“…something of a mess. Hill’s screenplay has peculiar narrative gaps that are not concealed by heaps on ‘right on, brother’ dialog, while his direction is frenzied without being exciting…” VARIETY
Who made it? Directed by Jack Hill | Written by Jack Hill| Director Of Photography Brick Marquard | Special Effects/make up Bruce Adams| Music Willie Hutch
Who’s in it? Pam Grier | Antonio Fargas | Peter Brown | Terry Carter | Kathry Loder | Harry Holcolmbe | Sid Haig | Juanita Brown
If you weren’t watching this the week it came out, you might have been watching…
Golden Voyage Of Sinbad | The Spikes Gang | The Conversation | Sugarland Express
Production notes and whatnot
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071517/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxy_Brown_(film)#Reception
What’s it all about?
Well it’s straight in! Bright colours, super sexy silhouettes, wiggling dancers, gun play and painfully hip jive stylings. Much like the template set by Bond movies, Foxy Brown opens with a sultry dancey bang. As fast paced strings and wah-wah guitars give at all the “wocka-waka-wocka-waka” seventies funk, technicolour silhouettes of our heroine dance and kick and punch and groove their booties. But no anonymous models are these – this is Pam Grier herself showing us all she got. Pam in a trouser suit! Kick! Pam in an evening dress! Pow! Pam in her underwear! Sock! All the while the soundtrack tells us just how “Superbad” this foxy lady is. “Don’t make Foxy mad!” Well why would you? She seems charming. Nobody is going to watch the opening credits and not wriggle with glee at the super retro funktastic Blaxploitation groove of the whole damned thing. She’s one bad mutha and we’re going to find out over the next 90 minutes why you don’t mess with Foxy Brown. Although, as I say, I don’t know why you would. On the surface at least, she seems delightful. Ho-hum.
It’s night. We assume downtown LA or West Hollywood, but it could be any dirty seedy part of a 70s American city. Neon. Liquor stores. Streetwalkers. Sirens. And who do we have here, but Lincoln “Link” Brown. If you had to look up “pimpy looking mofo” in the Collins Illustrated Dictionary, it’d be this flared collared, satin-shirted, finger-clickin’ heeled-boot jive-ass staring back from the page and no mistake. (I’m going to end up talking in this manner for most the review. I can’t help it. I feel like Huggy Bear).
He’s struttin’ and lopin’ and dodgin’ in and out of the shadows, because he’s being followed. A couple of goons direct from central casting are after him. You know the types. Tight suits, wide ties, pocket-squares, slip-ons, obligatory plain sedan town-car. Basically every nondescript bad guy you ever saw holding an attaché case full of money and a snub-nosed revolver who said “right boss,” in a carpeted office building as Mr. Big sloshed a decanter of bourbon.
Link is on the run, so grabs some cover at a Taco stand to avoid trouble, like he was Mr White and Mr Orange discussing diamond heist etiquette. Two slouchy cops appear on a break and sit next to him, grabbing much needed coffee and he has a moment’s respite. But Goon 1 & 2 (who we will learn are Eddie and Bunyon – it doesn’t matter which is which) are happy to play for time so for a few mins, Link, the goons and the cops all sit sipping coffee waiting for the other to leave. Link grabs his chance and jives his way nervously to a phone booth, checking behind him all the while. Ring ring…
And who should be awoken but our gallant heroine. In her plush apartment, all velvet and velour and purples and reds, satiny headboard and wicker chairs, it’s Foxy Brown. Big afro still in place, draped in an opaque baby-doll nightie, she fumbles for the phone. Yep, it’s Link. Her no good brother, in trouble again. Can she come and get him? Man, she’s furious. But family is family. So grabbing up her little hand-gun, and peeling out of her night-dress, she’s off to the rescue. This is clearly not the first time she’s had to help out her loser brother from some scrape with the law or the mob.
And what a rescue! As the cops depart for their rounds and the goons grab their chance, with a flash of headlights and squeal of tires, Foxy’s red car comes screeching in. Link jumps headfirst into the sun roof, legs flailing and Foxy chases down the goons. One is sent spinning to the sidewalk, the other clings to the hood of the car. Fast driving, left and right, Foxy heads to the obligatory docks and, slamming on the brakes, sends the goon hurtling from the hood, smashing through balsa fences and crashing, splashing into the water. A squeal, a skid and they’re outta there. Blimey.
We meet Foxy and Link a few minutes later, back at her apartment. Link has some weasily explaining to do. Link is grateful – “You saved my beautiful black ass!” And such. – but Foxy has had enough. They snipe back and forth as anyone who has a brother or sister will recognise. What’s Link got himself into now?
