Doube (Barrel) Dose of Grier - COFFY

Dear Pam Grier,

I’m sorry.  I’ve been running Schizocinema for over two years and have reviewed over a hundred movies, but only ran my first Pam Grier movie a couple of weeks ago.  Worse yet, it was SCREAM BLACULA SCREAM.  Fun to write, but not a worthy entrance for someone of your caliber.  Don't get me wrong, there is no such thing as a bad Pam Grier performance.  Your voodoo priestess was the star of the show.  And while you were the one to make Blacula scream, I just wanted more.  I wanted you to stare down a vampire until he quaked.  I wanted you to put a racist cop in his place.  I wanted you punch a bat.  You didn’t get to call anyone a motherfucker.  In short, I wanted the full Pam Grier experience.  So, to make it up to you, and to me, and to everyone, I’m closing out Black History Month with a double dip, the quintessential Pam Grier movie (that doesn’t end with BROWN).  Get ready for Jack Hill’s 1973 Blaxploitation gem, COFFY.

The Capsule

To everyone who knows her, Coffy (Pam Grier) is a hard working nurse who wouldn't hurt a fly.  But when her darling 11 year old sister is turned into a vegetable by some bad junk, Coffy takes her double barrel sized grudge against dope dealers to the streets of L.A., leaving a trail of dead pushers in her wake.  Just when she is thinking of retiring her shotgun, her friend Carter (William Elliott) gets beaten into a coma for being the only cop not on the take.  Her soon to be congressman boyfriend, Howard Brunswick (Booker Bradshaw)
says he is going to clean up the crime, but Coffy's wheels of justice turn faster.  She is going to work her way up the ladder, starting with King George (Robert DoQui).  The dapper, high society pimp gets her a personal meeting with big time crime boss Arturo Vitroni (Allan Arbus), but just before she can ice the main man, his vicious henchman, Omar (Sid Haig) gets the jump on her.  While Vitroni decides what to do with her, Coffy gets an unpleasant surprise that pulls the rug from under her.  Down isn't out, though, and Vitroni's gang are in for their own surprises when Coffy unleashes her righteous fury.

Ask anyone, in the know, to picture Pam Grier at her most badass, 9 times out of 10, that image is going to be from either COFFY or FOXY BROWN.  Both are the work of legendary exploitation writer/director Jack Hill.  He made mean, gritty movies that were exactly what the '70s drive-in crowd wanted, heavy on the violence, nudity, and attitude.  Hill knew how to push the boundaries way outside of good taste, while keeping it fun and satisfying.  His morally questionable heroes always went through hell, but they gave much more than they got.  None more so than his #1 pistol packing mama, Pam Grier.  He knew he had something special in Grier ever since her breakout role in THE BIG DOLLHOUSE (yeah, you can also thank Hill for the Women in Prison genre boom).    

Hill takes all the torrid tropes and gleefully dials them to the max for COFFY.  The film opens with Coffy seducing mid-level, fashion conscious dope dealer, Sugarman (Morris Buchanan).  His proposal is drugs for sex, her counter-offer is a shotgun to the face.  Hill isn’t graphic, but he doesn’t leave anything to your imagination.  His violence is cheap, blunt, and hits like a hammer.  The carnage ranges from pulpy to disturbing, depending on who is dishing it out.  The scene where Sid Haig’s proudly racist Omar drags one of the characters behind a moving car, and into every barrier he can manage, is straight-up horrifying.  

Nudity is also ladled on liberally, most notably in what could accurately be described as the “Catfight at the Boob-A-Rama Bowl.”  Coffy infiltrates superpimp King George’s swank penthouse headquarters by posing as a sophisticated Jamaican call girl (clearly from her accent, King George has never been to, nor heard anyone one from, Jamaica).  His number one lady, Meg (Linda Haynes) doesn’t like all the attention her lover/boss/abuser is giving the new girl, and rallies the rest of the gals against Coffy.  Eventually, all the tension boils over into a call girl throw down where EVERYONE ends up topless.  I swear, if one of the girls had been in a space suit, she still would have a boob out by the end.  The ribald rumble comes to an end when Meg gets a handful of the razors Coffy hid in her hair.  I’m not sure if she had other plans for them, or if she just knows that Catfighting 101 states eventually a bitch will grab your hair.

