
For everyone too young to remember the huge box office success of the Blaxploitation flicks of the early seventies, it's hard to explain just how big of movie stars Richard Roundtree, Fred Williamson and Pam Grier were.
Pam kicked it all off with 1973's COFFY, a low-budget, high action film that was soon followed by "Scream Blacula Scream" and "Foxy Brown".
Grier stars as a nurse whose sister dies due to an overdose. She becomes a one-woman wrecking crew to go after the low level dealers all the way up to the crime kingpin behind it all.
The script is crap, the special effects are silly and the sets look like they cost $10, but damned if Grier doesn't rise above it all with a strong and believable performance.
Quentin Tarantino loved all her seventies action flicks and cast her in the lead in 1997's "Jackie Brown", finally giving her a film worthy of her efforts.
There are numerous unintentional laughs throughout, from the obvious use of dummies during action scenes to the worst fake blood this side of the Hammer Dracula movies.
Look quick for Alan Arbus (Major Freedman for a decade on TV's "M*A*S*H*) as Vitroni the horribly dressed mobster. Bet he'd like to get this one off his resume, haha.
Grier is a bad-ass action hero and by far the best actress in this nostalgic, cheap and silly movie. She gets a B but this COFFY is lukewarm and gets a D.
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