Pam Grier

Coffy

Scream Blacula Scream

Foxy Brown

Jackie Brown

When I’m not writing this blog or watching movies for it, I’m constantly researching and planning out what I will watch in the future. There’s so many genres and eras and countries and cinematic styles yet to be explored, but one subgenre that comes up time and time again in my never-ending quest for movie-watching is blaxploitation. As we covered with Nunsploitation last year, exploitation films can be categorized as (typically) low-budget, sensationalized films that center upon taboo, bizarre, and culturally-anxious topics—and one of the most foundational of those subgenres of this subgenre is blaxploitation. Being the painfully white person that I am, I cannot be the one to educate you on this topic, but being the wannabe feminist scholar that I am, I’d love to introduce you to the queen of blaxploitation, if I may—the goddess of groovy movies, the breathtaking beauty who sparked entire franchises and aesthetics and archetypes, the trailblazing Gemini icon known as Pam Grier. Often regarded as the first American female action star, Pam Grier is known for her soft voice and her ability to kick ass expeditiously, and glamorously. Using and abusing the feminine body was a key part of the era of sexploitation and blaxploitation, effectively making bodies like Pam’s known so well. When asked about showing her body in films Pam once said two very iconic things:

“Being nude in those movies, I was trying to help men understand. Society created this mystery about the vagina, the breasts. When you create a mystery, people want to see it and attack it if they can't have it. So I was like, 'Here's the mystery. I hope I bore you and you'll never get a hard-on again.’”

And when specifically asked about showing a black woman’s nude body:

“I call it the 'Brown Nipple Revolution.' We weren't the epitome of sexual attraction for the male audience, in movies, magazines, anything. We were told our brown nipples weren't attractive. I was trying to break that line of what was acceptable in society.”

