This month’s movie pick is probably in bad timing. But, “f*ck all that feelings sh*t”. This movie is probably not to some of yous taste or interest. You will probably be entertained or annoyed or you just might be like me and be on that timing. No, I’m not gonna give a whole Big Boss monologue. This is the Retro Movie of October 2025.

The Spook Who Sat by the Door is a 1973 action crime–drama film based on the 1969 novel of the same name by Sam Greenlee. It is both a satire of the civil rights struggle in the United States of the late 1960s and a serious attempt to focus on the issue of Black militancy. Dan Freeman, the titular protagonist, is enlisted by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in its elitist espionage program, becoming its token Black person. After mastering agency tactics, however, he becomes disillusioned and drops out to train young Black people in Chicago to become “Freedom Fighters”.

Directed by Ivan Dixon, co-produced by Dixon and Greenlee, from a screenplay written by Greenlee with Mel Clay, the film starred Lawrence Cook, Paula Kelly, Janet League, J. A. Preston, and David Lemieux.

Sometime in the 1970’s in Chicago. After the approval rating in the African American community takes a nose dive for a U.S. Senator, the Agency decides it would be good optics for the government as well for itself to go out and publicly recruit African American males to join the CIA. With no intention of passing any of them they begin scouting in the inner city. To their surprise one recruit actually makes it through the training. Dan Freeman who unbeknownst to the Agency (Nowadays this would be impossible with social media and digital footprints), Freeman happens to be a Black Nationalist.

The idea of the Agency recruiting from the population isn’t hard to believe. There have been numerous occasions of people being covertly recruited or claim to have been recruited since the beginning of the Cold War. Especially with all the projects such as MK ULTRA.

Back to the plot – Freeman is a Black Nationalist and the Feds don’t know it. After passing his training, Freeman impresses his handlers. However, he is placed in the basement as file clerk and routine tour guide for visitors to project the image of inclusivity. This doesn’t last long before Freeman comes to the reality that he is a Token. (To be honest he most likely was aware this would happen from the start). Freeman keeps a low profile as he completes the Guerilla Warfare training in weapons, subversion, communications and you get the point. When he learns what he needs to learn he quietly resigns and returns to social work in Chicago.

Freeman has the intention of using what the government has taught him and turning it back on them. This is called BLOWBACK. He starts training local youths the same techniques he learned from the government and begins his insurgency for Black Liberation.

After its release the film was pulled from theaters and banned for a time by the FBI for its political tones and themes. Especially since the Civil Rights movement was still fresh in the minds of the inner cities and there were a lot of African American veterans returning home to a country they fought for and  experience the same racism and poverty that existed before the war; a lot of veterans with military training in guerilla warfare and weapons. The idea that this film might spark the idea for revolt and self-determination was just too scary for the powers that be that happen to be Ofay. Shame because, I wish this flew below their radar and more people were able to watch it.

“Tim Reid, whose company helped to release Spook on DVD, said to the Los Angeles Times in 2004: “When you look back at the times…Martin Luther King was assassinated, Malcolm X, Bobby Kennedy. Black people were really angry and frustrated; we were tired of seeing our leaders killed. What do we do? Do we have a revolution? There is nothing that comes close to this movie in terms of black radicalism.””

I mean if you remember how the proto-dudebros were all charged up after watching 300 for the first time enough they adopted it’s imagery, themes and masculinity(?) like cosplay, tribal tattoos and fake muscles shirts. It would’ve been interesting if THIS film had a longer life in the theaters – Could’ve been interesting.

Regardless of their attempts, enough people did watch it and it gained Cult status over the years before the original film reels were found and restored for the public.  

“Nina Metz wrote in the Chicago Tribune: “For years it was only available on bootleg video. In 2004, the actor Tim Reid tracked down a remaining negative stored in a vault under a different name (‘When they want to lose something, they lose it,’ Reid told the Tribune at the time) and released it on DVD.”  In a 2004 feature for NPR, Karen Bates reported that the director of the film, Ivan Dixon, admitted that United Artists would not show the film in a way that would allow its political message to come through when clips were viewed prior to the film’s public release. “Dixon says when United Artists screened the finished product and saw a Panavision version of political Armageddon, they were stunned.””

So f**k all that interference and here is for your pleasure or discomfort is the controversial, thought provoking and inspiring – 1970’S The Spook Who Sat by the Door, directed by Ivan Dixon.

Stay free, Stay Strapped, Read more, Learn Real History, Build your bodies and Minds, Question authority, Buy physical media, practice your aim, sharpen your punches and conceal your knives, know the law and the law won’t trick you. Stay fresh, smart and always keep your finger on that damn REWIND button.

