Pam Grier and Jack Hill: Crafting the Archetype

Blaxploitation as a subgenre is an absolute minefield. At its best, it led to Black actors, writers, directors, and other creative parties getting to make compelling B-movies with better representation than had been seen in prior years, often with the backing of significant studios. At its worst, it indulged in all the bad habits of 1970s exploitation cinema in general with added racial frisson making everything more problematic. White directors and writers jumping into the genre could, perhaps, be expected to be especially prone to the latter failure mode, especially if they glossed over some of the radical politics behind early genre works and just went broke out the obvious aesthetic tropes of the genre (slap bass, pimp hats, you know the deal).

On the other hand, some managed to be better allies; in particular, the movies that Jack Hill wrote and directed as vehicles for Pam Grier, Coffy and Foxy Brown, have proved ripe for examination from a feminist perspective over the years, since they’re essentially hard-edged action movies with a Black woman in the lead role at a time when merely seeing a woman taking the lead in such a movie was a rarity. With Arrow Video having put out blu-ray versions of both, let’s see how they stand up some 50-odd years later.

Coffy

Flower Child Coffin (Grier) is an emergency room surgical nurse turned bloodthirsty avenger, intent on taking out the drug pushers she blames for getting her younger sister LuBelle (Karen Williams) hooked on the drugs that have ravaged her body and left her unresponsive in a rehab facility. Saving lives in her day job and taking them in her spare time is doing a serious number on her, and worse yet Officer Carter (William Elliot), her police officer ex-boyfriend, has ended up stumbling across one of her murders; despite the fact she set the scene up to look like one of her victims shot the other then overdosed, Carter doesn’t buy that narrative, and disaster beckons if he digs deeper. What’s more, the more Coffy damages the local organised crime racket, the more a different and even more vicious syndicate moves into the vacuum.

Still, things are looking up – her boyfriend, city councilman Howard Brunswick (Booker Bradshaw), is running for Congress – and Carter might in the long run be more interested in taking down the corrupt cops he works alongside than discovering the truth behind two gangsters’ deaths. Yet Howard has a web of business interests across the city he holds with the assistance of some silent partners he isn’t too specific about – and Carter’s own partner on the force is in on the racket. When Carter won’t play ball, a couple of masked goons bust down his door, beat him bloody, rough up Coffy for good measure, and then one of them tries to rape her into the bargain before his buddy, aware that they really need to be gone quick if they’re going to get away with this, pulls him off. With Carter left comatose with severe brain damage, Coffy doubles down on her path of revenge – but is she ready for where it will lead?