Well, gambling. Link’s got in with a dodgy crowd. Two big shots we’ll meet later, known as Miss Katheryn Wall and Mr Stevie Elias. And a couple of bad dudes they are. Link is a cool 20k in the hole with Kath and Stevie after his gambling racket went boobs up. They won’t give him the three days he needs to get square so they’re hunting him down. Foxy, as sisters will, gives him the usual ticking off, but Link is quick to snap back. It’s okay for her! She’s dating Dalton Ford! He’s a paid informer for the cops! Link was cool when he was dealing coke but Foxy made him quit that! We get a long passionate speech about Link and his failed ambition. There are no chances for black men like him! What’s a cat to do, man? Link sees no way to make it in the world outside of crime. Big sis’ Foxy ain’t buyin’ it though. Sure, he can stay with her for a while. But he’s gotta get out of the rackets. Link says he’ll try, but his destiny couldn’t be more signposted if he was a troubled padowan Jedi.
So who are this mob Link has got tied up in? Well let’s head over to their luxury office complex, all velvet and dark wood, heavy ashtrays and drinks trolleys and meet them. Behind her desk. Miss Katheryn is an odd type. Silky dresses, dark make-up, heavy hair, she’s a moll from the old school. Her beau, Stevie is the classic gruff hunk boss type. Roll necks, corduroy, jewellery, medallions and pinkie rings. The pair yell at the hopeless goons Eddie and Bunyon. How did they let this Link guy getaway? Some dame?! Don’t they realise what’ll happen to their business if they lose fear and respect! They’re gonna have to fix this Link guy and for good.
So what of Foxy and her boyfriend? The paid informer? Well next morning she’s off to visit him in all places, the hospital. He is in recovery, bandaged up like David McCallum in The Invisible Man. Foxy by name, Foxy by nature, she decides to wake him gently with a relaxing blow-job. Of course she does. Much raunchy bed talk and smiles as the couple are reunited. Dalton is recovering from plastic surgery – a way to disguise himself after his 2 years undercover drug work. He’s now going to re-enter the world as one “Michael Anderson”.
Well if that doesn’t deserve a good fuck, nothing does. However Foxy’s lusty intentions are cut short by the obligatory sassy black nurse who shooes her away and give Dalton/Michael’s cock a good hard thwacking to calm him down. Ouch.
The cops come and hand “Michael” his new passport and paperwork for his new identity. But the mood is less than triumphant as Dalton/Michael never got the convictions he was working on. Some “fixers” got to the judge and the jury. Fixers, we will soon discover, by the names of…yep, Miss Kathryn and Stevie…
Out of the hospital, we don’t have to wait long for more action as Foxy and Dalton come across a street fight. As a pimpy fellow jives down the street, a “cripple” jumps into action and takes him down. Black figures jump from cars, all fists and kicks. Fast flutes and hi-hats and piccolos accompany the violent street-fightin’ punch up, hard and fast on the corner street. As the bad guy makes a run for it, good ole’ Foxy trips him and allows his attackers to finish him off with a punch over a news vendor cart and with some karate chops and kicks, the poor fellow is bundled into a plain car and driven away.
Turns out the accosters are Foxy’s pals. A few streetwise Black Panther beret and arm-band types calling themselves the “Neighbourhood Anti-Slavery Committee.” They’re out there doin’ what the cops won’t – protecting the streets from dope peddlers. Unlike the judges and the lawmen, they can’t be bought. “You dig?” “Right on brother…” (There’s a lot of that stuff). Dalton is not sure he approves of this rough handed vigilantism. But hell, Foxy tells him “vigilantes are as American as apple pie.”
Meanwhile? Well idiot Link is about as trusty-worthy as he appears. (Not trustworthy at all). He’s on the phone trying to get back into business. On the other end? A dumb looking gum chewing blonde broad in pyjamas. Interrupted as Foxy and Dalton come home, Dalton introduces himself innocently in his new persona. “Mike Anderson. A friend.” Eager to score and get back to work, Link is outta there, tugging down his slouchy baker’s boy cap. With the place to themselves, and no sassy black nurse to be twonging his pecker, Foxy and Dalton have funky slow sex: Lots of boobs and neck action. But fairly chaste, considering the genre.
After sex, they’re both gonna get outta here. A few chores and then kick the dust off this town.
Later, Link is back and watches Foxy pack her bag. In his fingers, he fondles the newspaper cutting that talks of “informant Dalton being missing presumed dead.” Foxy ain’t talking. But hell, whoever grassed up this Dalton and got him whacked must have made a big payday, right? Folk would pay top dollar for that information. “That’d be worth $20k to someone if they knew where he was.” Without realising what Link has in mind, Foxy leaves. Link thinks…and takes a pencil to the photo of missing Dalton. A scribble here? A shadow there? Hell…that’s Mike Anderson! Ker-ching! Or words to that effect.
