The Twilight People (1972)

A cheesy ripoff of H.G. Wells’ 1896 novel The Island of Doctor Moreau, this action/horror flick was wrought by the dubious brain trust of actor/producer Josh Ashley and director Eddie Romero, who made a number of lurid productions together in the Philippines, Romero’s native country. Like their many women-in-prison pictures, The Twilight People burns screen time on travelogue shots featuring people moving through jungles. The picture also bears the Ashley/Romero hallmarks of catfights, torture scenes, underground dungeons, and villains prone to grandiose monologues. In some of their other projects, Ashley and Romero hit the exploitation-movie sweet spot, conjuring just enough vivid sleaze to sustain 90 minutes of lizard-brain interest. Not so here. The Twilight People is episodic, goofy, and slow. Worse, the makeup FX for the story’s animal/human hybrids are pathetic—anyone who can’t deliver on the promise of the opening-credits phrase “Pam Grier as the Panther Woman” has some explaining to do. Ashley, all tight-lipped cynicism and tough-guy posturing, stars as Matt, a diver kidnapped by minions of Dr. Gordon (Charles Macaulay). He’s a loon who wants to help man evolve for life underwater and in outer space, hence the Panther Woman, the Antelope Man, the Bat Man, and so on. Matt was stolen for his ideal combination of intellect and physicality, because Dr. Gordon wants to use Matt’s DNA as an ingredient for his experiments. Matt tries to escape, improbably receiving help from Dr. Gordon’s hot daughter, Neva (Pat Woodell), so before long, the jungle chase begins. The only element of The Twilight People that works is the tension between Matt and Dr. Gordon’s hired gun, repressed homosexual Steinman (Jan Merlin), but it’s hard to take that trope, or anything about The Twilight People, seriously once Romero unleashes unintentionally hilarious shots of the Bat Man “flying” through the jungle.

The Twilight People: LAME

The Arena (1974)

          To get a sense of what The Arena has to offer, think of the Kirk Douglas gladiator classic Spartacus (1960), subtract all the sociopolitical themes, and replace them with bloody catfights and sleazy nude scenes. As directed by pulp-cinema specialist Steve Carver, The Arena is as briskly entertaining as it is shamelessly exploitive, so it makes for a zippy viewing experience. Furthermore, except for a couple of secondary cast members who camp it up by playing avaricious women and/or queeny men, the actors play their roles straight, resulting in the sort of overwrought intensity one normally associates with comic books. Combined with the picture’s most overtly appealing elements—think leading lady Pam Grier and her lissome costars parading around in the altogether at every possible opportunity—the movie’s Saturday-matinee vibe ensures 83 minutes of gleefully tacky escapism.

          Set in the era of the Roman Empire, the picture begins in England, where Roman slavers interrupt a pagan religious ceremony and kidnap statuesque blonde Bodicia (Margaret Markov). Next, slavers bust up an African dancing-and-drums ritual to kidnap voluptuous Mamawi (Grier). Together with other recent abductees, Bodicia and Mamawi are taken to a place called “Burundium” and sold at auction to Priscium (Silvio Laurenzi), a fey Roman who helps operate a gladiatorial academy. The ladies are tasked with menial duties, and they’re also expected to provide gladiators with companionship. (Or, as one incensed woman exclaims, “Oh, Gods, do you mean we have to satisfy their animal heat?”) Eventually, a catfight in the academy’s kitchen gives Prisium and his gluttonous boss, Timarkus (Daniele Vargas), the notion to present female gladiators as a novelty attraction. Audiences love the girl-on-girl action, turning Bodicia and Mamawi, among others, into arena superstars. All the while, the women plot their escape. Betrayal, bloodshed, and bonking ensue.