Speaking of which, Coffy has a talent for hiding weapons.  She uses her hair again to stash a sharpened hair clip, and keeps a silenced pistol inside a stuffed lion.  Still not sure where she was concealing the double barrel shotgun from the beginning.

The rogue’s gallery Coffy is up against is so cartoonish, like the camera-shy hitman with one blacked out glasses lens (I’m glad Snake Pliskin went with the eye patch), or aggressively offensive, like kinky sadist Vitroni (he’s sort of a racist Joel Grey), that you can’t feel bad when they get wasted.  King George is the one exception, mostly because nobody deserves his horrendous fate (not at Coffy’s hand), but also because he earns a modicum of sympathy for how he comforts a post-catfight Meg.  He tells her he loves her and gives her a couple of weeks to rest before turning tricks again.  As pimps go, that’s almost gentlemanly.  Plus, he has his own theme song.  

That bigoted bastard Omar, on the other hand, deserves everything he gets.  Haig plays him like a grinning mad dog, gleefully anticipating his next chance to cause harm.  Omar smugly struts around like he owns the place, so its immensely satisfying when he goes out like a punk, looking terrified and begging for help.  

Though she clearly does not mess around, Grier doesn’t play Coffy like a cold-blooded killing machine.  She has doubts about the dark path she walks.  She gets scared, and is overpowered by Vitroni’s goons.  The one thing she doesn’t do is cower and wait to be rescued.  Even before her cop friend Carter got his noggin bashed, Coffy was all on her own.  She thinks fast, follows through, and she fucking well means business.  When a hooker she is trying to get information from pulls a knife on her, Coffy's first impulse is to smash a liquor bottle and wrap her coat around her arm like she’s a gladiator ready for battle (the hooker wisely backs down).

And for god’s sake, do not betray this woman.  [Spoilers coming] Turns out, her moralizing politician boyfriend is in bed with Vitroni.  To worsen the sting, Brunswick looks Coffy in the face and gives her up to Vitroni just to save himself.  Naturally, after she plows through the gangsters, dirty cops, and hitmen (literally), Coffy ends her spree at her ex’s house.   



Up until now, Coffy has been on a righteous crusade against the toxic dregs of society.  She’s kept some distance between her deeds and herself.  Brunswick is personal.  Not only did she love the conniving congressman, she believed in his commitment to the black community.  Learning that he was full of shit on all fronts crushes her.  Even after everything she has seen and heard, she still wants to believe him.  The smooth talking weasel almost has her convinced he’s still a stand-up guy, too, until his topless, white girlfriend pops out from the bedroom.  Coffy ends the debate by shooting him in the dick and taking a beach side walk in the sunrise.

Having just come from seeing BLACK PANTHER, the racial politics of Blaxploitation tends to be eye rolling at best.  Even though the priority of these movies was less about tackling social issues and more about selling tickets, the value cannot be dismissed.  The ‘70’s produced dozens of movies starring a predominately black cast, showing African Americans as heroes and ass kickers.  They handled their own problems, because the system was rigged against them.  Bad guys tended to be blatantly racist, and almost always got their comeuppance.  Blaxploitation may not have offered a nuanced, realistic representation of African Americans, but it was still representation.  The genre died with the decade, leaving the '80s a conspicuous void until directors like John Singleton showed the market for African American themed cinema was still alive and hungry.  Just imagine how the genre could have evolved if it had escaped its exploitation roots of the ‘70’s, filling the gap between Melvin Van Peeples and Spike Lee, weening out the stereotypes while maintaining the spirit.  At the very least we would have gotten more Pam Grier movies.

C Chaka