I’d already been curious about Pam Grier’s filmography, being that I only previously knew her from Mars Attacks! (1996), but after listening to Turner Classic Movie’s podcast series about her, I really couldn’t wait any longer. Pam Grier has lived a fascinating, storied, and hard-to-believe life—that I urge you to read more about—but for the time being, let’s celebrate her impending birthday with not just one but four Pam Grier classics. She got her start in women-in-prison films like The Big Doll House and Women in Cages, where establishing a plot was secondary to exploiting the female form. Pam Grier became a key player in these early sexploitation and blaxploitation films, where she was sexualized and brutalized and fetishized alongside other women. But this earned her a leading role in 1973, in a brassy, bold film by Jack Hill called Coffy. Coffy is quintessential blaxploitation—it’s instantly groovy with its multiple theme songs for multiple characters, and it’s instantly-chaotic with its premise. The trailer advertised Coffy as “the baddest one-chick hit-squad that ever hit town”, but when we first meet her, she’s under the guise of a sex worker. She easily lures a drug dealer and a mob boss to a secure location to get their respective fixes, only to whip out a shotgun and blast both of them away. You see, Coffy (aka Flower Child Coffin, for long) is out for revenge against everyone who got her younger sister, now in a clinic, addicted to drugs. And though Coffy is a dedicated nurse and good friend to her police officer buddy Carter, she won’t rest until every drug pusher and mafioso is taken down for their crimes against her community. This movie, which was shot in 18 days, was Pam’s first leading role, but you’d never know it. The confidence with which she blows dudes’ heads off while wearing the chicest outfits just seems so innate and effortless. And though Coffy often toes the line between brilliant and stupid, its fearless portrayal of dirty cops, corrupt governmental structures, and autonomous, self-assured women felt incredibly ahead of its time. It’s beyond bonkers to watch a movie like Coffy—one that boldly confronts the white supremacist ideations of the police and the culturally-accepted abuse of women, while still making sure every single woman on screen showed her tits. I mean, listen, it wasn’t exactly a perfect time in the collective consciousness, but Coffy still made some salient points and made excellent use of its leading lady. Coffy is a surprisingly sweet, silly, and shocking tale of vengeance, where Pam Grier is in full force. Watching her conceal weapons in her afro, her purse, and stuffed animals was thrilling, and to see her methodically get her revenge was oh-so-satisfying. Later that year, Pam made another frenetically fabulous movie, a follow up to one of my latest favorite horror films Blacula, Bob Kelljan’s 1973 sequel Scream Blacula Scream. The film opens much like Coffy, with an impossibly groovy song and colorful title card sequence. We’re then shown a gathering of people, all huddled around the dying voodoo queen Mama Loa. When she names Lisa Fortier (Pam Grier) as her successor instead of the true heir Willis (Richard Lawson), Willis procures the bones of Prince Mamuwalde (aka Blacula) and uses voodoo to bring him back to life. Willis intended to use Blacula to do his bidding, but when Blacula bites him, Willis quickly learns that he will be the one serving Blacula. As we learned from the first film, Blacula is a refined, educated, highly-esteemed man, but Willis is no such gentleman, and instead uses his first hours of vampirism to bitch about how he can no longer see his reflection, saying, “A man has got to see his face!” Willis isn’t cut out for the life of a vampire, just as Blacula isn’t cut out to live among the humans. Even when he meets the dazzling Lisa, and they bond over their knowledge of antiquity and history, Blacula cannot help but feast on one of her friends, moments later. Thankfully, Blacula is able to quickly transform into a bat and escape the scene of the crime, but Lisa, and especially her boyfriend Justin, are more than suspicious. Scream Blacula Scream feels much more like a horror movie than Blacula, because there were shots and scenes dedicated to building the tension and fear, and some effectively scary jumpscares. And in many ways, it’s the perfect sequel: with more vamps, more violence, and more out-there ideas than before. But what Blacula had that its sequel lacks was a sense of purpose and a tangible sympathy. I’m just as surprised as anyone else that Blacula ended up being a tragically beautiful, weirdly poetic masterpiece of the horror genre, but because it set itself up this way, I expected so much more from Scream Blacula Scream. It wasn’t really until the final third of this movie that it seemed to decide what the exact goal and premise was, and by that point, so much silliness had ensued that I couldn’t take it as seriously as I wanted to. Similarly to Blacula, this film does eventually prove its pathos and its worthwhile intentions, it just took a little long to get to the point, and felt a little less fun than normal. Even still, I very much enjoyed hearing the booming, operatic voice of William H. Marshall, and delighted in Pam’s contribution to this iconic franchise. And there was no shortage of gorgeous costuming, fun music, and irresistible charm from the lady of the evening, which could also be said about the next film that I watched, released 11 months after Coffy, Jack Hill’s 1974 film Foxy Brown. If you’ve heard of Pam Grier, it’s very likely you know her as Foxy Brown, another blaxploitation heroine that Miss Grier