          Carver gives the material gonzo treatment from start to finish, his whiz-bang style abetted by slick editing from future director Joe Dante. (Dante enjoyed a varied apprenticeship at New World Pictures, the Roger Corman-led company that produced and distributed The Arena.) Only one scene in the movie breaks the spell by attempting full-on comedy, so for the most part The Arena remains true to itself by giving viewers one breathless scene of sex and/or violence after another. Grier and Markov, previously paired in the grungy exploitation saga Black Mama, White Mama (1973), make a physically attractive pair even if it’s a stretch to describe their onscreen interactions as evidence of genuine chemistry, and both women are displayed to flattering effect. Better still, while neither actress seems to have any illusions about what's expected of them, they each notch a credible moment periodically, contributing to the overall zestiness of the movie.

The Arena: FUNKY

Black Mama, White Mama (1973)

          Judged by the low standards of the cinematic cycle to which it belongs, Black Mama, White Mama is fairly palatable, thanks to attractive starlets, brisk pacing, steady action, and a welcome sense of humor. However, the aforementioned cycle comprises a series of lurid women-in-prison movies that American International Pictures shot in the Philippines during the early ’70s, so Black Mama, White Mama is an inherently crude enterprise. Think incessant nudity, swearing, and violence—as well as the constant use of women as sex objects. None would ever argue that this genre represents a high point in human achievement.

          Black Mama, White Mama begins when new convicts including African-American hooker Lee (Pam Grier) and white revolutionary Karen (Margaret Markov) are delivered to a prison work farm in the wilds of the Filipino jungle. The women quickly catch the eye of a pair of female wardens, sadistic lesbians who are in a relationship but use convicts as playthings. Naturally, this plot development occasions a scene of a horny female prison guard masturbating while she looks through a peephole at showering convicts. Classy! After the usual scenes of catfights and torture, Karen and Lee escape. Unfortunately, they’re handcuffed together, Defiant Ones-style. Intrigue ensues as the women debate whether to rendezvous with Karen’s guerilla pals or Lee’s criminal chums. Meanwhile, pursuers include Ruben (Sid Haig), a flamboyant hoodlum who dresses like a cowboy, and Captain Cruz (Eddie Garcia), an ambitious policeman. The story also includes something about Lee having stolen $40,000 from a Filipino gangster named Vic (Vic Diaz), who sends bloodthirsty lackeys to chase the women.

          Cobbled together by several people (including Jonathan Demme), the story is hackneyed and laborious, but it’s really just a means to an end. As rendered onscreen by prolific Filipino director Eddie Romero, the narrative is merely the gas in the engine of a vehicle traveling at breakneck speed through episodes of bloodshed, nasty interpersonal conflict, and trashy sexualized content. (A typical scene involves Karen slipping off her panties and then placing them around the neck of a dog, thereby throwing pursuers “off her scent.”) Yet when compared to other movies of its sordid type, Black Mama, White Mama is positively restrained—and even periodically entertaining, especially when Haig fills the screen with his gonzo characterization.

Black Mama, White Mama: FUNKY

Bucktown (1975)

          One of my favorite ’70s drive-in flicks is the violent oddity Vigilante Force (1976), starring Jan-Michael Vincent as a redneck who recruits his Vietnam-vet brother, played by Kris Kristofferson, to clean up a town that’s become infested by unruly newcomers. Alas, the cure is worse than the disease, because Kristofferson’s character and his hired guns seize control of the town, forcing a showdown with Vincent’s character. Anyway, go figure there’s a blaxploitation movie with virtually the same plot. Released more than a year before Vigilante Force, the far less satisfying Bucktown stars Fred Williamson as a tough guy named Duke Johnson. When the story begins, Duke returns to his Southern hometown, which is nicknamed “Bucktown” by racist white authorities because of the municipality’s large concentration of black citizens, in order to attend his brother’s funeral. Duke quickly learns that his brother, who owned a nightclub catering to black customers, was murdered, and that cops under the supervision of Chief Patterson (Art Lund) mercilessly squeeze African-American business owners for protection money. Determined to set things right, Duke reopens his brother’s club and summons his badass buddy Roy (Thalmus Rasulala) from Chicago with a request to “bring muscle.” Together, Duke, Roy, and Roy’s hired guns topple Chief Patterson’s operation, but then Roy decides to establish himself as the new underworld king of Bucktown.

