Foxy Brown: "She's a whole lotta woman!"

Pam Grier as Foxy Brown.

Coffy or Foxy Brown? I've been debating which Pam Grier movie to review this month (I quickly ruled out less stellar efforts like Sheba, Baby). I finally concluded that Coffy may be the better-made film, but Foxy Brown has had a greater impact on pop culture. After all, Quentin Tarantino renamed the title charactor in Jackie Brown as a tribute to Foxy. Pam Grier titled her autobiography Foxy: A Life in Three Acts. Foxy Brown has been referenced in everything from the TV show Bones (with Pam as a guest star) to an Austin Powers movie to a rapper who changed her name to...Foxy Brown.

Foxy again? No, this is
Pam as Coffy.

So who is Foxy Brown? Well, it's not clear from the 1974 film--perhaps because it was originally intended as a Coffy sequel called Burn, Coffy, Burn! (which makes no sense...because who likes burned coffee?). However, American-International Pictures decided against a Coffy follow-up at the last minute, leaving little time to revamp the screenplay. As a result, while we knew Coffy was a nurse, Foxy's occupation is never mentioned. (She earns a sizable income through some means, though, judging from her extensive, flashy wardrobe).

The film's plot hinges around the two men in her life: her inept, drug-dealing brother Link and her boyfriend, Michael, a former undercover narc who just had plastic surgery so he and Foxy can lead a normal life together. Drug dealer and narc--yes, Foxy's life is filled with irony.

Link owes $20,000 to Miss Katherine (Kathryn Loder), who operates a successful drug and prostitution business with assistance from her stylishly-dressed boyfriend Steve (Peter Brown from Ride the Wild Surf). Foxy rescues Link from Miss Katherine's thugs and lets him hide out in her house. At this point, I started to question Foxy's judgment.

Meanwhile, Michael gets released from the hospital. When he shows up at Foxy's house, Link thinks Michael looks familiar. Later, Link spots a newspaper clipping with a pre-plastic surgery photo of Michael (one has to wonder why Foxy left it out with her brother in the house). Somehow, Link--who is none too bright--figures out Michael's identity and sells that info to Miss Katherine for the $20,000 he owes. Then, Link tells his girlfriend that he's staying at Foxy's home. The thugs find out Michael's location from Link's girl and promptly gun down the former narcotics agent. When Foxy learns of Michael's demise, she barely sheds a tear before swearing to bring down those who killed him.

While one could say there's not a lot of logic in director Jack Hill's script, I could argue that there are indeed stupid people in the world. My only issue is with the plastic surgeon. If Link could recognize Michael's new face that quickly, then that plastic surgeon should have been sued for malpractice and barred from his profession. (Of course, who could sue him? His patient was dead.)

There's a gun in that Afro! Really.

The fact that Foxy Brown succeeds as solid entertainment, despite its narrative deficiencies, can be attributed wholly to Pam Grier. She dominates every scene she's in, whether she's modeling a form-fitting evening gown, pulling a gun out of her Afro after being frisked, or pummeling people that get in her way. In one of my favorite scenes, she confronts an angry lesbian bar patron trying to hit on a female friend:

Woman: Listen, skinny, before you start talking tough, I'd better warn you I have a black belt in karate. So why don't you get out of here quietly while you still got some teeth left in that ugly face?

Foxy: (knocking down a bar stool) And I've got my black belt in bar stools!

It's worthwhile to mention that Foxy Brown was one of the action films with a female hero and villain (though I wish Miss Katherine would have been a stronger character). Yet, despite all the female empowerment, there's a scene in which a captured Foxy gets victimized by two bad guys. If the intent was to add further motivation for Foxy's extreme actions at the climax, I don't buy it. Her grief over Michael's murder (which could been emphasized more) should have been adequate grounds for her actions.

Foxy Brown is a flawed film, to be sure, but an important one for its star, the promotion of strong female characters, and the Blaxploitation genre. It also created one of the great characters of the 1970s. As Link explains to his girlfriend after Foxy roughs him up: "That's my sister, baby. And she's a whole lotta woman!"

Blaxploitation Films: An Overview of the African American Urban Action Genre of the 1970s

Richard Roundtree as Shaft.

