I was in a really crabby mood the other night, but soon after
Emily popped writer/director Jack Hill's blaxploitation classic
into the VCR, I found myself carried away on a wave of euphoria
the likes of which I've never known. The flick opens with perhaps
the greatest theme song ever recorded ("Coffy is the color/of
your skin/Coffy is the world/you live in"), then jumps
head-on into its violent storyline: The incredible Pam Grier--built
like a brick shithouse full of bobcats and in full-on ass-whoopin'
mode--is out to avenge her little sister, who, at the tender age
of 11, shot up with some bad smack and ended up comatose. Pam
plays the horny junkie to lure in a local pusher, then blows his
head off with a shotgun. The brains are still dripping off the
camera when the fierce Pam jabs a needle into the pusher's li'l
buddy, forcing him to OD. Later, the Pamster chills with her cop
ex-boyfriend, who tells her that Italian mobster Arturo Vitroni
is "moving in on the black rackets." When the cop refuses
to go on the take, Vitroni sends a couple of ski-masked, baseball
bat-wielding honkies to stomp a mudhole in the cop's ass. Pam,
unaware that her Congressman wannabe boyfriend is mixed up in
all this, sets out on the vengeance trail. She questions a junkie
ex-hooker, but is interrupted by the arrival of the hooker's burly
black dyke "old man," who says, "I go away for
half an hour for you to turn a trick and when I come home I find
you balling some nigger bitch!" By pretending to be Jamaican
(!), Pam infiltrates the legion of hos under the employ of suave
pimp King George in hopes of getting close to Vitroni. After hiding
razor blades in her 'fro, Pam instigates one of the wildest catfights
ever committed to celluloid, featuring more gratuitous boobs than
you can shake a pimp-stick at. The flick gets even cooler as it
goes along, if you can believe that, as the always-great Sid Haig
tries to do the underpants-polka with Pam in the L.A. river, King
George meets a brutal end and Pam discovers the truth about her
lovin' man. Blaxploitation flicks don't get any better than this,
and nobody rules the planet like Pam Grier (soon to be
seen in Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown!). Rent it immediately.
(Orion)
--Scott Phillips
Other Films by Jack Hill
Foxy Brown 
Spider Baby 
Film Vault Suggested Links
Sister Street Fighter 
Black Angels 
Truck Stop Women 
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