          Naturally, even though Duke spendt the first half of the movie proclaiming his intention to leave Bucktown after defeating Chief Patterson, Duke decides to stay and fight Roy. Part of Duke’s motivation, of course, is a burgeoning romance with local beauty Aretha, played by the va-va-voom Queen of Blaxploitation herself, Pam Grier.

          As written by Bob Ellison and directed by the perpetually disappointing Arthur Marks, Bucktown is a compendium of missed opportunities. The characterizations are paper-thin, the possibilities of defining a community by illustrating the vibe at Duke’s nightclub are never exploited, and the logic problems created by open warfare in the streets of an American city are ignored. As a result, the vibrant actors populating the cast are left to flounder while trying to energize lifeless material. Williamson’s at his best, focusing on righteous indignation and suppressing his tendency toward megalomaniacal strutting, but every single thing he does is a cliché. Rasulala fares slightly better, since his character gets to arc from noble to nefarious, but it says a lot that the climax of his performance involves taking a brutal kick to the groin. Grier is almost completely wasted, since she’s relegated to showing off her astonishing body and watching the main action from the sidelines. Making a story this colorful boring required considerable effort, but Marks and his team somehow managed that dubious accomplishment.

Bucktown: FUNKY

The Big Doll House (1971) & Women in Cages (1971) & The Big Bird Cage (1972)

          Overflowing with gratuitous nudity, sadistic violence, and various iterations of sexual abuse, this trio of babes-behind-bars pictures—which were filmed together in the Philippines and share many actors, but which do not comprise a continued narrative—is trashy in the worst way. The movies are also, surprisingly, quite boring. The first flick, The Big Doll House, sets the numbing tone. After sexy blonde Alcott (Roberta Collins) gets thrown into a primitive Filipino prison overseen by perverse warden Miss Dietrich (Christine Schmidtmer), Alcott runs into hassles with cellmates including tough-talking African-American Grear (Pam Grier). The movie features myriad ugly scenes of Alcott being fondled by a swarthy cook (played by B-movie staple Sid Haig), being tortured by the warden’s goons, and/or trudging through catfights with Grear. (The ladies’ climactic battle is fought in a puddle of mud, with the combatants wearing only panties and tank tops.) The slim narrative involves Alcott uniting her fellow inmates for an audacious escape, but the story is really just an excuse for generating scenes of women in demeaning situations. And while Collins, Grier, and their cronies are attractive, the movie is so crass that it’s hard to find much enjoyment in director Jack Hill’s tacky take on titillation. That said, blaxploitation fans may find The Big Doll House interesting simply because it features Grier’s first major role. Her acting is dodgy, but Grier is so committed that she even sings the theme song, an R&B thumper called “Long Time Woman.”

          The second picture in the cycle, Women in Cages, is a decidedly weird type of drive-in sludge. Scored with dirge-like music and featuring such a fragmented storyline that the movie feels more like a series of torture vignettes than a proper narrative, Women in Cages comprises 81 minutes of nearly unadulterated brutality. The gist of the piece is that a political prisoner (Jennifer Gan) gets tossed into jail and rallies her cellmates for an escape. The lovely Collins is back, in a florid supporting role as a heroin-addicted inmate tasked with murdering a fellow prisoner—her methods include loosing a snake into a cell, poisoning a sandwich, and tossing acid onto her intended victim. Grier switches to full-on villain mode, playing a psychotic matron who runs her own personal torture garden. Grier’s performance is bug-eyed and silly, but the actress participates in the movie’s best dialogue exchange: After one of Grier’s victims asks, “What hell did you crawl out of,” Grier replies, “Harlem!” Given the lack of a compelling storyline, it doesn’t really matter that leading lady Gan is inept; this one’s all about grooving on seedy textures.