The term “Blaxploitation" was coined in the early 1970s to describe a genre of low-budget, action pictures that featured mostly American African actors and typically played in urban neighborhood theaters.  Some critics considered these movies offensive, charging that their African Americans protagonists were poorly-developed stereotypes. Indeed, Blaxplotation "heroes" were often private eyes, gangsters, and drug dealers that were violent, sexually insatiable, and defiant of authority. Those traits were certainly nothing new in 1970s cinema--Dirty Harry's Inspector Callahan was more violent than the private eye hero in Shaft and James Bond was more promiscuous. What made Shaft unique was that its protagonist was a black man and--at a time when the only African American movie star was Sidney Poitier--that was a game-changer.

The mainstream success of Blaxploitation pictures like Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970) and Shaft (1971) spawned dozens of urban action films from 1971 to 1976. Richard Roundtree, who exuded cool as John Shaft in three films, became the genre's first star, but others quickly followed: former football player Fred Williamson; feisty Pam Grier; and, to a lesser degree, Tamara Dobson (Cleopatra Jones), karate champion Jim Kelly (Black Belt Jones), and Bernie Casey (Hit Man).

The majority of Blaxploitation films were aimed to simply entertain. They were, after all, "exploitation films," defined in The Film Encyclopedia as movies "made with little or no attention to quality or artistic merit but with an eye to a quick profit, usually via high-pressure sales and promotion techniques emphasizing some sensational aspect of the product." Still, the Blaxploitation genre made a lasting impact on the film industry by spotlighting African American actors, indirectly promoting female empowerment, and producing memorable film soundtracks.  

Williamson in Black Caesar.

Actors like Richard Pryor, Godfrey Cambridge, and William Marshall had established solid credentials in the entertainment industry well before the start of Blaxploitation films. However, their careers got a substantial boost when they landed starring roles in The Mack (Pryor), Cotton Comes to Harlem (Cambridge), and Blacula (Marshall). Jim Brown was already a leading man, but the box office hits Slaughter, Black Gunn, and Three the Hard Way made him a bona fide genre superstar. And, as mentioned earlier, the Blaxploitation genre created its own stars in Richard Roundtree, Fred Williamson, Bernie Casey, and Pam Grier--all of whom went on to long careers in film and television.

Pam Grier as Foxy Brown.

Quentin Tarantino has suggested that Pam Grier was Hollywood's first female action star. It's hard to disagree, given her body of work in action films like Coffy, Foxy Brown, and Friday Foster. Combining toughness, sexuality, and female empowerment, Grier dominated the male characters in her films. Even when she became their victim briefly, as in Foxy Brown, she retaliated with a vengeance.

When The Washington Times compiled a list of the Top 10 Female Action Stars earlier this year, Pam Grier ranked #9. Except for Linda Hamilton in Terminator (1991) and Sigourney Weaver in Alien (1979), every other actress listed is from a film made in 2001 or later. Thus, Grier was breaking ground for female action stars that wouldn't be plowed for two more decades--an impressive achievement.

Blaxploitation films also broke ground with urban soundtracks composed by well-known musicians such as Isaac Hayes, Curtis Mayfield, and James Brown. Hayes scored a No. 1 Billboard hit with "Theme from Shaft," which also earned an Academy Award for Best Song. His Shaft soundtrack was so popular that Hayes was cast in the lead role in his own Blaxploitation film, Truck Turner (he also composed its soundtrack). Still, music critics generally regard Curtis Mayfield's Superfly soundtrack as the best for a Blaxploitation film. In fact, the success of Mayfield's No. 4 single, "Freddie's Dead"--which was released before Superfly--may have contributed to the film's success. James Brown's soundtrack for Black Caesar is considered one of his strongest albums.

William Marshall in Blacula.

Speaking of Black Caesar, it's one of several Blaxploitation films with interesting origins. Writer-director Larry Cohen (It's Alive) based Black Caesar  loosely on the 1931 gangster film Little Caesar. The 1972 film Hit Man was a remake of the Michael Caine thriller Get Carter. Black Mama, White Mama appears to be a loose remake of The Defiant Ones. The mainstream success of Blacula (which featured a fine lead performance from William Marshall) spawned other horror films: Blackenstein; Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde; Sugar Hill (about zombies); and the sequel Scream, Blacula, Scream.

