Scanlines
By Jerry Renshaw
Foxy Brown
D: Jack Hill (l974)
with Pam Grier, Antonio Fargas, Peter Brown, Kathryn Loder, Sid Haig
Word on the street is, you don't mess around with Foxy Brown! She's sexy, she's
bad, she'll give you the worst beating you ever had! Pam Grier is Foxy, bent on revenge
against the mobsters who rubbed out her government-agent boyfriend. Antonio "Huggy
Bear" Fargas plays her shifty brother, into the mob for 20 grand on a coke deal,
who sells out Foxy's boyfriend to get the goons off his back. Director Hill (Spider
Baby, Switchblade Sisters) keeps the plot going as fast as a speeding Sedan deVille
(it seems like it's only about 45 minutes long) while the budget limitations give
the overall look of a Mannix episode. There's grotesque Seventies fashions
aplenty, a disgustingly kinky relationship between the nasty-looking mob boss and
her gigolo boyfriend, big cars, big guns, big hair, and lots of wah-wah guitar soundtrack.
Foxy uses her sturdy bra as a shoulder holster for her small caliber automatic (later
concealing it in her Afro), opens up a king-size can of whupass in a lesbian bar
and uses her considerable feminine charms to dupe some chump bad guys. Like Switchblade
Sisters, there's a feminist element as well, as Foxy uses her brains as well
as beauty and guts, biding her time, waiting to get all her ducks in a row before
clinching her plan. Also, Foxy enlists the help of a Panther-esque "neighborhood
committee" to provide the muscle to get her revenge on the baddies (another
similarity to Hill's other film). Predictably, the story builds up to a torrent of
violence and gunplay by the end (including death by airplane propeller). This is
fun action sleaze from the classic era of drive-in blaxploitation films, driven by
the no-nonsense direction of Jack Hill, and did well enough at the box office to
help put the still-gorgeous Pam Grier on the map. Don't miss it.
Still thinking about those over-the-top directors? Here are some other turds...
ah, titles that are worth bugging your video store about:
Robot Monster
D. Phil Tucker (1953)
Grade-Z nonsense about a man in an ape suit wearing a diving helmet and battling
post-nuclear-war humans. Watch for his war-surplus radio, which emits bubbles while
in use. Originally in
3-D.
The Flesh Eaters
D. Jack Curtis (1964)
Plane crash survivors (including an ex-Nazi) fall prey to parasites that dine
on them. Audacious ending!
The Frozen Dead
D. Herbert Leder (1967)
Deadpan Dana Andrews keeps a room full of leftover Nazis on ice and powers them
with a severed head in a developing tray. Turgid, but worth seeing.
The Killer Shrews
D. Ray Kellog (1957)
Dogs dressed in fangs and wigs terrorize Texas. Produced by Ken "Festus"
Curtis.
The Giant Gila Monster
D. Ray Kellogg (1957)
Teenagers, rock & roll, hot rods, and rear-projection lizards come together
in the companion piece to The Killer Shrews.
The Corpse Grinders
D. Ted V. Mikels (1971)
Bodies get shoved in one end of a box, and cat food comes out the other. Kitties
turn into vicious killers.
The Cape Canaveral Monsters
D. Phil Tucker (1960)
Zombie car-crash victims piece together their wrecked Buick to sabotage the U.S.
space program. Baffling.
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