          The best of these three movies, though it’s not saying much, is The Big Bird Cage, which benefits from an action-packed climax and lots of wink-wink jokes. This one stars icy beauty Anitra Ford as an American who sleeps with political figures for social advantage until a misunderstanding lands her in the slammer. Grier and Haig play revolutionaries who pursue the oddball idea of freeing inmates from prison and transforming them into fellow revolutionaries. Written and directed by The Big Doll House’s Jack Hill, who brought more pizzazz to this skeevy genre the second time around, The Big Bird Cage has several interesting gimmicks, such as the presence of a giant sugar mill in the prison yard; the mill is the “Big Bird Cage” of the title, because workers toil inside the towering structure. The picture also benefits from campy humor, usually involving Haig doing something outrageous. (At one point, he masquerades as a swishy homosexual.) Leading lady Ford has a beguilingly reserved quality—she’s the Faye Dunaway of grindhouse cinema—and Grier locks into a groove playing a gun-toting mama with a smart mouth. In fact, of the three pictures, The Big Bird Cage comes closest to delivering the full Pam Grier persona that blaxploitation fans know and love.

The Big Doll House: LAME

Women in Cages: FREAKY
The Big Bird Cage: FUNKY

Sheba, Baby (1975)

Produced at the tail end of the blaxploitation boom—and in the waning days of leading lady Pam Grier’s initial popularity—this lackluster action flick is quite a comedown after the funky heights of previous Grier joints including Coffy (1973) and Foxy Brown (1974). Wham-Bam-Thank-You-Pam plays Sheba Shayne, a Chicago-based private investigator who returns to her hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, when she gets word that her dad is being hassled by local gangsters. Before long, Sheba’s dad falls victim to gun-toting thugs, so Sheba—with a little help from her pop’s business partner, Brick Williams (Austin Stoker)—unloads you-messed-with-the-wrong-mama vengeance on crime boss Pilot (D’Urville Martin) and his associates. Grier spends Sheba, Baby talking tough while looking great (her knockout figure is on ample display in costumes like the wetsuit she wears for the movie’s last half-hour), but Sheba, Baby is unmistakably second-rate. The dialogue is trite, the production values are mediocre, and the supporting performances are awful. Even the requisite funk/soul soundtrack, often a saving grace for shaky blaxploitation movies, is uninspired. Grier’s nomrally forceful acting falls victim to the general crappiness, because she often seems as if she’s delivering lines she’s just learned—it almost feels as if the movie comprises rehearsals instead of takes. Director/co-writer William Girdler was far more comfortable with in the horror genre, and after making this picture, he banged out a trio of demented creature features (from the campy 1976 gorefest Grizzly to the wigged-out 1978 supernatural flick The Manitou). For Sheba, Baby, he’s unable to conjure the needed vibe of frenetic violence and urban grime—the picture moves too slowly, the textures all feel phony—and it doesn’t help that Sheba, Baby is rated PG instead of R. Really, what’s the point of trafficking in a sleazy genre if not to present sleaze?

Sheba, Baby: LAME

Cool Breeze (1972)

          A blaxploitation take on W.R. Burnett’s classic crime novel The Asphalt Jungle—previously filmed as a 1950 film noir by director John Huston—Cool Breeze nearly works. The intricate story about a criminal mastermind gathering cohorts for a jewel heist is filled with betrayal and danger, so the narrative fits comfortably into the blaxploitation milieu. Furthermore, the film’s acting is generally very strong. However, first-time writer-director Barry Pollack’s inexperience shows. He fails to reveal exposition clearly, so it’s hard to track who’s doing what to whom, and nearly every scene has the same level of intensity, which creates tonal monotony. That said, the picture has a gritty look and a thumping soul-music soundtrack, so what it lacks in narrative polish, it makes up for in tough atmosphere.

