Although I’m not sure what I expected, Cooley High was like nothing I’d seen in the movies prior as the camera followed the main characters Preach (Glynn Turman) and Cochise (Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs) as they cut school, shot dice, hung out, went to parties, met girls and explored other misadventures on the streets of sixties Chicago. Unlike most flicks made during the Blaxploitation era, Cooley High was down-to-earth and relatable in ways that Shaft, Super Fly and The Mack could never be, because it was predicated upon the premise of real people doing real things. “I wanted to make movies about us as real human beings, not stereotypes,” director Michael Schultz, who also directed Car Wash (1976) and Krush Groove (1985) among a handful of other films, says. Working closely with screenwriter Eric Monte, who based Cooley High on his own sweet and sour life growing up in the infamous Cabrini Green projects in the ‘60s, this was the first film project for both men. “Whether it was the gangster stereotype or the hooker stereotype, I wanted to get to the heart of who we are. That hadn’t quite been done on the silver screen.

& why should you.
Say goodbye that is.

Cooley High is one of the most enduring and probably respected of the blaxploitation films.