Movie Review: Coffy and Foxy Brown

I'm keeping track of the movies I watch in 2007 over on the DVDTalk Forums; my 2006 list is located here.

TCM Underground ran a Pam Grier double-feature the other night - surprisingly uncut (remember when Bill Cosby use to do ads for TCM boasting on how there was "no cursing"? Not when Rob Zombie is hosting!). I'd seen Foxy Brown before, but not Coffy. They're very similar movies (and apparently Foxy Brown was originally supposed to be a sequel to Coffy) - Pam Grier's character suffers a personal loss at the hands of a drug syndicate, infiltrates the syndicate's prostitute ring and starts killing. While both films have the requisite quota of violence and nudity, Coffy has a little more interesting plot. Coffy is betrayed by a supposed friend towards the end of that movie, and that betrayal is kept more in the dark. Foxy Brown's betrayal comes right at the start and is broadly telegraphed (how did Foxy not see what was coming?).

Grier is impressive in both films, but is a little more vicious in the fights in Coffy (notable exception - her final scene with the female drug lord in Foxy Brown). And did she do her own stuntwork in a scene where a policeman tries to run her down in a construction yard? Those actually looked like relatively dangerous stunts, especially if this movie (as an exploitation flick) was being made on the ultra-cheap.

Coffy also has the benefit of a creepier head mobster, made all the more creepy by the fact he was played by Allan Arbus, better known as the sympathetic psychiatrist on M*A*S*H. And the death of flamboyant pimp King George by being dragged behind a speeding car of course has more impact now in the wake of the Vidor, Texas killing. But Foxy Brown contains the single best kill, when Foxy chops up a hitman with the prop of a small airplane (!!) on screen.

In the end, I gave both movies three stars on my tracking list - they're both good solid movies, but not ones I feel the need to seek out more often than when they show up on TV somewhere. But Coffy does get the slight nod over Foxy Brown.