breathed eternal life into. Foxy Brown follows Pam as yet another hardworking individual, trying to keep her neighborhood safe. This time, Pam is out for revenge against the mob bosses that killed her government agent boyfriend. She’s able to link these killers to a drug ring and escort service run by a matriarch by the name of Kathryn Wall, and decides to go undercover as an escort to get close. Foxy Brown started out so promising, with perhaps the coolest title sequence and theme song yet, that positions Pam as a sort of female James Bond. And while the music, the wallpaper, the costuming, and the performances were all eye-catching and compelling, Foxy Brown made its protagonist earn her revenge plot a bit more than was necessary. Foxy Brown’s premise is so similar to Coffy’s that the only thing that truly distinguishes the two is the fact that Pam faces so much more abuse here. In Coffy, Pam is hardly ever in a vulnerable state where she’s not the one holding the gun, but in Foxy Brown Pam is raped, tortured, beaten, drugged, dragged across the floor of where she’s eventually held captive, and it was hard at times for this critic to watch. The fact that these movies are formulaic didn’t bother me, the excessive nudity and outdated language was expected, even the scene in which Pam Grier beats up a bar full of lesbians was manageable—what I couldn’t stand about Foxy Brown were the lengths they went to to humiliate and hurt this legitimately good protagonist. It’s an interesting study in how women are allowed to be portrayed in movies, then and now: seemingly a woman can only be powerful after enduring heaps of pain and misery and disrespect. But at least the revenge Foxy carries out after these moments was swift, clever, and fun. Whether it was hiding a gun in her bra or razor blades in her hair, or kicking the asses of whoever stood in her way, or emasculating the crooked judges who abide by the crime lords, or hijacking a plane, I was blown away once again by Pam Grier’s inherent, impossible magnetism. How she was still able to command my attention, three movies into this watch party, is a testament to her star power—and this was especially the case with the final film of the night, Quentin Tarantino’s 1997 film Jackie Brown. After the action-packed and undeniable enjoyment of these first movies, I was really excited to see Tarantino’s take—since he’s a fan of violence and exploitation, and especially of Pam Grier. Jackie Brown is based off of Elmore Leonard’s novel Rum Punch, and follows a flight attendant named Jackie Brown who is caught smuggling money for Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson), a gun runner in Los Angeles. The cops who arrested her (Michael Keaton and Michael Bowen) want to use Pam to get to Ordell, so she agrees to help them, while concealing another plan of her own. After Max Cherry (Robert Forster) bails her out, though, he develops a bit of a crush and clearly wants to help her. Meanwhile, Ordell’s girlfriend (Bridget Fonda) and his bestie Louis (Robert De Niro) smoke weed in an apartment and talk about guns. If that description feels disjointed, it’s because Jackie Brown, as a whole, felt disjointed. I’d be remiss not to mention the genuinely lovely romance that is sparked between Pam and Robert Forster, which felt out of place for Tarantino, but I wish there’d been more of it. Pam Grier was expectedly wonderful, and her acting abilities had only improved, but there wasn’t nearly enough of her, either! There would be these long, drawn-out, awkwardly-paced scenes of Samuel L. Jackson being rude to his girlfriend, followed by scenes of Robert De Niro smoking out of a dragon bong that certainly kept me interested, but failed to really entertain me. And all the while I just kept wondering, where the hell is Pam Grier? She wasn’t utilized the way I expected her to be, nor was the violence, sex, and blood up to the blaxploitation standards that Tarantino typically upholds. Despite its great cast (I didn’t even mention Chris Tucker and Sid Haig) and twisted scheme, I struggled to maintain my interest with Jackie Brown, a movie that featured all of the staples of a Tarantino flick—feet, guns, and Samuel L. Jackson saying “motherfucker”—but almost none of the staples from blaxploitation that I’d expected, and wanted to see. But Pam was just as engaging and powerful as ever, no matter her age or her character, she can’t help but stand a million miles taller than anyone else. And while you’d think I’d enjoy all of the scenes of Robert De Niro getting stoned, what I really preferred were the quiet moments of conversation between Jackie and Max—where their discussions of aging and cigarettes built a believable, aspirational chemistry. All in all, Jackie Brown was fine, but did not need to be 2 and a half hours long, nor did its use of intense bongo music add to this movie’s lack of excitement. While the blaxploitation era was far from wholesome or politically-correct, at least it was entertaining and full of action, and I wish I could say the same about the movie that I ended with. Regardless of the role she’s occupying, Pam Grier has an energy and a force that reaches out past the screen, directly into your eyeballs. Her voice could be sultry and seductive, or powerful and menacing. She has remained to be an icon of film and television, and a long-lasting figure of genre films, which is a rare, once-in-a-generation thing. I can’t think of a better way to end the month of May or kick off the summer season than by watching Pam Grier take suckers down. So I encourage you to partake in this subgenre if you haven’t already, and let the queen of the foxy silver screen be your guide.