Entertainment was granted full access by the filmmakers to digitally restore the movie from the original camera negative which had been hidden in a Hollywood vault for 30 years.