Bullet Points: Coffy
Pam Grier was a trailblazer for women in action films. Grier came across as a legit badass, but also brought with her plenty of sex appeal. These qualities made her a bonafide star in the world of B movies.
In this edition of Bullet Points, I’ll be reviewing one of Grier’s early starring roles in 1973’s Coffy….
- Hot Coffy: Pam Grier plays Coffy, a nurse by trade… a vigilante by choice. Coffy has taken the law into her own hands after her younger sister, LuBelle, gets hooked on smack. LuBelle now finds herself confined to a bed in a methodone clinic and her sister is mad as hell about it. When the movie begins Coffy has tracked down Grover, the pusher who sold LuBelle the drugs. The voluptuous Coffy is a sight to behold, so it is really no surprise when she is able to convince Grover to take her to his boss, the Sugarman. The results of this meeting… Coffy blows the Sugarman’s head off with a shotgun and forces Grover to OD on his own product at gunpoint.
- Black Coffy in Bed: There are two men vying for the affections of Coffy… one is a city councilman with aspirations of becoming a congressman, Howard Brunswick (Booker Bradshaw). The other is Carter (William Elliott), an honest cop in a town filled with dirty cops. Carter and Coffy used to have a thing going on in their younger days but have remained friends over the years, even after Coffy started her relationship with Brunswick. Carter is a pivotal character in the film, he is the one who fills Coffy in on the power structure of the Los Angeles drug trade… that includes the big pimp in town King George (Robert DoQui, RoboCop) and the man pulling all the strings, Arturo Vitroni (Allan Arbus). When Carter is brutally beaten with baseball bats wielded by two masked thugs after he refuses to go on Vitroni’s payroll like so many of his fellow cops, it motivates Coffy to turn her attention away from the lower level scum dealing the drugs and go after the proverbial head of the snake!
- Revenge is Brewing: Coffy tracks down a former employee of King George that she treated at the hospital in order to get some information on King George’s business and his boss Arturo Vitroni. From there she lets her feminine wiles (and a piss poor Jamaican accent) get her a “job interview” of sorts with King George. Before she knows it she is being introduced to Vitroni at a cocktail party… this party is also the backdrop for one of the more memorable scenes in the movie, with the new girl Coffy getting into a food fight/cat fight with King George’s main lady and some of the other whores in attendance. Tops are ripped off and Coffy used the old razor blades stashed in her afro trick to make anyone who tried to pull her hair instantly regret it.
- Good to the Last Drop: Coffy must have impressed Vitroni because she is invited to his place that night. Unfortunately for Coffy her plans of killing Vitroni do not pan out… and the news gets worse when she finds out her boyfriend Howard is mixed up with Vitroni. Things aren’t looking good for Coffy… but you can’t keep a good woman down and as the movie winds down, Coffy manages to escape certain death, steal a car and drive right INTO Vitroni’s house as she begins to dish out some vigilante justice to all that deserve it!
Coffy is the quintessential Pam Grier film. This felt like the movie where she cemented her status as an “Original Gangsta” that could be mentioned in the same breath as her male counterparts in the Blaxploitation era. Coffy has all the elements a Pam Grier fan would love and then some.
Like refills at a diner, these Coffy Bonus Bullet Points are free of charge…
- Familiar Faces: The instantly recognizable Sid Haig (Kill Bill: Vol. 2) played one of Vitroni’s top henchmen, Omar… Lee de Broux played one of the dirty cops on Vitroni’s payroll. I recognized Lee from his work in RoboCop, Open Fire and Mars… Actor/Stuntman Bob Minor played Studs, the right hand man of King George. I’ll always associate Bob from his role as Gamble in Action Jackson.
- Theme Songs: Nearly every character in the movie got their own “theme song” on the Roy Ayers composed soundtrack, but I think “King George” was the best song of the bunch.
- The King is Dead: Speaking of King George, the scene where King George has a noose put around his neck and is then dragged through the streets is without question the most over the top scene in a movie filled with over the top scenes.
- Reunited: Coffy would reunite Pam Grier with writer/director Jack Hill. The two had previously worked together in 1972’s The Big Bird Cage. After Coffy, Grier and Hill would collaborate again in 1974’s Foxy Brown.
