January 6 movie: Coffy. I had never heard of this movie before, but TCM has been running a promo in heavy rotation for the past week, all about what an amazing film it is (along with Foxy Brown) and what an amazing actress Pam Grier is. And since I've been watching a lot of movies lately, I've seen this promo over and over. And though I'd never heard of Coffy nor seen Foxy Brown, I didn't need to be convinced of Pam Grier's awesomeness. So I recorded the movie.
I'm very glad I did. Coffy is indeed extremely awesome. It's a blacksploitation film about Grier hunting down the bad people (mostly drug dealers) who ruined the lives of her sister and her cop ex-boyfriend with heroin and a severe beating, respectively. It's a fairly repetitive plot: Grier works her way into a situation via her amazing charm and even more amazing boobies, identifies the bad guys, and kills them. Rinse and repeat. There's one really difficult scene to watch, where a group of bad guys kill another bad guy by dragging him behind a car. Otherwise the movie doesn't seem to take itself too seriously.
In the TCM promo, the director said he wanted to create a heroine women could identify with because she wins through her cleverness. She also wins through the power of her afro, in which she hides razor blades, and later a bobby pin she has sharpened into a weapon. And did I mention the boobies? The movie is full of them. There's one extended catfight scene which features the "oops, my top fell off!" move on almost a half-dozen women.
Georg didn't watch the movie but I made him watch one scene where they introduce a pimp named "King George," complete with a kick-ass costume (including capelet) and his own theme song, "George, George, George ... he's the king!" The movie also features that guy who played Major Sidney Freedman on M*A*S*H as a big bad drug dealer with ridiculous sexual proclivities and an even more ridiculous accent.
3 Comments
"...and what an amazing actress Pam Grier was."
you scared me, i thought she'd died recently or something! but she's still very much alive.
she has (or had) a recurring role on "the L word" most recently, i believe. kudos to tarantino for bringing her back to hollywood.
sorry! I meant "what an amazing actress she was IN THE MOVIE." Sorry for the confusing implication!
I was going to say that I wished the "Tarantino bump" had applied to Robert Forster too, he's such a good actor. But then I looked him up in IMDB and he's done tons of work since Jackie Brown, and was working fairly steadily before it too. Just not stuff I watch.