Back in their plush offices, Mr Elias is having some Mexican heroin tested by one of his chemists. Yep, a lick and a sniff? Quality is good. There are lots of chunky handshakes and rattly identity bracelets as they agree to a buy. $10k now and the rest on delivery. Then, a phone call to Elias. Good news! Someone has squealed. The guy with the $20k who escaped? He’s got Dalton’s whereabouts!
Hoo-boy! The goons meet. (Kathryn and Stevie, barking at dumb goons Eddie and Bunyon). Miss Katheryn wants Dalton dead. Or as she more delicately puts it, “I want that damned nigger cop fink burned.”
Charming. So the goons have their orders. From their car, they watch Foxy and Dalton innocently prepping for their trip away, without a care in the world. Dalton heads to a drug store, Foxy heads home. Link is gone…but what’s this? The newspaper cutting with the scribbled face and features? “Oh Link!” Sudden gunfire! Dalton comes crashing in screaming as goons drive by the apartment and shoot him dead. Foxy holds her lover, sobbing and crying for his senseless death. Link. That goddamn Link! The man she loved!
Well, after his $20k payoff for the info, old Linky is back in business! He and the dumb gum-chewin’ blonde are at her place, measuring coke with scales and baggies and spoons like they were TS Eliot. Back in the big time! An interrupting knock on the door? They hide the blow and open up. Oopsie. It’s one angry Foxy with a Smith & Wesson revolver. All bare midriff, silky top and headscarf, she comes I guns blazing. Bang! She takes a notch from Link’s ear and down he goes screaming. Dammit, Foxy wants the name of who he told about Dalton! Link, ever the frightened weasel, gives it up – Kathryn Wall. She’s the protection, she’s the fixer – she makes sure the bad guys get away with what they’re doing. Jurys, judges, cops… She’s behind it all. Her front? A model agency running call-girls to the top men in town. That’s all Foxy needs. Before she leaves, however, Foxy smashes the apartment up. Someone’s not getting their deposit back. Foxy demands Link get out of town. If he was smart, he’d listen. But hell, whaddya you think?
So how can young Foxy get to this Kathryn woman and her model agency/bribery fixing scheme? Well, exactly the way you’d imagine. We next see Foxy as she sashays in to Miss Kathryn’s, dressed for work as a model. Yellow wrap around dress, busty bust, bare shoulders and a straight-hair wig. She meets Miss Kathryn. Talks sass. None of this acting modelling bull, stop wasting time. She knows its whores. “She’ll do the hell out of whoever.” Kathryn, ever the business woman, is impressed by this black fox. “Be back here ready at 4pm.”
Oh, we’re about halfway through now. Got the set up? Foxy wants revenge on Kathryn and her goons for killing Dalton. That’s about it. Oh there are drug deals and Link being a bastard. But we’re pretty much set up for 40mins of pure Blaxploitation revenge. Excellent. Let’s crack on
Next day? 4pm? As arranged, Kathryn has her new hooker. In a red plungey dress, Foxy is a knockout and sure to please Kathryn’s demanding clientele of corrupt judges and jurors.
But running a fixer joint plus model agency plus brothel is clearly a stressful gig as we meet Kathryn barking angry instructions to her girls. Too fat! Too tired! Sipping scotch, relaxing in his smoking jacket, Mr Elias hangs out like a Mandate cologne model, all chiselled chin and furry chest. Hell, he likes the look of this new Foxy and is caught eyeing her up as she is pimped and dressed by Kathryn’s assistants. Sexy saxophone and piano tinkles as Foxy reappears in clingy blue dress. Lots of cleavage and a long wavy wig. Good to go.
Being new to the game Kathryn teams Foxy up with one of her more reliable gals, Claudia. Skinny, doped up, strung out and wretched, Claudia is nobody’s idea of a good time. But has enough slutty devil-may-care don’t-give-a-shitness to be able to put out for a bunch of portly corrupt legal types.
Foxy and Claudia’s job is outlined – Kathryn and Stevie have 2 dope peddlars up in front of the judge tomorrow. F and C’s job is to make sure the judge gets “what he wants” from the gals and is persuaded to let the dealers off. Simple, right? Just as they’re getting into the car to head to a hotel room full of corrupt judges, Claudia’s distraught son and husband arrive. They plead with her to leave the business. However Claudia is in too deep. She can’t leave. At which point Stevie and the goons turns up and daddy gets a good ole beating before he’s dragged away. Don’t mess with the business.
In the limo on the way to the judges’ party, Claudia greedily pops pills like they were tic tacs and talks about how to cope with it all. But Foxy has a better idea than just playing along with Kathryn’s demands. Why not play together with the Judge? Sounds like more fun?
