Coffy

When her younger sister becomes hooked on heroin and if left brain-damaged by a contaminated batch, nurse Coffy (Pam Grier) begins a one-woman crusade against the pimps and pushers.

No one particularly minds her blowing away the odd pimp or pusher, the murders being blamed on mob boss Vitroni, who is known to be trying to muscle into the action – even if the general populace remains ignorant of the extent to which the authorities are in cahoots with him.

Coffy thus sets her sights on this new target, posing as a Jamaican prostitute to gain access to pimp King George and, through him, Vitroni himself.

The only snag in her plan is that her current boyfriend, an ambitious politician with designs on the senate, has a secret life of his own, his candidacy inevitably being sponsored by Vitroni's outfit. Can we say conflict of interests…

The biggest surprise Coffy manages is right at the start as our titular heroine produces a shotgun seemingly out of nowhere to blow away her latest victim – at least the derringer behind the afro in the companion piece Foxy Brown was just about plausible.

In others respect it's pretty much a case of doing exactly what you'd expect, with the social comment rendered moot by the overall cartoon-like approach, replete with sleaze – the standout here a series of catfights at one of Vitroni's parties where all of the women's tops seem to have James T. Kirk syndrome – pimptastic threads and foot-high afros and, above all, unnecessary violence.

The sequence when King George is dragged behind a car for having 'betrayed' Vitroni is particularly hard to watch in this regard, less for its obvious dummy use as the way it unfortunately eerily recalls/foreshadows the murder of black family man James Byrd Jr by white racists in Texas in the late 90s. (Interested parties are advised to check out Chantel Akerman's excellent documentary meditation Sud.)

Pam Grier's acting here isn't up to much, her performance as Coffy consisting primarily of exposing her breasts at every given opportunity, while writer/director Jack Hill's handling is, excepting the odd nice touch such as the opening tracking shots in the first pimp/victim's nightclub lair, pretty perfunctory. Sid Haig's typically slimy turn as one of Vitroni's henchmen is a plus, even if his accent – in common with many of the supporting players – seems to shift geographical locale from scene to scene.

MGM's R2 DVD of Coffy is a pretty bare-bones affair, with the only extra the original trailer, but looks and sounds fine, making it a reasonable purchase if you can pick it up cheap.

A minus, however, for not letting us skip through the copyright warnings at the end. And what was that about having an Australia notice when the disc is only for European markets – hey, you criminal, thanks for buying our product but…