Foxy Brown Blu-ray Review

• 2nd Jul 2013

WACKA-WACKA-WAH-WAH. This film kicks off as any good funky mid-seventies blaxploitation film should with a pimped up funk wah-wah track that sounds like Curtis Mayfield’s ‘Superfly’ but is in fact a very similar toon, ‘Superbad’ performed by Willie Hutch. There has been much written about these films as fulfilling racial sterotypes but this has to be taken in the context that these films were made in the early to mid-seventies in which there were very few black role models other than Martin Luther King or at best in the cinema world, Sidney Poitier. Added to this assertion is that this film and others of the ilk were directed by white film directors such as Jack Hill who made this film and had previously made that other cult classic starring Pam Grier, Coffy in 1973 as well as a host of other similar (blac)xploitation films in the early 70s pre-dating Foxy Brown. I should add to that, that most characters in blaxploitation films should not be seen as roll models but rather reflected the urban struggle for black people in a harsh urban environment. It also has to be remembered that the blaxploitation film is exactly what it purports to be, an exploitation film marketed for a predominantly black audience.

The story is hardly different from any other similar film but is led by the charismatic, sexy and empowering Pam Grier. Her profession is never really disclosed but she is dating a former vice cop who has undergone plastic surgery in order the bad guys aren’t able to recognize him and hunt him down. However, Foxy has a wayward brother, Link (played by Antonio Fargas, the original pimp, Huggy Bear from TV’s ‘Starsky and Hutch’) who is in trouble with the (white) gang running the drug pushing on the streets of LA. He recognizes Foxy’s boyfriend despite the plastic surgery and in order that he is able to curry favour with the gangsters he grasses him up. Needless to say that Foxy’s boyfriend is gunned down. Foxy takes matters into her own hands and uses her own methods to strike back at the gang. She discovers that the gang’s boss, the ruthless Katherine Wall (played by Kathryn Loder) is also running a high-class prostitution ring to serve up-market old guys and joins as one of the new escorts – with attitude.

The acting is pretty poor throughout, but although it was made in 17 days there is something irresistible about the film. Originally Hill, who had come from the Cormon stable as one of his screenwriters and had been making similar films to those of Roger Cormon had made Coffy the previous year and wrote a sequel. However, the production company, AIP were adamant that despite the success of that film that this wasn’t going to be a sequel so Hill had to re-write huge parts of the script again, but was able to keep Grier. She is undoubtedly the best thing about the film with some flash costumes and kick-ass attitude. Loder, whose last film this was before her untimely death in 1978 also stands out as the bitch character in Katherine with Grier’s Foxy Brown standing out as her nemesis. The action is poorly put together and choreographed but despite this the film moves at a cracking pace.

As one would expect from a blaxploitation film from this era the colours are as bright and as synthetic as a fly pimp in the LA heat. The blaxploitation film has its origins with two films: the hugely successful Shaft (1971) and its sequels and Melvin Van Peebles’ Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (also 1971) and before that Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970) as well as finding its way into martial-arts films, horror films (including the brilliant titled Blacula), westerns and disco musicals. The wealth of extras on the disc include a fascinating documentary about blaxploitation cinema, a sub-genre that has not had a great deal of research carried and a profile and interview with Bob Minor, one of the few black stunt coordinator’s working in Hollywood at the time. Also of note is an interview with Sid Haig who gives an affectionate recollection of all the films he worked on with Hill and Grier including how Grier and Haig were re-united on Quentin Tarantino’s Foxy Brown tribute, Jackie Brown (1997) which surprisingly this disc package doesn’t capitalize on that much. The trailer extras don’t just include Foxy Brown, nor the just the other release by Hill from Arrow Video, Spider Baby but also many other of Hill’s films, making this a pretty comprehensive release.

Chris Hick