Lord Thing

Chicago Film Archives has restored two remarkable “lost” films that shed new light on an overlooked chapter of Chicago history: the role of gangs in West Side neighborhoods in the 1950s and 1960s, especially the organization known as the Vice Lords and, later, the Conservative Vice Lords. LORD THING in particular qualifies as a major rediscovery, not only for its eye-opening subject matter, but also for its dynamic style--an urgent mosaic of speeches, recollections, on-the-spot footage, and vigorously staged rumbles. Spawned by poverty and police harassment, the Lords eventually turned from destructive street violence to constructive social activism, only to be targeted by the Daley administration as a political and economic threat.
　　DeWitt Beall’s LORD THING (1970) is a film that “begins in the ghetto streets of the mid-Fifties— a virtual combat zone for dozens of small neighborhood gangs from different parts of the city [that in time unite] forces in a common cause.” Only a muddy VHS copy of the film had been circulating until CFA recently discovered 16mm prints in storage and under the care of Beall’s widow. This film won a Silver Medal in the Venice Film Festival.