Monday, December 9,
1997 Her little 11-year old sister is a hopeless addict, the police can't help, and poor Nurse "Coffy" Coffin (Pam Grier) has no choice but to take the law into her own hands. Posing as a Jamaican prostitute, Coffy infiltrates the lairs of pimp King George (Robert DoQui) and kingpin pusher Vitroni (Allan Arbus). Eventually, after her childhood sweetheart is beaten into a coma and she finds out her politician-lover (Booker Bradshaw) is involved, Coffy kills everyone with a shotgun. Starring: |
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Reviews:
Coffy
is one of the more lively blaxploitation films of the period, with some silly
touches like genre standby Sid Haig as a racist Russian goon named Omar, puny
Arbus as the perverted gangster (he calls Coffy a "wildcat from the tropical
jungle"), and a catfight in which Coffy beats up a room full of scantily
clad hookers. There's also a junkie hooker whose "man" is a giant
leather-clad lesbian named Harriet, and DoQui wears one of the gaudiest yellow
pimp outfits ever seen on film. Like all revenge films, this one puts its
protagonist on dubious moral ground. Not only does Coffy ram heroin needles
into people and blow a corrupt councilman's gonads off with a shotgun, but
she intentionally steals a car from an innocent bystander, and causes hooker
Linda Haynes to slice her hands to ribbons just for spilling food on her out
of jealousy. Coffy also gets to run over a half-blind hit man, shotgun Vitroni
in his swimming pool, burn a crooked cop alive in his squad car, and repeatedly
jam a bobby pin into Omar's carotid artery. Needless to say, she is not a
woman to trifle with. Despite taking the moral low road, this is an outstanding
exploitation film with enough violence, sadism, nudity, and social outrage
to satisfy even the most demanding sleaze buff. Grier is terrific, and it's
no coincidence that Quentin Tarantino released Switchblade Sisters to theaters
and cast both Grier and Haig in his masterful 1997 blaxpo tribute Jackie Brown.
That film also featured music by Coffy composer Roy Ayers.
Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide
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