Coffy (1973)

(On Cable TV, May 2020) While Coffy wasn’t Pam Grier’s first starring role, it was the one that established the tough-woman screen persona that would make her an icon. Under a perfect afro of many dangerous secrets, she delivers a character that’s both an avenging angel, capable and sexy, but also one with moments of weakness and vulnerability unlike other female-avenger roles. This film is close to the Blaxploitation ideal for several reasons—the early-1970s style, the over-the-top nature of its sequences, the go-for-broke sadistic villainy of the antagonist (dragging someone behind a speeding car—yes, there’s a strong racial component to that), the dramatic-bordering-on-exploitative way the film is built, and so on. It’s not quite perfect: in keeping with Blaxploitation tone and genre, it’s often surprisingly violent and the nudity in catfights gets to be intrusive after a while. But, throughout the film, we keep going back to Grier, perfect in a role that matches sexiness and toughness, with agency and credible fight scenes despite the awkwardness of early-1970s low-budget staging. Various elements, like the anti-drug message, a female protagonist and Grier herself, have made Coffy age much better than many of its contemporaries. There’s something wonderful in how Grier is, through retrospectives of the films of her first heyday, now seducing entirely new legions of fans and is likely to keep doing so well into the future.