          The antihero of the piece is Sidney Lord Jones (Thalmus Rasulala), a slick thief who just bribed his way out of prison. Planning the robbery of a vault containing diamonds worth millions of dollars, Sidney gets into business with Bill Mercer (Raymond St. Jacques), a wealthy crime boss who agrees to bankroll the job. Sidney then hires accomplices including a priest who moonlights as a safe-cracker and a ne’er-do-well Vietnam vet who provides muscle. Also lurking around the story are various cops—some corrupt, some honest—including the unhinged Lt. Brian Knowles (Lincoln Kilpatrick).

          The movie toggles between subplots at weird rhythms, as if Pollack can’t decide whether he’s making an ensemble piece or telling Sidney’s story, but many vignettes are vivid. On the lurid side of the spectrum, the always-ravishing Pam Grier shows up for one sexy scene as a hooker servicing Sidney, and on the character-driven side of the spectrum, supporting actor Stewart Bradley entertainingly chews through his role as an exasperated police captain. (Discovering that Mercer has a young mistress, Bradley goes off on a rant: “I can tolerate a little masturbation. I can tolerate a little sodomy. Let him cavort with a cow! But an old man with a nice, pretty, young girl—that’s too much.”)

          Playing a bookie helping Sidney set up his team, Sam Laws gives the movie’s most amusing performance, because his character is likeable, flabby wimp who whines whenever danger is near. As for Rasulala, he’s appropriately cocky and smooth throughout the picture. Had Pollack’s skills been sharper, this same cast and story could have coalesced into something really memorable; as is, Cool Breeze is entertaining but frustrating. (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

Cool Breeze: FUNKY

Blacula (1972) & Scream, Blacula, Scream (1973)

          For a few funky years in the early ’70s, the blaxploitation genre was so popular that it produced subgenres including a string of campy horror movies whose titles were urbanized puns on the names of classic monsters. The first and best of these flicks is Blacula. Starring Shakespearean-trained actor William Marshall, whose elegant bearing and resonant voice class up the inherently trashy surroundings, Blacula transposes tropes from Bram Stoker’s classic novel Dracula into a modern African-American milieu. The story begins in Transylvania circa the 1700s, when Count Dracula (Charles Macaulay) greets two visitors from Africa, Prince Mamawulde (Marshall) and his beautiful wife, Luva (Vonetta McGee). They seek the count’s assistance in abolishing slavery. Bad host that he is, Dracula responds by taking a chomp out of Mamawulde’s neck and burying the prince, cursing him to eternal half-life beneath the earth. Two hundred years later, screaming-queen antique dealers buy the contents of Castle Dracula—including Mamawulde’s coffin—and take the goods to Los Angeles, leading to the release of the long-buried Mamawulde. Black-on-black bloodsucking ensues as the vampire meets and woos Tina (also played by McGee), whom he believes is the reincarnated Luva.

          Capably directed by William Crain, Blacula moves along at a good clip and stays focused on the tragic storyline, while still delivering such blaxploitation signifiers as pimptastic clothes, streetwise trash talk, and wah-wah guitars on the soundtrack. The picture also boasts one or two genuine jolts, and the gloomy finale has a hint of an emotional punch. This isn’t sophisticated stuff by any measure, but Blacula is moderately better than one might expect—and, hey, the fact that Mamawulde sprouts bitchin’ sideburns every time his blood gets boiling adds an extra blast of campy ’70s flava.

