In 1973, actress Pam Grier and director Jack Hill poured some Coffy onto the blaxploitation genre with awesomely sleazy results as socially conscious nurse, Flower Child Coffin (yes, that actually is her name), went undercover as a prostitute in order to get revenge on the dope pushers that had caused her little sister to become a strung out wreck. Impressively tasteless and hard-edged as hell, this two-fisted heroine took as many lumps as she gave and after becoming something of an icon, a sequel seemed inevitable.
However, that’s not quite what transpired as even though 1974s Foxy Brown looks like a Coffy sequel and smells like a Coffy sequel, it’s very much it’s own thing – right down to the unfeasibly funky, kaleidoscopic, James Bond inspired title sequence that sees the actress gyrating to such lyrics as “No, but please don’t make Foxy mad, or you’ll find out that the lady is super bad”. Strap yourself in baby, because it’s time for another round of afro wearing, jive talkin’ craziness that regularly skirts the line separating cool, from flat out offensive. You dig?
Foxy Brown is a woman with her finger on the pulse of the street, but that doesn’t stop her no-good brother, Link, trying all manner of get rich quick schemes that includes gambling and running coke which gets him into hot water with some local hoods. After Foxy bails her brother out of his latest scrape after a couple of heavies look to beat his face to a pulp, she angrily demands that he put a stop to all of his various bullshit, but unbeknownst to her, Link’s weak nature will soon spell disaster.
You see, Foxy’s government agent boyfriend has just undergone facial reconstructive surgery (as you do) to protect his identity after informing on a local crime syndicate run by obscene power couple Kathryn Wall and Stevie Elias – however, it doesn’t take long for the opportunistic Link to spot the subterfuge and leak the information for a big fat payday. Before you know it, Foxy’s boyfriend is taking a dirt nap thanks to a back full of hot lead and our heroine is adamant she’s going to get herself the most righteous revenge she possibly can. But because this is an exploitation film through and through, first Foxy has to infiltrate the criminal organisation as one of their prostitutes and soon finds herself on the inside, trying to help the other whores find a way out and generally being a spanner in the works for the murderous duo of Wall and Elias. However, it wouldn’t be much of a blaxploitation revenge thriller if our avenging angel didn’t get found out and so suddenly, Foxy has to fight her way out of some truly sticky predicaments using her guts, wits and a particularly nasty use of some wire hangers.
Exactly why Foxy Brown isn’t a sequel to Coffy, I’m not sure, but what is evident in Jack Hall and Pam Grier’s second shot at blaxploitation immortality is that this is a far more accessible adventure than the uber-sleazy tone the previous movie set. Oh, all the murders, racism, rape, drug use and whoring are all still present and correct, of course – exploitation movies have a reputation to uphold, after all – but it’s delivered in a way that noticably less squalid than Coffy’s grimy, nihilistic attitude.
For a start, the movie starts with that afformentioned title sequence that puts Grier front and centre and makes the work of Maurice Binder look as sensible and restrained as watching grey paint dry. Watching her dance and whip out a pistol to the strains of Willie Hutch’s righteous theme song while rainbow colours pound your eyes like Mike Tyson working a punching bag, you realise that we’re now supposed to see Grier as almost a sex icon, superhero-like figure, rather than Coffy’s angry vengence junkie. Similarly, Hill directs with more confidence than before, infusing its bizarre content with more of a comic book feel that makes it’s more noticably sordid material a little more palatable. However, while its debatable which approach is better, Foxy stands on her own two feet by being just as good as her predecessor, just in slightly different ways.
Obviously, Grier stands astride the movie like a beautiful black colossus, with her pistol-concealing afro on point and a bunch of hard boiled dialogue on her lips. There’s not many actress working in the 70s who could pull of lines like “The darker the berry, the sweeter the juice, honey” with such conviction, but Grier finds the perfect balance of camp and grit as she gets down to her bloody mission.
The mission proves to be ridiculous as fuck, and while the plot tends to drift into weird little side-quests, they still end up adding to the madness. For example, there’s the plot thread of the call girl who isn’t allowed to leave to be with her family; yet Hill has it veer into strange territory that sees Foxy having to save her from a bar full of violent lesbians which ends in a fight that boasts the fight choreography of the Adam West Batman show.
However, when the movie gets down to business, it’s rather messy plot becomes something of a virtue as you genuinely have no idea where the fuck the movie is going to go next. Once the help-a-whore plot line has run its course, Foxy is then whisked away to a run down drug factory/farm run by two disturbingly rapey hicks where, after being abused of course – exploitation movie, remember? – she eventually escapes in magnificently violent fashion and from there on it’s a madcap dash to the finish.
Kudos have to be given to Katheryn Loder and Peter Brown for creating such an intriguing pair of villains, whose complicated dynamic proves to be the most complex aspect of the film by far (she adores him, but is repulsed by here but is addicted to the power she wields) – but even more kudos have to go to the vicious lengths Foxy goes to when it comes to dismantling their business. With a spoiler warning baring out at full volume, some of Foxy Brown’s more perverse pleasures come from the moments when she blinds and burns some rapists alive, obliterates a henchman by driving a plane through him and, best of all, having her vigilante friends slice off the meat and two veg from a screaming Elias so she can gift it to a horrified Wall pickled in a jar.
Aside from dubious wonders such as these, we also get treated to cameo from the omnipresent Sid Haig (whenever Grier had serious shit to wade through, Haig never seemed to be far away) and a pre-Huggy Bear Antonio Fargas as Foxy’s skeevy brother and even though Grier’s reign continued with the likes of Friday Foster and Sheba, Baby, they never quite reached the heights of her opening one-two punch.
Some prefer the unfettered grime of Coffy, while others hitch their wagon to the flashier Foxy – but in my opinion, there is no real correct answer as both give you all the Grier you can handle – and then some.
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