COFFY

US, 1973, 91 minutes, Colour.
Pam Grier, Booker Bradshaw, Robert Do Qui, William Elliott, Alan Arbus, Sid Haig.
Directed by Jack Hill.

Even at the time, the first half of the 1970s, films like this received a label Black Exploitation, Blacksploitation. The films featured African- Americans, often in gangster films, and often in revenge films. The characters, their language, the scripted dialogue were from comic strips – later graphic novels. Everything was over the top, the situations were highly exaggerated and stylised, and performances seemed hyper rather than realistic. If the plots and characters were considered as realistic, they were ridiculous and absurd. But, in this Blacksploitation context, they offered excitement as well as some humour, even spoof.

One of the key performers in these films was Pam Grier, who 20 years later would appear in Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown, and would continue to have a long career. At this stage of her life, in her early 20s, she could play the femme fatale, she could play earnestness and respectability, she could appear as the seductress, and she could also go into fistfights with other violent attacks, especially with women characters – and she was not afraid of nudity. These were also the ingredients of black exploitation.

To that extent, the films seem very dated, especially with the large hair and the colourful clothes of the 1970s, and can be considered the period pieces that they are. During the 1980s there was something of a lull in African American films but there was a revival in the 1990s and to focus on boys and activities in the ‘Hood.

This is a revenge film. It opens with Pam Grier being seductive in the back of a car, luring a flashy drug dealer into wanting to have sex with her – and then her shooting him, revenge for the drug addiction of her sister. Then suddenly she is in hospital gear, assisting at an operation, a respectable nurse. Then she is talking with her friend, a policeman whose partner is corrupt. Then she is changing into lavish clothes to go out with her would-be politician boyfriend. And she seems convincing enough in each of these roles.

When her policeman friend is bashed along with her and has brain damage, she decides to go further in revenge, setting itself up as a woman from the Caribbean, available to be a high-class prostitute, ingratiating herself with several of the drug dealers. She also discovers that her politician friend is in league with these criminals.

While she has some success in getting rid of these bosses, even with their own guns, she herself gets beaten up, but has the nous to escape, being pursued by corrupt police in their cars, discovering that her boyfriend was exploiting her – and finishing up getting rid of all of them.

At the beginning she is wondering about her conscience and this kind of killing but she gets reassurance and is encouraged as she goes on.

So, with the exploitation, there is a lot of violence, a lot of sex and nudity, a lot of women’s fights, a lot of glamour, and some sleaze. The writing and directing is by Jack Hill, a director of many exploitation films including Foxy Brown with Pam Grier.