Blu-Ray Review- Coffy (1973)

Quentin Tarantino famously called Jack Hill “the Howard Hawks of exploitation filmmaking” and that might be stretching it a bit, it’s more fair to say he wanted to be the Howard Hawks of exploitation filmmaking. Coffy is one of the most impressive films in his body of work and Arrow has brought out a lavish Blu-Ray special edition which will impress all the soul brothers and sisters. Arrow Video previously released other Blu-Ray editions of some Jack Hill films such as the quasi-sequel Foxy Brown, Pit Stop and my personal favourite Spider-Baby, let’s hope Switchblade Sisters is next.

The whole idea of Coffy came out of American International Picture (AIP) losing the rights to Cleopatra Jones and in pure exploitation way they wanted to make a rip-off film. AIP were laughing to the bank however when it became a much bigger hit than Cleopatra Jones and in turn made its star Pam Grier a cultural icon for life. Grier was discovered by Jack Hill when he cast her the Woman in Prison film The Big Doll House and they would do another in that vein with The Big Bird Cage. Tarantino would resurrect Pam Grier’s career in 1997 with his masterpiece Jackie Brown and was shamefully was snubbed for an Academy Award nomination that year.

Coffy first and foremost works as a fun badass Blaxploitation film but it lots of underlining radical socially political ideas. Jack Hill always considered himself a feminist filmmaker and as Pam Grier says in the interview included on this disk she saw the film as experiment to see if the public would take to a female action star. Pam Grier as the titled character in Coffy always has the upper hand both physically and sexually over her men counterparts and this kind of strong female lead was rare then and still is sadly today. Tarantino is one of few contemporary non-female writers or directors who is noted for writing strong female characters and that can be traced back to the influence Jack Hill had over his own work.

The film also deals with the underlining issues of drugs invading black communities. Coffy’s revenge is triggered by her little sister’s life being ruined by smack, which was rife then (and still is) in American black communities especially after the assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. Naturally the drug kingpins are white which of course symbolise white oppression over black communities. It’s also deals with why the drug problem continues because the law enforcement are paid off of course. Coffy remains a film that sticks to the man and has some political subtext but is never too heavy-handed to alienate genre fans who want their genre thrills.

The disc boosts a new Hi-Def transfer that looks extraordinarily good given the kind of film it is and age, really solid image that is detailed and cleared but regains it’s original organic film look. Jack Hill does a commentary track that is ported over from the Region 1 DVD. There are two newly filmed interviews with Hill and Grier and visual essay on Blaxploitation from Mikel J. Koven which is extremely informative and gives a lot of interesting context on the genre. The essay does suffer due to a close-up zoom on Bill Crosby which is very awkward and the white narrator trying to sound black at times was a bit cringe.

[rating=4]
Ian Schultz

Genre: Crime, Blaxploitation Distributor: Arrow Video BD Release Date: 20th April 2015 (UK) Rating: 15 Director: Jack Hill Cast: Pam Grier, Booker Bradshaw, Sid Haig  Buy: Coffy (Blu-Ray)