Tomorrow is Mother's Day. I was going to say "here in Australia," but unlike with Father's Day, it's the same day as in the U.S. (Australian Father's Day is in September. Let's not get into it.)
Which means it's the perfect time to watch a movie about a vengeful nurse who goes undercover as a prostitute to take out heroin dealers.
In all seriousness, though, I did think the month of Mother's Day was a good time to turn to the first female-led movie of this series, not to mention one of the genre's most iconic.
In a way, you could say Pam Grier's Foxy Brown is the mother of all blaxploitation heroines, except there's probably some evidence that an earlier film would be more accurately considered that. Grier herself actually appears a year earlier in 1973's Coffy, another likely viewing in this series.
But Foxy Brown is the name we all know. When Grier appeared in Jackie Brown more than 20 years later, there were a lot of mentions of Grier's iconic turn in Jack Hill's 1974 film Foxy Brown, not so much about Jack Hill's 1973 film Coffy. Heck, it could just be the fact that the characters have the same last name. (Interesting to note that Hill was such a maker of blaxploitation, when he was white. A discussion for another time probably.) And since I found Grier very captivating in Jackie Brown -- one of my favorite parts of the movie, of which I have only a middling appreciation -- I had wanted to see Foxy Brown for a good 25 years.
So the actual movie was probably a mild disappointment for me, though I do think Grier is great in it, and she has an absolutely dynamite succession of period outfits.
First I should say it was something of a relief to return to a more straightforward narrative after last month's Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, which was the best movie in this series so far, if not always the easiest to watch in terms of clarity of the story. I still, though, don't think I got all the details, or maybe some of those details were just wrong. For example, I don't actually think Foxy Brown is a nurse, a detail I got from the Amazon Prime brief plot synopsis when I rented it. Speaking of Coffy, I think they may actually be conflating the two, as she definitely appears to be a nurse there.
The Wikipedia plot description makes no mention of her profession at all, but there is an early scene in a hospital, so I tell myself I may have just missed a throwaway line of dialogue. However, in that scene Brown is a visitor to the hospital, not working there, as her boyfriend, an undercover agent who had infiltrated a drug ring, has needed to have facial reconstruction to avoid being targeted now that his cover has been blown. It might have worked, too, if this man hadn't been ratted out by Foxy's own brother, a drug addict named Link, played by Antonio Fargas.
Before we continue with the plot, I wanted to pause for a moment to mention Fargas. His was a face I immediately recognized, and thought I even knew from where, even though this next film is one I haven't seen in more than 30 years. Sure enough, I confirmed on IMDB and he plays that pimp with the fishbowls in his shoes in I'm Gonna Git You Sucka!, which was probably my first exposure to blaxpoitation in the form of a spoof. Maybe I will rewatch that this year after I have seen the original version of many of these tropes. It's been too long.
So one thing I thought was funny about this undercover agent, who is played by Terry Carter, is that to prove the success of the facial reconstruction and change in name from Dalton Ford to Michael Anderson, the film shows us a newspaper headline that reads UNDERCOVER AGENT DALTON FORD MISSING. I love imagining that there would have ever been a time when the whereabouts of undercover agents, whose names should not be named, would be the subject of newspaper articles.
Anyway, Ford/Anderson is gunned down, and that sends Foxy on the warpath both to rough up her own brother and to take down the drug ring headed by Kathryn Wall (Kathryn Loder) and her lieutenant Stevie (Peter Brown). Loder's performance is pretty campy, but it's hard to tell whether or not it's on purpose.
Hill's direction is probably the weakest part of the movie, as his ability to get good line readings from the actors is only one of the deficits he puts up there on screen. He's also challenged when it comes to staging the action scenes, with some of them even prompting laughter.
At least he has Grier, whose charisma is a physical force. I did find myself surprised, though, how much this movie takes us down into the dirt with her character. I imagined her to be kind of a groovy superhero with a great afro in a variety of sharp wardrobes, above the fray and able to dispatch foes with a cool quip. But that's me looking back on Foxy Brown from the perspective of her being an icon, not imagining how the filmmakers might have seen her at the time.
There's no doubt she's badass and strong, but the film is not above degrading her. Without getting too much into spoilers -- though I doubt you are worried about spoilers for a film that turns 50 this year -- there's a scene where Foxy is tied to a bed, drugged, and raped. The rape is off screen, but that would not have played in a film today -- at least not for the hero of the film. As she's struggling against the ropes that have her bound, we get a casual exposure to her breasts. I suspect this sort of thing may have contributed to why the film was, according to Wikipedia, "seized and confiscated in the United Kingdom under section 3 of the Obscene Publications Act 1959 during the video nasty panic." I'm not following the link to see what the "video nasty panic" was.
There is one other actor I wanted to call out. Sid Haig, who I know from his later life collaborations with Rob Zombie, appears here, looking quite thin, as a hippie pilot. It's a goofy role and it brought a bit smile to my face.
The movie does end with a very satisfying comeuppance for its villains, which reminds me a bit of the ending of Shaft. That might be the kind of thing that gives a film its iconic status. I'll have to see whether Coffy botches that same sort of ending when I get to it later in the year, perhaps explaining why that film is not as well known.
So Happy Mother's Day, everyone. If you have a heroin ring you want to bust up, Foxy Brown is available.
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