Foxy Brown

Foxy Brown was one of Pam Grier’s best known roles in the 1970s when she got her start. It was released in 1974 and basically adapted the story of her previous release Coffy which came out the year before. Both were about getting revenge. In Coffy Grier went after a group of gangsters for getting her little sister strung out on drugs. In Foxy Brown she goes after a drug-prostitution ring that kills her lover and her brother.Even more than Coffy this film plays off of Grier’s sex appeal. Some of the outfits she wears are jaw dropping.It also has some signs of the times as Coffy goes to a black power group to help her out against the gang at the end.If you want action, sex, black nationalism and some gangsters Foxy Brown is your kind of movie.C

I absolutely loved this action-packed 'chick flick' from the 'Blaxploitation' era! Actress Pam Grier is fantastic as Foxy Brown who seeks revenge on her boyfriend Michael's murder (played by actor Terry Carter) as well as her brother Link, played by actor Antonio Fargas; Foxy posed as a sultry call girl to find out who is behind the murders of her boyfriend and her brother. I liked the fight scene in the lesbian bar and both Foxy and her call girl friend Claudia kicked butt! The character Claudia liked to get high and she 'acted' as though she loved her son Jason but her husband tried to stop his wife from being a call girl. I felt bad for Foxy when she was kidnapped, drugged and raped by the 'dirty old and perverted goons' and I loved how Foxy escaped the ranch as well as flying a plane! Awesome! The character, Miss Katherine Wall was very 'strange'! She talked funny as though she were 'manic'! Actress Kathryn Loder bore an uncanny resemblance to actresses Stockard Channing and Judith Chapman; actor Peter Brown was just plain creepy as Steve, who is practically 'kissing Katherine's butt' by being on her side when her henchmen were being complete idiots and Steve is gay after Foxy's friends cut off Steve's genitals and Foxy brings the jar with his genitals to Miss Katherine's place. She freaks out and she's begging Foxy to kill her but Foxy lets her live; good movie as well as the acting and it's too bad the 'Blaxploitation' era of the 1970's is over but thank goodness for the classics on DVD! It's worth watching again and again!

Though fans of Grier's early work seem split about 50/50 on whether Foxy Brown or Coffy is better, I lean towards the former. Got to love the 70s psychedelic open, the costumes, the scenery and, or course, the bodacious Ms. Grier. Adding to its appeal is an entire slew of memorable criminals, including Peter Brown, Sid Haig, Tony Giorgio and H.B. Rafferty. Couple that with all-around good guy Terry Carter, Pam's hair -- expansive enough to require its own area code -- and the film being a (ta-da) "American International" release, and you are all set.All-in-all, a perfect reminder of stale drive-in popcorn, watered down Coke (or Pepsi) and a tinny, 50-pound speaker threatening to pull your car window out of the door.

