Pam Grier, Booker Bradshaw, Sid Haig

In the opening minutes of Coffy, Pam Grier's star-making role, she blasts the skull of a sleazy drug pusher into pulp like a watermelon and shoots his junkie assistant with an overdose of her...( read more  read more... )oin. Jack Hill knows how to open a movie, and he never lets up on the down-and-dirty action. Coffy is an emergency room nurse by day and vigilante by night, targeting the dealers who made her sister a comatose junkie. She works her way up to the Italian mobsters muscling into the ghetto drug trade while she's romanced by glib, smooth-talking politician Booker Bradshaw and wooed by nice-guy cop William Elliot, whose refusal to sell out to the corrupt force earns him a crippling beating.

There's plenty of sex, a catty girl-fight that leaves the losers topless, and car chases and shootouts galore, but what makes Coffy a blaxploitation classic is Grier's Amazonian presence and fiery charisma, and the gritty, low-budget action scenes marked by visceral, wincing violence. Mob strong-arm Sid Haig (Spider Baby) cackles while dragging his victim (a strutting peacock pimp played by Nashville's Robert DoQui) behind a speeding car in a sadistic lynching, and Grier runs down one bad guy with a speeding car and takes care of another with a shotgun to the groin. Hill had previously directed Grier in The Big Doll House and The Big Bird Cage. Their next and last picture together, Foxy Brown, was originally written as the sequel to Coffy. --Sean Axmaker

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74% liked it

7,075 ratings

Critics

78% liked it

18 critics

R, 1 hr. 31 min.

Directed by: Jack Hill

Release Date: June 13, 1973

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DVD Release Date: December 26, 2001

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Stats: 403 reviews

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Flixster Reviews (403)


  • October 17, 2009
    If you only watch one blaxploitation movie make it this one. There is much fun to be had in many films of the genre, but here the central performance by Pam Grier is monumental. She may not be the greatest actress in the world, but what presence, and when the big boys fall for he...( read more)r at the wink of an eye, it is believable. Perhaps at the end it is a little over the top, that on such a serious mission a guy would pause for a quickie, but then?. This measured, involving and exciting. There is much violence, including the most wonderful massed cat fight, and much gratuitous violence. In fact during the aforementioned cat fight, all the girls involved have their breasts spill out one after the other. The dialogue is fine and scenes are not overlong as they can be in this genre. Also, the costumes have to get a mention and impressive as Grier's are it's the top bad boys that really come up trumps, as for the top pimp's jump suit, in yellow, what can I say?
  • September 30, 2009
    Another great Grier/Hill blaxploitation collaboration, you just know somebody?s gonna lose a dick!
  • May 24, 2008
    fun, nudity riddled and action packed with pam grier as coffy baby... the woman who takes out the bad guys in true old skool action movie style. i'd never really seen grier in anything except tarantinos jackie brown. so this is where she made her name! always enjoy it in a film w...( read more)hen a woman knows how to handle a piece or has a revenge trip! coffy is sizzling!
  • October 1, 2007
    Pam Grier maybe the biggest badass...ever
  • August 26, 2007
    Pam Grier does her part fighting the forces keeping the black man down.
  • September 13, 2009
    Pam Grier gets her revenge on the baddies that turned her sister into a drug addict. Plenty of violence, toplessness and girl-power for people who like that kind of thing, and why not. Nice soundtrack by Roy Ayres.
  • August 7, 2009
    I wish I was half as cool as Pam Grier.
  • June 16, 2009
    ALIGHT RIGHT NOW!CLASSIC BLACKPLOTAIN ENTERTAINMENT
  • June 4, 2009
    The very start of pam grier carreer
  • May 25, 2009
    Shocking, exploitative, sick, and cruel. Everything that I expect from a Foxy Brown film. Pretty badass.

Critic Reviews


October 23, 2004
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

Coffy is slightly more serious and a little more inventive than it needs to be. full review

View more Coffy reviews at RottenTomatoes.com

Comments


  • rayman0071
    March 13, 2007
    This was the movie the cemented Pam Grier as one of the top action black female superstars of the 1970's and her first feature role in "Coffy" was one of them. If you want to see some good action and explosive violence to boot,please by all means check this movie out! It's precessdor,"Foxy Brown",also directed by Jack Hill is something to highly recommend too. The soundtrack to this movie sung by R&B legend Millie Jackson is worth listening!

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Coffy Trivia


  • Is this a real movie title? Coffy (1973)  Answer »
  • Quentin Tarantino was inspired to make “Jackie Brown” by the 1974 “Foxy Brown”. Both starred Pam Grier. What was the first movie to star Pam Grier?  Answer »

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