Foxy Brown (1974)

A tried and true method to stretch out a series or genre is to do the same thing as before, but with a woman.  The Universal horror films did it, the Japanese Street Fighter series did it and, of course, so did blaxploitation films.  Many of them went for humor or turning the heroine into an impossible secret agent type, such as with Cleopatra Jones and a number of cheap imitators.  No female star from this genre has had a greater staying power than Pam Grier.

Grier had already starred in a number of exploitation films produced by Roger Corman and filmed in the Philippines, but when director and writer Jack Hill jumped into to the blaxploitation market with Coffy her career took off.  It was successful and American International Pictures originally wanted Hill and Grier to do a sequel.  They then decided that they wanted something different, so the script was rewritten as Foxy Brown, creating a new character for Grier but with the same street cred.

Foxy Brown is a middle-class black woman whose boyfriend, Dalton Ford (Terry Carter), has recently gone through surgery to change his appearance and is now living as Michael Anderson.  Ford was a federal narcotics agent who had infiltrated a heroin ring run by Katherine Wall (Kathryn Loder), who uses her modeling agency as a front for high-class prostitution.  Foxy's brother Link (Antonio Fargas), a low-level drug pusher, is on the hook for 20 thousand dollars with Wall and her boyfriend Steve Elias (Peter Brown) and decides to earn his way back in their good graces by dropping the dime on Anderson.

The result is that Brown starts planning revenge against Wall and her associates.  Initially trying to take down the organization from within does not go as planned.  This leads her to team with a neighborhood vigilante group led by her friend Oscar (Bob Minor) to take down the dealers and exact her revenge for her lover's death and her own mistreatment.

The problem with most female twists on a genre is it's done for sex appeal only.  There are exceptions, and Grier is definitely sexy in both this and Coffy.  If one watches some of the more serious African-American directed movies of this time one thing that comes up is black men preferring white women after decades of being sold the typical American beauty standard, with black women often seen as less desirable than their white, Latina or Asian counterparts.  Though sexy her nudity had a point behind it, trying to normalize beauty beyond what was on magazine covers. 

I would say, at least in her case, she succeeded, as she was not forgotten like so many actresses of the time and was able to have a post-blaxploitation career more successful than many of her colleagues.  It also helps that Jack Hill went for the grittiness of Shaft rather than the camp of Cleopatra Jones.  Foxy Brown handles the topic of drug addiction in the ghetto in the same hamfisted way as most of these films, but Foxy is such an engaging character and Kathryn Loder, in the last role she would play before her death four years later, is a wonderful psychotic villain as well.  

It is tough to watch parts of this, particularly what happens to Foxy at the ranch, but the more uncomfortable scenes never go as far as I Spit on Your Grave.  I mention that because, although she is also getting revenge for the death of people close to her, this is also partially a rape-revenge story.  If there is anything wrong, other than some minor acting issues which are common to Hill's movies, it is that the pacing is a bit slower and there aren't as many up front action scenes as in Coffy.  I think the reason for this is Hill and Grier both intended to make Brown a bit more of a three dimensional character, but the pacing is more in line with many movies of the time.

This wouldn't be a Jack Hill film without at least one appearance by Sid Haig, and he shows up as a pilot that Foxy seduces in one of the more humorous parts of the film.  Antonio Fargas, as despicable as Link is, also manages to bring some needed laughs, as does the opening hospital scene between Foxy and Michael.  This is without question the best female-fronted film in the genre.  It is still unfortunately that a lot of what Grier was fighting for and trying to accomplish is still unfulfilled after all these years. 

Foxy Brown (1974)

Time: 92 minutes

Starring: Pam Grier, Antonio Fargas, Terry Carter, Kathryn Loder, Peter Brown

Director: Jack Hill