          In addition to triggering inferior ripoffs  (please avoid Blackenstein at all costs), Blacula inspired a quickie sequel with less  kitschy charm than the original, even though Marshall reprises his role. (Bob Kelijan, director of the underwhelming Count Yorga pictures, puts Marshall through his paces.) Bearing the fabulously lurid title Scream, Blacula, Scream, the foll0w-up suffers from a drab script and a dull second act. The story begins when a dying voodoo queen bequeaths her power to her apprentice, Lisa (Pam Grier), instead of her closest relative, the craven Willis (Richard Lawson). Eager for payback, Willis uses voodoo to summon Mamawulde, who promptly turns Willis into a vampire slave. (That’s what you get for thinking you can control a vampire,) Mamawulde meets and becomes smitten with Lisa—understandable, given Grier’s casting—and he asks her to cure his vampirism with that voodoo that she do-do. Unfortunately, it takes forever to get that far into the narrative, and the whole movie is so enervated that even Grier’s formidable charisma is stifled. Except for some tribal-drum-led tension during the movie’s climax, Scream, Blacula, Scream fails to get anyone’s blood pumping, which might explain why Blacula never returned for a third adventure.

Blacula: GROOVY

Scream, Blacula, Scream: FUNKY

Friday Foster (1975)

          First, the good news. In the last of her ’70s blaxploitation star vehicles, leading lady Pam Grier looks fantastic, and she displays an endearing quality during the film’s too-few comedic bits. She’s also supported by an eclectic cast: Godfrey Cambridge, Scatman Crothers, Julius Harris, Yaphet Kotto, Thalmus Rasulala, Carl Weathers, and the always-bizarre Eartha Kitt. There’s even room for erstwhile Love Boat bartender Ted Lange, who plays a pimp named “Fancy Dexter” in a spectacularly bad performance.

          Now, the bad news. Friday Foster is a silly adventure story adapted from a family-friendly newspaper comic strip, but with the requisite level of sex and violence to earn its blaxploitation bona fides—meaning it’s too rough for lightweight escapism, and too soft to be a real action picture. The characters are cardboard, the plot is clumsy, and the storytelling is so numbingly obvious that the whole thing feels like an episode of Wonder Woman (which is not a compliment).

          Friday (Grier) gets assigned to photograph a possible sighting of Blake Tarr (Rasulala), known as “the black Howard Hughes.” Instead of grabbing a paparazzi shot, however, she photographs an assassination attempt, drawing her into a conspiracy targeting leading members of the black community. If that sounds promising, prepare for disappointment, because Friday’s unauthorized investigation, with cranky PI Colt Hawkins (Kotto) at her side, comprises a clichéd string of close calls with incompetent would-be killers and convenient discoveries of clues that only make sense when one of the characters provides a recap of the plot thus far. It’s all very garish and labored, so it’s impossible to care what happens, even in the rare instances when the storyline is decipherable.

          What makes this so unfortunate is that Grier is actually stronger than usual here; she clearly relished the chance to try something a bit outside the grimy blaxploitation norm. It’s also fun to see Kotto playing a gruff charmer instead of one of his ususal menacing roles. Yet, no matter how likeable Grier and Kotto are in fleeting moments, they can’t make up for the flat filmmaking and tedious narrative.

Friday Foster: LAME

Hit Man (1972)

          At first glance, the idea of a blaxploitation remake of Get Carter (1971) sounds great, since the grim Michael Caine picture has all sorts of elements that could transfer easily from working-class England to the American inner city: gangsters, pornographers, violence, and a badass antihero out for revenge. As written and directed by George Armitage, however, Hit Man lacks the single-minded malevolence of Get Carter. (Both pictures were adapted from Ted Lewis’ novel Jack’s Return Home.) Hit Man is a fun movie in sporadic bursts, mostly due to Armitage’s odd little character touches, and it’s watchable overall because of leading man Bernie Casey’s charisma, but the flick is not the slam-bang winner the combination of genre and story should have produced.

