Each week on Cathode Ray Mission, video store nerds Randy & Will plumb the depths of Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, and all the other streaming services to find the best and worst of big-budget cinema blockbusters, direct-to-video cult favorites, and everything in between.
This week we directly address the historic demonstrations that have been held across the U.S. and around the world in response to the most recent wave of highly public murders and other violent crimes perpetrated by police officers and their supervising agencies.
To do this we watched Uptight, Jules Dassin's 1968 crime drama made following his return to the U.S. after being blacklisted from Hollywood. Uptight was released the same year as Rev. Martin Luther King's assassination and uses the aftermath as a backdrop to tell the story of a group black revolutionaries in Cleveland, OH and the botched gun heist that threatens to tear their movement apart.
The screenplay was written by Dassin along with the film's star Julian Mayfield and co-star Ruby Dee who also co-produced the film alongside Dassin. It's based on The Informer, a novel originally set in Ireland had been twice adapted to film with John Ford's 1936 version winning 3 Oscars.
The film's clear political stance made it a risky release for Paramount and despite helping to inspire the political messages of the emerging Blaxploitation genre, the film has been largely ignored for over 50 years.
This film is obscure but easily available for purchase on DVD, rental or purchase on Amazon Video, it appears on channels like Criterion occasionally, and several versions are available on YouTube at the time of this release.
This week we encourage listeners to check the movie out, show and discuss it to others, and donate anything you can (be it cash or your own time) to organizations in your community that help citizens fight against abuse from the police and other systems of power.
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