In the opening minutes of Coffy, Pam Grier's star-making role, she blasts the skull of a sleazy drug pusher into pulp like a watermelon and shoots his junkie assistant with an overdose of heroin. Coffy is an emergency room nurse by day and vigilante by night, targeting the dealers who made her sister a comatose junkie. She works her way up to the Italian mobsters muscling into the ghetto drug trade while she's romanced by a smooth-talking politician Booker Bradshaw and wooed by nice-guy cop William Elliot, whose refusal to sell out to the corrupt force earns him a crippling beating.
There's plenty of sex, a catty girl-fight that leaves the losers topless, and car chases and shootouts galore, but what makes Coffy a blaxploitation classic is Grier's Amazonian presence and fiery charisma, and the gritty, low-budget action scenes marked by visceral, wincing violence. Mob strong-arm Sid Haig (Spider Baby) cackles while dragging his victim (a strutting peacock pimp played by Nashville's Robert DoQui) behind a speeding car in a sadistic lynching, and Grier runs down one bad guy with a speeding car and takes care of another with a shotgun to the groin. Her next picture, Foxy Brown, was originally written as the sequel to Coffy
Small time gangstas Billy Goode (Tyrin Turner) and Jackie Williams (John Bryant) are fed up with their work going unrecognized. So when a ruthless underworld crime boss with a twisted vision of justice contracts them to handle a high profile hit, it is bad news for Harlem. In the realm of Training Day and Belly, Crime Partners is relentless and action packed. Also starring Snoop Dogg, Ice-T and Ja Rule
Based on the autobiographical novel by Sonny Carson, this film traces the tragic descent of a talented young black teen from honor student to hardened criminal. Eventually imprisoned, he then has to cope with a racist and brutal police force. Rated R VHS & DVD
Pam Grier, the voluptuous queen of blaxploitation movies reigns supreme in this kick-ass action flick. Bodacious nurse Foxy takes the law into her own hands after her main squeeze is murdered in cold blood. The standard revenge plot of Foxy Brown moves along on fast-forward, and the violence ratio (some of it quite gruesome) is high. At one crucial moment Foxy saves herself by pulling a concealed revolver out of her mighty Afro--absolutely one of the high points of blaxploitation cinema. VHS & DVD
Pam Grier is Friday Foster, a photographer's assistant at a glamour magazine assigned to cover the secret arrival of a reclusive black millionaire (Thalmus Rasula). "Just get your cute little behind out there and take your little pictures and goddammit don't get involved!" Of course she does: The scene erupts into an attempted assassination, and Friday digs up a conspiracy that reaches to Washington, D.C., and involves sassy, flamboyant fashion designer Eartha Kitt, lascivious but good-at-heart minister Scatman Crothers, and a powerful black congressman. Yaphet Kotto costars as a good-natured P.I. she tags along as a sidekick and bodyguard, and Carl Weathers makes a strong impression as a silent but deadly hit man systematically silencing potential witnesses. The script feels more like a comic book than a movie with Grier playing Friday as a plucky, resourceful amateur, stealing cars and stalking killers armed with nothing but a fully loaded camera. She's better as the street-smart pistol-packin' mamas of Coffy and Foxy Brown, but still commands the screen every minute she's on. Shootouts and car chases galore, but the highlights are an assassination by garbage truck and a free-for-all firefight at a religious retreat. Jim Backus costars as a wheelchair-ridden racist millionaire, Godfrey Cambridge plays a flamingly gay conspirator, and Ted Lange is a flashy, fast-talking pimp in two comic scenes. DVD Only
Paul Winfield through this movie reflected the Black Consciousness Movement in America in the early 1970's. A clip of a wall sprayed with "Free Huey: Power to the people" is just a taste of it. Gordon's war against the pushers reflected the Black Panthers and other groups crusade against the Heroin epidemic that was raging in Harlem and other poor Black neighborhoods at the time
Director: Ossie Davis
Encoding: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. This DVD will probably NOT be viewable in other countries.)
Martin Scorsese's 1990 masterpiece GoodFellas immortalizes the hilarious, horrifying life of actual gangster Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), from his teen years on the streets of New York to his anonymous exile under the Witness Protection Program. The director's kinetic style is perfect for recounting Hill's ruthless rise to power in the 1950s as well as his drugged-out fall in the late 1970s; in fact, no one has ever rendered the mental dislocation of cocaine better than Scorsese. Scorsese uses period music perfectly, not just to summon a particular time but to set a precise mood. GoodFellas is at least as good as The Godfather without being in the least derivative of it. Joe Pesci's psycho improvisation of Mobster Tommy DeVito ignited Pesci as a star, Lorraine Bracco scores the performance of her life as the love of Hill's life, and every supporting role, from Paul Sorvino to Robert De Niro, is a miracle
This video shows how females operate in the drug game. It also shows how hookers and female adult entertainers earn their bread. Mary J. Blige and Lil' Kim have cameos in this video. So does Az, Tupac Shakur, and Russell Simmons. While Mary makes the claim that she is a gangstress, she is in a different league.
Fred Williamson returns as Tommy Gibbs, the self-styled Godfather of Harlem in Larry Cohen's quickly made sequel to the low-budget Black Caesar. The film opens with a different perspective on the finale from the earlier film, this time with Gibbs surviving an assassination attempt with the help of his estranged father (Julius Harris), who becomes Tommy's new chief lieutenant in his rebuilt organization. Tommy takes his revenge on those who set him up but faces a new threat from within as the corrupt DA partners with an ambitious gang member to take Tommy down. It's not going to be as easy as they think. Shooting on NYC streets and locations, Cohen punches up the slim rise-and-fall/revenge story line with gritty action, a driving pace, and edgy, always-on-the-move, hand-held camera work. The production feels rushed at times and the performances don't have the energy of the previous film, but Cohen doesn't give you much time to think about it with his speeding plot and machine-gun editing, moved along nicely with help from Edwin Starr's funky score
Director: Larry Cohen
Encoding: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. This DVD will probably NOT be viewable in other countries.)
Format: Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen
Rated:R Not for sale to persons under age 18.
Studio: MGM/UA Video
DVD Release Date: October 16, 2001
DVD Features:
Theatrical trailer(s)
Widescreen anamorphic format
