My review was written in March 1983 after a screening at New Directors/New Films series at Midtown Manhattan screening.
Titled after the neon sign above the community gathering spot, "Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads" is a diverting fictional student film by 25-year-old Spike Lee. Filmed as a master's thesis project using student crew and pro thesps, hour-long opus is well-lensed as a slice of life of black people coping with neighborhood problems and the influence of the numbers racket.
After his partner Joe (Horace Long) is murdered fro skimming off the barbershop's numbers trade, Zachariah (Monty Ross) takes over the haircut business, but finds no customers when he tries to steer clear of the rackets. His social worker wife Ruth (Donna Bailey) places one of her charges, a youngster nicknamed Teapot (Stuart Smith), as a helper in the shop, and everyone prospers as Zachariah agrees to let numbers kingpin Nicholas Lovejoy (Tommie Hicks) re-establish the site as a local betting parlor.\
With filmmaker Spike Lee glossing over the moral crises, Zack eventually takes a stand against the rackets and pic's open ending offers no solution eo everyman's dilemma in trying to survive (or escape) a harsh, limiting environment. Eschewing the sex and violence cliches of blaxploitation gangster films, Lee delivers a friendly portrait of blakc folkways that, except for the convincing street language and wit, is probably too mild to capture a sizable audience.
With the married lead characters a trifle unconvincing, film's best role (in an all-black cast except for one bit part) is numbers magnate Nicholas Lovejoy (said to be patterned after the early career of Cleveland's fight promoter Don King), well-enacted as a cool, smooth philosopher by Tommie Hicks.
Ernest Dickerson's camerawork and other tech credits are pro quality, and film is aided by a jazz score by the director's father, Bill Lee.