          The movie begins when Tyrone Tackett (Casey) arrives in LA for his brother’s funeral and starts asking questions about who whacked his sibling. During the meandering first hour of the movie, Tyrone spends about half his time digging for clues and the other half hanging out with his late brother’s pals and assorted women; it’s like the movie periodically forgets to have a plot as Armitage gets lost in rich blaxploitation textures. This aimless stretch has its distractions, though: Tyrone visits a nature preserve, makes time with groovy ladies, and tussles with bad dudes. All of this is punctuated with choice blaxploitation dialogue, like this heavy line: “Look, man, I don’t know nothin’ about nothin’, and that’s the righteous truth.” There’s also some weirdly amusing stuff involving Tyrone and his late brother’s business partner, likeable used-car salesman Sherwood (Sam Laws). The two share a bizarre drunk scene, with Casey raising his voice like he’s going through puberty; later, Sherwood blows a take of a TV commercial by innocently proclaiming, “And for you prestige motherfuckers, we got . . .”

          The movie gets more mojo in the second half, when vivacious costar Pam Grier becomes prominent and when the revenge story kicks into gear. The dialogue gets juicier, too: “They shot her in the fuckin’ head, but chicks like your bullshit bourgeois daughter can do anything they wanna do, ’cause you got the bread to make it cool, ain’t that right?” That’s the stuff! Casey’s performance is erratic, suggesting he and Armitage couldn’t decide whether to make Tyrone a wronged everyman or a killer waiting for an excuse to open fire, but Casey’s laid-back vibe offers a good counterpoint to the flamboyant narrative. Most of the supporting cast is forgettable, though Grier is as outrageously sexy as usual, Laws is a hoot, and future Magnum P.I. costar Roger E. Mosley is amusing as a hired gun. (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

Hit Man: FUNKY

Foxy Brown (1974)

After scoring at the box office with Coffy (1973), writer-director Jack Hill and blaxploitation queen Pam Grier delivered more sexed-up crime drama with Foxy Brown, a nasty flick about a woman taking on the mob. Yet while Coffy has force and momentum, Foxy Brown gets mired in a murky storyline. It’s also much more unpleasant than the previous film, thanks to a gruesome sequence in which the heroine is bound, drugged, and repeatedly raped. The storyline gets off to a bad start, because it’s never clear what Foxy does for a living or how she came to know Michael (Terry Carter), her lawman boyfriend. Plus, how does Foxy balance her relationship with a cop and her tight bond with a drug-dealing sibling (Antonio Fargas)? For that matter, when the hell did she learn how to fly a plane? To cut Hill some slack, Foxy Brown apparently began life as a Coffy sequel, and the director was instructed to transform Foxy Brown into a stand-alone film so late in the game that he wasn’t able to properly reconfigure key elements. Notwithstanding these issues, Foxy Brown has built a huge cult audience over the years. Much of the appeal, of course, stems from Grier’s formidable physical presence. She looks fantastic, whether she’s glammed up in a silky wig and evening dress or down-and-dirty in a giant Afro and head-to-toe leather, and she’s a relentless killing machine. The moment when she coils a wire hanger into a claw and gouges out a scumbag’s eye is memorable, as is the bit when she introduces a thug to the business end of a plane’s propeller. Fargas is almost as entertaining as Grier, jive-talking through a campy performance, and Coffy costar Sid Haig shows up briefly to infuse the picture with a welcome burst of nutjob energy. Yet while some elements are watchable, the movie as a whole is distasteful, and the main villain is awful: Every scene featuring the startlingly amateurish Kathryn Loder, as conniving madam Miss Katherine, is excruciating.

Foxy Brown: FUNKY

Coffy (1973)

          Pam Grier’s status as the queen of blaxploitation movies was secured by her appearance in Coffy—even though she doesn’t give a particularly good performance, she creates an indelible image. Tall, gorgeous, outrageously built, and believably ferocious, she’s a cartoonish vision of empowered womanhood, a superheroine sister with a shotgun mowin’ down every rotten mother*#@%er who does her wrong.

          Just as Grier’s performance is a triumph of attitude over skill, Coffy is more about vibe than cinematic virtues. Writer-director Jack Hill’s narrative is as simplistic as a pulpy comic-book story, portraying Grier as an indomitable avenger cutting a swath through the criminal underworld in order to exact revenge against the system that caused her younger sister to become a brain-damaged addict. Feeling like she’s unable to affect real social change in her day job as a nurse, Coffy (Grier) moonlights as an adventurer, using her wiles to penetrate criminal organizations.