This month, the Classic Film & TV Cafe pays homage to the Blaxploitation films--the African American urban action films of the 1970s. Yes, they were violent exploitation films and lasted for just a few years. Yet, they remain an important part of American cinema history and warrant a closer look.

Underrated Performer of the Week: Pam Grier, Cinema's First Female Action Star

In an interview with Charlie Rose, filmmaker Quentin Tarantino suggested that Pam Grier may have been the cinema’s first female action star. In a 1975 interview article in Ms. Magazine, Jamaica Kinkaid wrote that Grier’s films of the 1970s displayed a “woman who is independent, resourceful, strong, and courageous.” Undoubtedly, her strong female heroines were in sharp contrast to the supporting roles played by most actresses in the action film genre. Yet, despite her groundbreaking roles, Pam Grier’s career as a leading actress was fleeting—with the exception of a revival of sorts in Tarantino’s 1997 Jackie Brown.

Grier was born in Winston-Salem, NC, but moved frequently due to her father’s career in the military. She entered beauty contests and sang backup to Jimmy Womack before landing a job as a receptionist at budget-minded American International Pictures. After a bit part in Russ Meyer’s satire Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Grier starred in 1970’s The Big Doll House, a Philippines-shot “women in prison” picture. She followed it with two similar films (Women in Cages and The Big Bird Cage) and supporting roles in the bigger-budgeted Hit Man (a remake of Get Carter) and Scream, Blacula, Scream (a sequel to—what else?—Blacula). Her career got a boost when she landed a co-starring role opposite Margaret Markov in 1972’s Black Mama, White Mama, an above-average rip-off of The Defiant Ones that was co-scripted by future filmmaker Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs).

That film’s success led to the title role in 1973’s Coffy, Grier’s most famous action film. By this time, blaxploitation films had evolved into a lucrative genre. The term “blaxploitation”—derived from “Black” and “exploitation”—was used in the early 1970s to denote action films with predominantly African-American casts. The genre’s biggest stars were Richard Roundtree (Shaft), Fred Williamson (Hammer), and Jim Brown (Slaughter). But Pam Grier held her own in Coffy, as a fierce heroine obsessed with bringing down the drug kingpins responsible for her eleven-year-old sister’s addiction. The lovely Grier didn’t hold back—Coffy was every bit as violent and ruthless as the criminals she killed and maimed (“Coffy—she’ll cream you!” screamed the ads).

Grier followed up Coffy with Foxy Brown (1974), another violent revenge picture in which her heroine destroys a dope-prostitution ring responsible for killing her worthless brother and her undercover narcotics agent boyfriend. Although Coffy and Foxy Brown were both big hits, the blaxploitation genre began to receive criticism for its violence and promotion of African-American stereotypes. As a result, Grier played a private detective in the more subdued Sheba, Baby and a fashion photographer in Friday Foster (both 1975). Neither film did big business and, by 1976, the blaxploitation genre pretty much came to an end with martial arts-themed movies like Black Belt Jones. Grier’s career as a leading action star ended, too.

She got occasional supporting roles in mainstream movies: she played opposite then-boyfriend Richard Pryor in the stock car biography Greased Lighting (1977); she was a killer prostitute in the Paul Newman cop film Fort Apache, The Bronx (1981); she played the “Dust Witch” in the atmospheric Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983); and she was Steven Seagal’s partner in Above the Law (1988). She stayed busy with television, too, playing Philip Michael Thomas’ girlfriend in a few Miami Vice episodes.

But lead roles eluded Grier until Quentin Tarantino offered her the title role in Jackie Brown (1997). Tarantino had long admired Grier’s action films and he had considered casting her in Pulp Fiction. Her portrayal of a stewardess mixed up with an arms dealers and FBI agents in Jackie Brown earned her critical praise and a Golden Globe nomination. She subsequently returned to supporting roles, but continues to stay busy, having recently completed a long run in the TV series The L Word.

Pam Grier never married, although she has been romantically linked with Pryor and former basketball player Kareen Abdul-Jabbar. She is a cancer survivor. She was named as one of Ebony Magazine's "100 Most Fascinating Women of the 20th Century.”