Oh, young Pam Grier, where have you been all my life?
BQB’s corona movie marathon continues.
Like most Gen Xers I was first introduced to an older Pam Grier in Tarantino’s 1990s followup to Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown.
Pam was no slouch then but damn, in the 70s? Holy crap on rye, hold the mayo, 3.5 readers. I am no left with no choice to go through her entire movie catalog.
Coffy is a nurse by day and by night, a bad ass vigilante mama. At the start of the film, Coffy has tracked down a drug kingpin and a pusher and, while posing as a prostitute willing to do anything for a fix, gets the upper hand and cooks these fools, thus securing revenge for her little sister, who these bad hombres got hooked on heroin.
Its all over. She’s managed to get off scot free, no repercussions for taking the law into her own hands and for awhile it looks like she’ll have to figure out how to live a normal life again while what she has done eats away at her conscience.
She’s dating city councilman Howard, who comes across as a man who wants to help the little guy, though she suspects he might be corrupt. Meanwhile, she pines for Carter, a straight arrow cop.
When Walter is attacked by corrupt cops who fear he will turn them in, Coffy uses her vigilante skills to go down the rabbit hole of posing as a prostitute, deep undercover in the seedy criminal underworld, taking out a pimp and his associates, working her way up the food chain until she finally takes out all those responsible for the attack on Carter and naturally, she’ll have to make some hard choices along the way.
On the surface this sounds like a great plot for a film, but unfortunately, like many 70s flicks, it suffers from a lot of choppiness. But it makes up for it with heart and well, if I’m being honest, titties. Coffy’s gratuitous titties are the true stars of the show, and she uses them to lull many a criminal into a false sense of security right before she gives them the old deep-six.
Its funny that Tarantino built his career on bringing 70s filmmaking style to the 90s, seeing as how even by the 90s, a lot of these cheesy 70s flick weren’t up to industry snuff, but if you get get past the bad dialogue and at times, scenes that look like they were made by student fllm makers, you can have fun watching Coffy as she delivers expletive laden soliloquies, explaining to each crook what they done wrong just before she blasts them.
Did I mention there are boobies?
STATUS: Shelfworthy.
Bookshelf Battle 