          Coffy soon sets her sights on King George (Robert DoQui), a flamboyant pimp who also deals the nastiest junk in town. So, naturally, Coffy goes undercover as one of King George’s working girls, allowing Hill to put Grier into a series of barely-there outfits, and giving the director an excuse for epic catfights involving screeching hookers who are threatened by the buxom new arrival. Meanwhile, top-level criminal operator Arturo Vitroni (Allan Arbus) takes an interest in Coffy, at least until his underlings realize she might not be what she seems.

          And so it goes through a series of standard detective-story beats: Coffy digs for evidence, schemes her way out of trouble when she’s trapped, and ultimately confronts the baddest bad guy in the climax. It all goes down smoothly, after a fashion, since Hill’s filmmaking is crudely entertaining and since the director doesn’t skimp on exploitation elements. Coffy overflows with boobs, gore, vulgarity, wah-wah funk music, and horrific ’70s fashions. (DoQui’s pimp outfits are particularly heinous.)

          The movie has lots of lunkheaded exuberance, especially when Sid Haig shows up as Vitroni’s most sadistic lieutenant. Bearded, chrome-domed, and nearly always wearing a sick smile, Haig is Grier’s opposite number, an image of animalistic fury driven by base impulses instead of righteous ones. He’s also weirdly funny, and undoubtedly a big part of why Coffy has enjoyed decades of devotion from its cult of fervent fans.

          Brisk and brutal, Coffy is only incidentally a feminist statement, since it’s really just unapologetic trash—the picture is so shameless in its pursuit of cheap thrills that it has a kind of gutter-level integrity. That it also happens to feature a powerful female protagonist who retains her femininity and sensitivity amid horrific circumstances is an added bonus.

Coffy: FUNKY

Greased Lightning (1977)

Easily mistaken for one of the myriad demolition-derby comedies that flooded theaters in the ’70s, Greased Lightning is actually a charming biopic about real-life stock-car racer Wendell Scott, a former bootlegger who rose through his sport in the ’50s and ’60s to become America’s first black stock-car champion. Made with an easygoing vibe and a strong pace by cult-fave director Michael Schultz, the picture stars Richard Pryor in one of his most amiable leading performances. While not completely suppressing his comic gifts, Pryor mostly plays it straight, combining the inherent exuberance of a thrill-seeker with the latent anger of a black Southerner busting through racial barriers prior to the Civil Rights era. The story begins just after World War II, when Wendell (Pryor) returns from the war to his tiny town of Danville, Virginia. He marries local girl Mary (Pam Grier), buys a taxicab, and starts a dodgy business driving the community’s mostly impoverished black residents to and from errands. Eager to make more money, Wendell joins his childhood buddy Peewee (Cleavon Little) running moonshine, soon becoming the scourge of local police with his prowess behind the wheel. When Wendell finally gets caught, he’s given a choice: rot in jail, or compete in a dangerous stock-car race where he’ll be a target as the only black competitor. Wendell chooses the race, thus beginning his storied racing career. Given Wendell’s colorful backstory, the movie loses a little of its novelty value once his racing career begins, but the picture is helped along by a solid cast. Grier is lovely and warm in one of her few non-sensationalized roles of the era; Little adds the same sharp timing he contributed to Blazing Saddles (1974); and Beau Bridges is amiable and loose as a good ol’ boy who unexpectedly joints Wendell’s pit crew. A major sequence about two-thirds of the way through the picture suffers because it’s mostly assembled from stock footage, and in general the movie streamlines Scott’s narrative to a fault, so everything plays out in the most sanitized and simplistic fashion possible. Nonetheless, the picture’s fundamentally interesting story and its thoroughly watchable cast make Greased Lightning a fun romp.

Greased Lightning: FUNKY