Well not for the judge, as we’re about to discover. A hotel room. The judge and cronies are having a weird party. Porn plays on the Super 8mm projector and topless women sit about, bored, on men’s laps. F and C arrive and take the Judge to his room for fun. They tease the judge, talking about the dealers he has to release tomorrow.
They strip him down and tease him about his tiny penis, which he is oddly happy to play along with. I mean it’d put me right off, but hey, that’s me. Foxy peels off down to her blue underwear and, as these taunt and flirt and tease…they shove the judge into the public hallway. Oopsie! As he lays, flailing in the carpeted hallways, what appears to be Mary Whitehouse and the cast of Songs Of Praise appear and – shock! – catch judge without his trousers and give him an old fashioned hand-bagging. Nice.
The woman laugh, hysterical about their misbehaviour. But laughter turns to panic when Claudia realises how she’ll be punished by Miss Kathryn. She’ll never see her kids. But don’t worry! Ole’ Foxy has a plan to get her out and get her free.
Next day. Ohhh fuck. The Judge? Dammit. Yep, he’s jailed the dope peddlers. Sent the pair down the river. Hardly surprising, after the way he was treated by the gals. Kathryn, natch, is furious. If they can’t be relied on to fix the judges, they’re out of business. Man oh man, those girls are gonna get it! Especially that sassy new one!
That morning, Foxy comes home hoping to find Claudia. But no. She’s gone. To her fellah? Back to Kathryn? To Centre Parcs? Nope, to drown her sorrows in a local saw-dusty lesbian bar. Well, it’s where I’d go.
It’s a plain kind’a place. Bare wood, a jukebox, dull plain faces of local lesbians sit about, bored, glugging bottles of cheap beer trying to come to terms with a life. Funk plays but nobody’s dancing. Claudia stumbles in, looking for company, looking for distraction. “Keep her here,” barmaid tells the clientele. She’s had word from Kathryn. Apparently, Kathryn has her fingers everywhere. Hmm. Fishy. So to speak.
Foxy arrives. How she knew to look here, is not made clear. Maybe it’s the nearest watering hole. Trying to drag Claudia away we get a great old school western bar fight. Screams, punches, kicks, bottles, rolling around, smashed juke box, hair pulls, smashed card tables, cheap wood and fake glass bottles, gun fire, Foxy drags Claudia away.
Only to find – doh – Stevie and his goons waiting for them. Ohhhh bollocks. A chase. Fast funk. Bongos and wacka-wocka wah-wah. Alley ways, bins, fences, chain-link. Broken bottles. Climbing gates. Foxy hits a goon with bin. Bloody mouths. “Bitch!” Just as Foxy is about to be carved up, Stevie arrives. He has plans for her.
Well they’ve got her now. Kidnapped, Foxy is being assaulted and man-handled by the goons. Stevie turns up, all Hai Karate and medallions. He’s had Foxy I.D.’ed. She is Dalton’s girlfriend! Plus? The sister of the dope dealer who turned him in! “These people don’t believe in family loyalty.” They will take her to the ranch and fill her full of heroin. Ranch? Once she has the habit she’ll fetch a good price when sent to the island…
Island? Blimey. Things aren’t looking good.
So now we are at this ranch. Somewhere in the desert. A jaws harp twangs. A ratty bed and filthy mattress. Mosquitoes. Hot. Sweaty. Torn clothes. Pulp Fiction style, we have a couple of good ole’ boys, leering and dribbling, stinking of liquor and sweat. Among broken bottles, burnt tyres and oil barrels, in their greasy dungarees, they’re gonna keep Foxy here. Get her hooked on junk. Sell her on. Tee-hee etc.
But no! Our Foxy is foxier than that and ain’t gonna take this lying down. Or, indeed, pumped full of heroin. Groggy but up and at ‘em, she tries to escape… but is caught. A whip around her neck brings her flailing to the dusty ground. Cackling, the hicks are slapping her, tying her up. There’s a fair bit of “This big jugged jigaboo,” which is frankly unnecessary. A needle of dope forced into her arm, the hicks are feeling horny and tear off her clothes, climbing on board for a bit of, what Alex and his Droogs would call, the old in-out in-out. Christ…
Foxy awakes after the gruelling ordeal. Ever vigilant and never beaten, she leans over and tongues a used razor blade into her mouth from the heroin table next to her bed. Stealthily, she manages to cut her ropes and escape from the iron bed. She gathers 3 coat hangers from a wardrobe and, with a bend, fashions a Freddie-clawed weapon. Outside in the dust, her rapist sings tunelessly like Quint in Jaws, a rough song about Linda Lou. I forget the lyrics. “There once was a girl called Linda Lou, er…give her a buck and she’ll suck your dick.” Or something like that.