Movie link: https://youtu.be/HG-56GKbPtk?si=C53B1Pwf0122h5IU

When we were kids, and we first beheld the wonder of console video games, the entire thing would sometimes seem like one huge river – no, an ocean is more appropriate. One deluge of games would be released, then another, and we’d still be tackling the first. Then here, a whole new system, and there, crazy new peripherals we never even knew we wanted (but we wanted them). It was like we could never run out of choices. The best (but perhaps most bewildering) part: we were duplicating a primary cycle that was approximately 3 years ahead of us in Japan, where all (most) of this stuff was getting made. One thing most of us were guilty of, though, at least until we were older, was that we’d make strong mental associations with the games and characters, but maybe not the great companies creating them. Now, as a grown-ass man writing about video games three times a month, I try to explore what I clearly missed as a child… the mostly unsung sagas of these companies, some of whom came from humble beginnings and seemingly faded away without the public noticing.

Hudson Soft is a tale that begins with Hiroshi and Yuji Kudo. In May of 1973, they opened a simple shop called CQ Hudson, which sold radio equipment and also had some nice art photographs. You know, stop in for a transistor, get a nice shot of the ocean for your mom as a gift. It’s worth noting that the company was named after a train, specifically the Japanese C62 which had been produced originally by Hudson Locomotives. Japan saw a lot of railway growth after the Second World War, which was when the Kudo boys were coming up.

The post-war choo choo that inspired two young Japanese boys to innovate and entertain.

Things went well for the Kudo brothers, and in 1975, they began selling products for personal computers. Around ’78, Hudson began inching into video games. At first, the firm was putting out around 25-30 titles a month, which sounds impossible; given the simplicity of the platforms in that era, however, it was far from it. Needless to say, this clone-vat approach bore only modest fruit, so Hudson leaped at the opportunity when given a shot a developing for Nintendo’s new Family Computer. Let me re-phrase that: Hudson strode confidently into video game history by becoming Nintendo’s FIRST third-party developer. They immediately met with strong success; both their port of Lode Runner and their self-conceived game Bomberman sold over 1 million copies. Bomberman had been released previously for Microsoft’s Japan-geared MSX computer, and Broderbund had done well with Lode Runner in the US and Europe, but the Famicom was the desired platform and the timing was just right.

Two titles that solidified Hudson Soft’s position in the top tier.

From its new office in Midtown Tower in Tokyo, Hudson continued to carve a place for itself in video game history. Starting in 1985, the company began doing something we wouldn’t even think of until the early 1990s: tournament-style video game competitions. Their first one revolved around the Hudson title Star Force in Summer of ’85; its sequel Star Soldier was used in ’86 and even had 2 and 5 minute modes built into its home version to reflect its status as a competitive game. These remarkable yearly events, which took a much less competitive tone after 1992, solidified Hudson Soft’s notoriety and popularity at home.

In 1987, Hudson teamed with NEC to create perhaps the greatest dark-horse console of the 20th Century: The PC Engine. Known in the West as the Turbo Grafx 16. I’ve already written a love letter to that console, so I’ll spare you the gushing… but it’s important to remember a few things. With this platform, Hudson Soft beat both Nintendo and Sega at a few things. The PC Engine set the record at the time for the smallest console. It also achieved graphically what the Mega Drive did, except almost three years earlier. Lastly, the portable version of the PC Engine wasn’t using its own pared-down set of games. This wasn’t some wrap-it-up Game Boy shit. It was using the same media as its mother system. It did this five years before Sega could pull off the same thing by producing the Nomad. There’s more to how awesome the PC-Engine is, but you’d be better served by reading my original article.

You’re not losing a whole lot visually, either.  Sorry, I just like rubbing this in because so many Sega partisans tend to studiously overlook it.

Other memorable titles from Hudson Soft (many of which saw multi-platform release) were Starship Hector, the Adventure Island series, Faxanadu, Milon’s Secret Castle, and my two favorites of theirs… Jackie Chan’s Action Kung Fu and Felix the Cat.

Hudson Soft’s main bank collapsed during a financial crisis around the turn of the millennium, driving the firm to offer itself on the Japanese stock market. To speed up a sad and tedious tale, Konami bought majority stock in Hudson; the two companies had worked amicably with each other since the early 80s and Konami sought to help give lift to the tired bee’s wings. Hudson still self-published until 2011-2012, when Konami bought what was left and absorbed it into itself. The final vestiges of Hudson Soft vanished in 2014, when its website began redirecting to Konami’s. Officially, the Hudson brand still exists, but it is part of Konami Digital Publishing.

The Hudson Bee about to be taken down from over the firm’s original HQ in Sapporo, 2/29/12.

I tell myself sometimes (And I’m sure someone reading this will laugh at me) that I’m helping preserve and curate history when I write articles like this. I know it’s not terribly significant stuff to the world at large, but it is to me… and to any gamer who likes knowing where things started. Thank you, Kudo Brothers. Thank you for starting a radio parts shop in 1973 and naming it after a train.

Thank you for everything.

More in February! Take care until then!