Following the success of her film Coffy (1973), Pam Grier appeared in this film, titled Foxy Brown (1974), which was originally intended to be a sequel to Coffy titled "Burn, Coffy, Burn!", but was changed for some unknown reason by those at American International Pictures prior to filming to be a stand alone film, featuring a different, yet similar character. Written and directed by Jack Hill (Spider Baby, The Big Doll House, Switchblade Sisters), the film includes Antonio `Huggy Bear' Fargas (Cleopatra Jones, "Starsky and Hutch"), Terry Carter (Abby, "Battlestar Galactica"), Kathryn Loder (The Big Doll House), Sid Haig (Spider Baby, The Big Doll House), Juanita Brown (Caged Heat), and Peter Brown (Kitten with a Whip), who looks a lot like Bryan Cranston, the actor that played the father on the show "Malcolm in the Middle".After an opening credit sequence obviously influenced by the works of Maurice Binder (Binder is probably best known for his opening credit sequences on many of the James Bond films) we see a character named Link Brown (Vargas)...he'll always be Huggy Bear to me...walking down the city street at night, being tailed by two hoodlum types in a car. During a slight reprieve he phones his sister, namely one Foxy Brown (Grier) for help, providing our first shot of Ms. Grier's naughty pillows. Just as Huggy, er...I mean Link is about to get a beat down of momentous proportions, Foxy shows up to save the day by running down the two muthas with her car. Seems Link, a low level pusher among other things, has gotten into a local criminal organization for a whole lot of bread (twenty G's, to be exact), and now they're looking for payment...with his life! Anyway, Link, being the sniveling, opportunistic worm he is decides to rat out Foxy's boyfriend Dalton (Carter), an undercover narcotics detective whose just had plastic surgery, to the gang in exchange for his skin, which results in Dalton, now known as Michael, ending up with a terminal case of lead poisoning. After a vengeful Foxy beats the crud out of Link, she decides to infiltrate the gang, which is led by a woman named Catherine (Loder) and her pretty boy toy Steve (Brown). Posing as a call girl, which the gang uses to appease local public officials (judges and what not) into looking the other way with regards to the criminal activities of those in their organization, Foxy soon finds herself a target of the gang, as they catch up with her after a brawl in a butch bar, and she's sent to an out of the way ranch where the gang processes their drugs. While there Foxy suffers some serious abuse (and we get another showing of Pam's amazing boobage), to which she eventually gets her revenge via some coat hangers and gasoline (you'll have to see the movie if you want more), and continues her vendetta against the gang, enlisting the aide of some Black Panther types from the neighborhood, all leading up to one heck of a finale that includes someone losing a particularly vital appendage...While I thought this film not as tight as Coffy, it's still a lot of fun and provides a good example why Ms. Grier deserves the crown of Queen of the Blaxpoiltation genre, a title she may, or may not, bear with some amount of pride. As I mentioned earlier this film was originally meant to be a sequel to Coffy, but the powers that be at AIP decided not to go that route, and, as a result there are some weaknesses in terms of proper character development but that seems a fairly moot point as few went into this film looking for that kind of thing, even if it was present in Grier's earlier film. Grier doesn't seem to have the intensity here as displayed in Coffy, but even at half speed she's still a lot of fun to watch...and the fact she didn't seem shy about showing off her voluptuous figure didn't hurt, either (the sequences here were good, but those in Coffy were better). There's a number of memorable lines throughout the film, but the one that sticks out in my mind occurs when Foxy, posing as an escort, accompanies another woman to a gathering where they're supposed to provided entertainment for a sleazy judge. As the old man corrals the girls into a separate room one of the Judge's friends yells out the following..."That's an awful lot of chocolate for one man, Fred!"Nice...I did learn a number of things throughout the course of this film, including the following...1. Pam Grier's got a gargantuan rack.2. Jumping into the sunroof of a speeding car probably isn't the best way to catch a ride.3. Modeling agencies can sometimes be a front for escort services.4. Old Caucasian men in positions of power are particularly piggish and skeevy.5. Someone owns a pair of boxer shorts festooned with giant, red hearts and actually wears them.6. The darker the meat the sweeter the berry, or so I've heard.7. A barstool upside the head beats a black belt around the waist every time.8. Lesbians like Coors Beer.9. Pam Grier is very talented with her tongue, enough so she can use it to pick up a razor blade left on a nightstand while tied to a bed.10. Never stand in front of the propeller of a moving plane (especially when an African American woman with a grudge is driving).11. Frisking Pam Grier for weapons is probably the biggest perk that henchmen ever got..12. A giant Afro makes a great place to hide a gun.Director Hill keeps things moving along with lots of action, including some pretty graphic violence, although the worst bits aren't shown (Foxy's defilement at the ranch, Steve's fate) but rather left to the viewer's imagination. There's also a good deal of racial slurs tossed about, primarily by the often overly sadistic, antagonistic elements in the film (all of whom happen to be Caucasian), followed up those issuing said remarks getting their just comeuppance. While Foxy Brown may not be the best in the genre, it's still better than a lot of the features cranked out at the time, particularly due to Hill's capabilities and willingness to get downright nasty, for lack of a better term.The picture, presented in widescreen (1.85:1), enhanced for 16X9 TVs, looks very clean and the Dolby Digital mono audio comes through clearly. Extras include an audio commentary track with writer/director Jack Hill, an original theatrical trailer, and subtitles in both French and Spanish (no English). It would have been nice if they could have gotten Ms. Grier involved on the commentary, but oh well...Cookieman108By the way, there are a couple of boxed DVD sets out there with Pam Grier's films (one's called `Fox in a Box' and the other is called `The Best of Soul Cinema DVD Collection', both released by MGM), so if you're interested in buying this film, you might want to check out the availability on those sets as it might save you some green rather than buying the films individually.