Desperate to escape, Foxy sucks oil from barrel into a bowl with syphoning suck of a filthy tube. But a hick is upon her! Foxy slashes at him with the hangers! Blood and screams stripe his face. The other kick stumbles in. Foxy tosses gasoline on him and throws a lit flame. An inferno of denim, screams and casual racism as they holler and writher. The hut collapses as she flees, leaving the men burning.
There’s 20mins left, if you’re counting.
Well naturally we’re back with Kathryn and Stevie and the goons. Foxy has fucked everything up godddamit. The shipment at the ranch has been destroyed by the fire. They have to tell their dealers they’ll have to wait a week for the new shipment from Mexico. But Kathryn and Stevie KNOW it was Foxy who caused it. Find her and kill her, dammit. “We’re going to kill ourselves a couple of niggers.” And hey, they know how to find them. Link? Of course. Who else?
Coked up and high as a Blue Peter presenter, Link is having frisky sex with his dumb blonde girlfriend. Between thrusts, there’s plenty of powdery snorty sniffs. Topless, she’s all about the coke and the fun. What could go wrong? Well, once again? Doorbell. Who is this?
Of course. It’s Eddie with Stevie Elias. “Where is she?!” Shouts and screams as they search for Foxy. Waving about a sawn-off shotgun, Stevie lets rip and blows Link to pieces. Whoops. With only the dumb blonde as a witness…yep, they’d better cut her throat and leave her for dead. Which they do, with ketchupy gooey nastiness.
Foxy, as we know, has escaped the ranch. Somehow she has made her way back to her friends, the “Neighbourhood Committee against Slavery” we met earlier. Yep, those guys. Sitting in their den (lair? Cabin? Hideout? Shack? Tree house?) there are angry posters and right-on art on the walls. The black men have all gone to the head-bands and leather combat waistcoat school of fashion and design and sit on folding chairs righteously and pouting around a bare war-room table as Foxy makes her case.
Oh and what a case it is! This is how you get a bunch of vigilantes riles up: “Man, she needs their help! Good men are dying out there! It could be any of us! Our brothers! Our sisters! We gotta stand up!” and so on. Manly quiet nodding as Afros bounce and brows are furrowed. You said it sister. The leader is troubled buy all this. Sounds a little like she wants them to take care of her personal business? “Sounds like revenge?” “You take care of the justice,” Foxy tells them, anger and fury in her eyes, “I’ll handle the revenge.” Blimey it’s exciting. We are heading for a big finish and someone’s getting comeuppance.
We are at a local airfield. A funky jive talking guy in the Red Hat Of Patferrick is holding court at the table with pals. At the bar? Well who’s this foxy madam in a lot of camel suede, boots and a sass-filled hat o’er one eye? The pilot is charmed and Foxy gives it all the coy flirting she can. She twirls her hair. “Never been on a plane before…” This bozo can’t believe his luck. He’s got a flight down to Mexico real soon. Foxy is in!
Meanwhile, the deal is being prepped. Ole Stevie is trying to leave his apartment for the south of the border drug deal but Kathryn is being clingier than her silky frock. While she paws and smooches her hunk, keeping him distracted, Stevie is distracted, still giving it lashes of scotch, medallions, jewellery, flat-fronted trews and a few pints of bouffanty Hai Karate. He’ll hurry back. She’ll wait. Presumably lounging around in a flouncy bit of sheer acrylic crackly enough to power Cuba.
So we’re in the plane. Or the cockpit at least, which with a wobble and a bit of dry ice out the window, may or may not be actually flying. (It isn’t). The pilot and Foxy are making flirty chit chat on their way across the border for the cocaine drop off.
In Mexico, goons Eddie and Bunyon plus boss Stevie arrive at a quiet airfield. Corrupt cops take a handful of bank notes to keep the place clear for a while. IN a dusty shack, goons meet more goons (It’s a Goon Show, as it were) and money is counted and samples tested. Lots of staring at each other trying to make their polo neck and medallion look more menacing than another’s pinkie-ring and kipper-tie combo.
The plane drones in and lands. Foxy keeps low and the pilot clambers out with his sports holdall full of, we assume, coke. Dodgy dealings ensue. At the entry to the airfield, a plan van drives up. The cops try and wave them away but…aww fuck. It’s the Black Panthers. Half a dozen black guys with automatic weapons spread out, disarm the cops and take over the perimeter.
Meanwhile Foxy is up and at ‘em! Into the cockpit, full throttle, Foxy powers the Cessna back along the airfield to attack the goons. Panic! Flee! The money goes one way, the drugs go another and Foxy chases goons left and right in the plane. Goon #1 tries to play chicken with the aircraft…which ends in a glorious rubbery juicy splatter of blood, bone, hair and cheap suit as she ploughs him down. Gunfire! Car chase! Black Panthers! Goons! A firey shoot-out on the hot tarmac.
Stevie knows the jig is up so makes a run for it, jumping into his sedan and flooring it. HE squeals dustily to the perimeter for the cops to let him go but…yep! There are no cops anymore. Just the “Neighbourhood Anti-Slavery Committee,” armed to the teeth. Dragging him out, they splay him across the hood of his car. Foxy arrives. There is some nodding and agreement and then a wave of a fuckin’ big hunting knife. Stevie’s trousers are unbuckled and pulled to his knees. The knife is waggled in the sunlight. Are they..? Surely they won’t..? Stevie panics! No! But yes. Camera pulls into his gurning screaming face as blade meets balls…
Which only leaves one strand of the tale to clean up. Back at their low-slung apartment, among fur rugs and Danish modern furniture, Kathryn awaits her lover’s return. But nope, it ain’t Stevie. It’s that damned Foxy Brown. She has the holdall. The remaining goons pat her down, but she’s unarmed. “I got a present from your faggot boyfriend.”
And she produces…a cloudy pickle-jar. Tossing it over to Kathryn, it’s peered and at examined. Kathryn realises the contents are fleshy and familiar…
The jar drops, smashes. Much yelling! But ever prepared, Foxy reaches into her tremendous afro and tugs out her little sliver automatic. Blam! Blam! The goons go down.
Now Foxy faces Kathryn. Kathryn, her world collapsing around her, begs for death. But that wouldn’t be revenge. Death would be too good for her.
With a loud BANG, Foxy shoots Kathryn in the arm, and the woman drops screaming to the floor. Katheryn, now injured, will have to live a long lonely life with her crippled lover. She will suffer, just as Foxy has suffered.
Triumphantly, Foxy strides out with more sass than John Travolta at Jack Rabbit Slims. Into her car, her Black Panther pal sits revving at the wheel. With a squeal, they pull away. We zoom in to Foxy’s face.
Freeze frame.
Is it any good?
Wow. It’s terrific. Fast, punchy, slappy and violent, you’ll come for the fist-fights and funk, but stay for the hairstyles, clothes and pure hip energy of the whole thing.
We’re in new territory though, dear reader. I think it’s fair to say – looking back on our project so far, we are dealing with a new first. If Hershell Lewis’s “Blood Feast” was the first splatter, “Love Camp 7” was the first “porno,” (of sorts), we can call “Mark Of The Devil” the first “thriller” (that is to say, no supernatural aspects), and “Headless Eyes” our first “psycho-on-the-loose.” But with 1974’s Foxy Brown we have our first Blaxploitation piece.
Not a term we’ve come across and certainly I think watching this yesterday was a first for me. Maybe I might have watched a bit of “Shaft” with my father if that was on telly? Don’t really remember. Although nobody can forget Isaac Hayes’s theme tune. No matter who’s singing it…
So let’s dig and find out what this genre is all about, where it came from and whether this is a good place to start.
Story is it was one Junius Griffin, the then President of the NAACP (The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People) who came up with this word in 1972, specifically to identify a new breed of motion picture. The NAACP was formed in 1909, to date 300k members-strong across the US to – in their own words – “…ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination.” Which in 1909 was a major cause for concern. It’d be nice to say they disbanded having achieved their aims a few years later. But, y’know. Read a book.
So, Junius Griffin. His term was a catch-all way if identifying a new breed of action cinema which began to emerge in the early 1970s. One can argue about the “first” of the type, but as ever – these sorts of affairs don’t arrive fully fledged and formed out of nowhere. Trends grow and develop and scenes and themes and styles catch-on and one day – tah-dahhh – there’s a genre with a dozen of examples jockeying for chart attention. A brief bit of research suggests suspects for “very first” might be “They Call Me Mr Tibbs” and “Cotton Comes To Harlem” from 1970, plus the legendary “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song” from 1971.
But what are we talking about? Griffin was recognising a new breed of motion picture with new styles, new ethics, a new message, a new look and – most importantly – new heroes. How does one spot a Blaxploitation movie?
Well it’s more than a black leading man or an African American setting. Porgy & Bess or Take A Giant Step (1959) for example aren’t troubling any retrospectives where Sheba Baby or Dolomite are playing.
What you gotta have is a what Vincent Canby of The New York Times called, “…super-charged, bad-talking, highly romanticized melodramas about Harlem superstuds, the pimps, the private eyes and the pushers who more or less singlehandedly make whitey’s corrupt world safe for black pimping, black private-eyeing and black pushing.”
By and large it’s the North East or West Coast of the U.S. for location and its poor urban neighbourhoods. You won’t go long without a shoot-out or a punch-up. Women are likely to be full of sass and confidence as well as busty and curvy as all get out. Plots revolve around drug deals, sex, trafficking, gangs, dealers, prostitution and aren’t likely to hold back on shocking scenes, violent outbursts and provocative language. If the white folks are known as “The Man”, or “Cracker McHonky” and empowered black protagonists overcome prejudice and subjugation by society, then you’re in the right territory.