I like Pam G. I really enjoyed the film. I'm saddened that whosever is profiting off this old movie did NOT care enough to update the technology. Many scenes are very dark & difficult to see.

“Who’s she think she is?”“That’s my sister, baby, and she’s a whole lotta woman.”Following their success with Coffy, Pam Grier and director Jack Hill carved up another prime slice of blaxploitation with Foxy Brown. She’s a black belt in bar stools, deadlier with a wire coathanger than Joan Crawford and if you get on the wrong side of her death is too good for you – she wants you to SUFFER. She can even wrap the local Black Panther wannabes around her little finger.Having saved her worthless brother Antonio Fargas’ life from the drug dealers whose stash he’s lost, he promptly repays her by selling out her narcotics cop boyfriend’s new identity to them, setting her on the revenge trail after they predictably gun him down - after all, vigilante justice is as American as apple pie. Curiously, unlike the gangsta films of the 90s and beyond there’s a moral centre: it’s not about glorifying crime but taking back the neighborhood from the drug dealers who want to drag them down, as personified by Peter Brown’s gigolo and Kathryn Loder’s melodramatically overacting mastermind running her drugs and prostitution empire from a phoney modelling agency-cum-white (and black) slave ring. All the exploitation tropes are there – Grier gets her mamas out for the boys in her very first scene, there’s plenty of low-rent action so they can afford one big stunt at the end and the white professional killers become instantly inept when confronted by a black star with their name above the title – though a few are given bizarre spins, like a barroom brawl in a lesbian club or the exact nature of Foxy’s final revenge, which might put you off pickles for life. Hill directs with zest and pace, Willie Hutch provides the funky soundtrack and it’s all more fun than a hotel room of judges with topless prostitutes.Arrow's UK Blu-ray offers a nice widescreen transfer with a good array of extras - audio commentary by Jack Hill, interviews with Sid Haig and Bob Minor,blaxploitation featurette Back to Black, stills and poster gallery, theatrical trailer, additional trailers for Spider Baby, Pit Stop, The Big Doll House, The Big Bird Cage, Coffy, The Swinging Cheerleaders, Switchblade Sisters and Sorceress and booklet.

These are terrific films that only the 70;s could produce. I never quite understood the term "blaxploitation" to label these films? Is it because most of the cast members were black? Were they being exploited? It's a catchy title that I guess that has stuck. Regardless, they are very entertaining. Pam Grier is great. She is one of the very few actress who lives up to her appearance as depicted on the film posters. She was born to be on the big screen and carries her films with all the sexiness and authority of a genuine movie star, Terrific extras too.

Good but not great like 'Coffy'. 'Foxy' is not as gritty and hard-hitting as 'Coffy' so lacks its hefty punch. 'Coffy' is officially the film that Tarrantino secretly wishes he'd made.

Nice looking steelbook from Arrow,classic film with some cool art and a info booklet.But unfortunetly mine arrived damaged.

4 stars is just for Blu-ray transfer itself.I don't see big difference vs. DVD mostly.On the other hand excellent booklet included