Add to these fast pace dramas, a decent car-chase or two, some killer fashions, great hair and the obligatory funk soundtracks with heavy bass, wah-wah guitars and whirling flutes and strings? You gotchaself a Blaxploitation pic.
The question that Griffin’s catch-all term raises is…this a good thing or not? I mean…the “blax” is one thing, but the “…ploitation?” Sure, representation in an art form where one is used to being the sidekick, the bystander, the villain or the victim is of course a welcome relief and a long time coming. In 1972, the question remained, is a run of thrillers, shoot-em ups and punch-ups depicting African American culture as a messy immoral illegal world of drugs, crime and violence really the representation a culture needs to move forward? Is it more of just a base appeal to an audience’s most prurient interests?
Well while many joined Griffin in decrying this trend in African American film, there were of course others who believed they were all to the good. Strong black male and female leads, their own code and morals, living in the real world of prejudice and corruption. A group side-lined by “the man” and, as Link famously puts it, “unless you can sing or dance or play basketball? What other choice does America give a poor black dude?” (I’m paraphrasing, but it’s a powerful scene and we genuinely believe that Link – and the men he represents that education and opportunity left behind – have been pushed into these lifestyle with little choice)
Plus of course these movies showed locations, people, society and culture that the black 1970s audience could understand and relate to. What else were they going to watch? A bunch of Burt Reynolds good-ole boys taking Transams across the US with denim hot-panted blondes in the bucket seat beside them?
Denim hot-panted, I don’t believe is an expression. Forgive me.
Yvonne D. Sims in her book Women of Blaxploitation, criticized Foxy Brown. Grier’s depiction of black womanhood was considered “disturbing,” in a time when African Americans were making progress politically, socially, and culturally. Sims felt Foxy Brown’s heroine contradicted the image they were creating for themselves in society and wasn’t doing progress any favours. But as ever in these debates, the flip-side speaks up just as loudly and the fearless power and agency of Grier’s characters has been embraced by many feminists. So y’know – ya buys ya ticket, ya makes ya choice.
But all of this academic conjecture only gets us so far. Is it, as I asked about an hour ago, any good? Foxy Brown is, after all the lectures and theories a 1974 blaxploitation romp much loved by Tarantino and other nerdy cine-buffs as a classic of its time. Not the first, not the last, not the best. But boy oh boy, if someone wanted an idea of what these movies are all about, there are much worse places to start.
On a personal note – which frankly is what this project is all about – for a middle aged Honkey Cracker like me, I loved it. I mean, I’m not about to go out and drop a grand on a Blue Ray collection of classics. But hell, for the duration of Foxy Brown, I was jiggling about in my seat with a big Taco-eatin’ grin on my face.
The director Jack Hill has a terrific sense of pace. There’s not a lingering establishing shot, a slow pan or a ponderous set-up in any frame. The whole tale thunders along with a great sense of speed and efficiency like film-stock was oil and he was Mad Max. The cast and characters – while largely stereotypes to be fair (especially the bad guys) – are slickly painted and we get motivation and purpose in the first 10 secs of their screen time. There’s hoods, there’s corrupt judges, there’s sassy dames and hipster jive-talking bad folk. Hill trusts us to know our genre and not a second is wasted with back-story or long ponderous explanations of fathers or families or why’s and how’s. Everyone is supercharged and has something they gotta do and its terrific fun sitting back and watching it all play out.
And play out to an amazing score. This kind of fast jazz-funk may not be everyone’s cup of java, but as a backdrop to the kind of cars, fashions and action, Willie Hutch’s guitars and drums, plus fast flutes and those whirling strings get the action leaping off the screen. One is high fiving and fist punching all the way as cars squeal and skid, high-kicks hit chins and goons go sprawling across baked LA sidewalks.
Not being old enough, or American enough, or indeed black enough to know the factual basis of most of this stuff, I assume costumer has huge fun exaggerating (or depicting) the looks of the time. Collars are huge, flares are flapping, colours pop, hair shines and every outfit Pam Grier sashays on with is a stunning bit of polyester. The blokes – so oft’ short changed in this sort of caper – get the standard grey suits and slip ons of course. But the main villains Miss Kathryn and Stevie simply reek of the 1970s with all the satins and sheer silks you could possibly want.
What to say about the plot? Well it’s a classic bit of revenge thriller nonsense. Good gal Foxy gets wronged by the mob, she takes revenge. Simple. But part of the appeal of the genre is the agency the black cast have in the whole caper. At no point do they phone the white cops, rely on the white judges, call on white lawyers or “the man” to get them out of scrapes. And for an audience at the time, this kind of empowerment was crowd-cheering stuff. One is reminded of Samuel L Jackson’s character in Die Hard With A Vengeance. “And who do we not want to help us? White people.” There’s a strong chance Jackson has a poster of Pam Grier up in his shop backroom.
The action, which we’ll get to in a minute, is terrific. Hard and fast, it pulls no punches (so to speak) and is tough and sharp and nasty. Punches connect, blades cut, kicks crack and the violence is all about adrenaline and heart-rate. Terrific stuff, edge of your seat the whole way.
Not much more to say. Pam Grier is a bottled lightening force of sex and rage and we are with her the whole way. Her brother Link – who many folk will know as “Huggy Bear” in Starksy & Hutch, over-playing his pimpy jive-ass brother act for the softer Saturday Night TV crowd – is sleazy and funny and snakey and perfect as Link. Someone you’d trust forever, but still count your silverware when he left. Huge fun. Goons are goons and they do their goon thing valiantly.
Nasty?
Well…I mean…sort of. As I said, it’s got plenty of violence. Punches, kicks, slaps, beatings, bottles, smashed chairs, flashing blades. And of course that terrific “goon in a propeller” bit of gore in the final act. The drugs are front and centre, if they bother you, and the language isn’t something you’d hear on television. Spooks and niggers and jigaboos and all the nasty cursey slurs you’d expect of the time. A blade to the blonde’s neck is gruesome. The punch-ups are snappy and nasty. The gun play loud and brutal with popping blood squibs and plenty of claret, as they say. But honestly? Not much worse than you would have got in an episode of The Sweeney.
What does it remind me of?
Well here it gets interesting. For me anyway. As I’ve gotta come clean on this one. For all its big screen bravado and Blaxploitation bombastic balls, all the way through my honkey cracker mind kept spinning back to more familiar territory. That is, the American 1970/80 Saturday evening cop show. It has that “wrap it all up in 28m” feel. Tone down the language and violence, and we are in the world of The A-Team, with panel vans and suited goons and Mr Big and airfield fisticuffs. I mean, this is the nature of the format and has much to do with the setting.
Let’s talk about that, because I’d hate to be seen as dismissive of a great piece of black banned action cinema. But it occurred to me, and it’s my site, so whaddya gonna do?
Hollywood. Oh bless its little heart. The few thousand square feet of California where so much of my childhood was born. Being a boy who grew up glued to the television…
And I mean this. I recall having a conversation with a school chum, Edward Gormley, when I was about 14. I explained our family life and he rocked back in his Clark’s brogues in a mixture of astonishment and thinly disguised disgust. Life was TV. Telly. Children’s TV got clicked on at 4.30 when we got home and the “idiot box” stayed burbling away in the corner all night, until it was clicked off at bedtime. Kids TV, news, soaps, dramas, comedies, game-shows, more news, documentaries, films… My entire childhood was spent shovelling cold meat and salad into my face, and then as the evening drew on, mug-fulls of tea, as flickering entertainment filled the living room. Dinners on laps, dinners on trays, hunched around the telly. Edward, being a little posher and well-to-do than us Asplins, found all of this alarming. Where was the dining room? The drawing room? The family card game? Charades? Bridge? Hah. As Mr Pink once said: “Yeahhhh, fuck all that.”
My entire youth had the soundtrack of Mike Post and Pete Carpenter and the production values of Stephen J Cannell. Knight Rider, The A-Team, Airwolf, Blue Thunder, Manimal, Street Hawk, BJ & The Bear, Vegas, Blossom, Doogie Howser, M.D., Hardcastle and McCormick, Magnum P.I., Quantum Leap… That’s what grown up life was like and I confidently expected the adult world I would one day enter to have a lot more punch-ups, saloons, panel-vans, attache cases, Colt 45s, M-16 machine guns, glamourous dames, sheriffs and hay bales. Oh the disappointment.
Anyhoo, why am I telling you this? To give you a sense of the aesthetic of Foxy Brown. It has the pace, thrills, stunts, goons and balsa-wood bar-stools of the 70s/80s adventure TV of my childhood. The cars, the streets, the cops – it’s all straight out of Knight Rider. With the “wrap it all up in 28mins” fast edits and plotting to go with it. Harder, darker, swearier, sexier and bloodier of course. But that’s the feel and I felt very much at home in Foxy’s world, as you will if you’ve shared my TV habits.
Where can I see it?
Well if you subscribe to Arrow, the grotty little on-demand movie channel for the best in rare sleaze and cheapie thrills (my slogan, not theirs) then Foxy Brown is there.
The handy site justwatch.com will fill you in on availability online
https://www.justwatch.com/uk/movie/foxy-brown
And for collectors and such, there’s a nice Blu Ray available.
letsgetthebannedbacktogether.uk 