My favorite of Pam Grier's Blaxploitation movies. Foxy Brown doesn't have the heavy handed sociopolitical themes of Coffy. While some of that is there it is much more fun and funny at times. The comedy in this never feels out of place either. I also like this character more than Coffy as Foxy is more clearly a hero. What she does for Claudia is more heroic than anything Coffy does. One of the things that made Coffy more of antihero was the fact that some of the people she goes after were victims themselves. Foxy is able to get her vengeance and have some fun along the way. That scene of her and Claudia with the politician is a laugh riot. Pam Grier has also never looked better in a movie. The dresses she wears, her hair, and her makeup have never looked better. When this movie gets violent it doesn't let up. I also think some of the sociopolitical stuff was a bit simpler and easier to analyze in this movie than in Coffy.
Plot Summary Contains Spoilers
The movie starts with Link Brown (Antonio Fargas) being cornered by the people who owes drug money at a hot dog stand. Link calls his sister, Foxy Brown (Pam Grier) to help get him out of there. A car chase ensues where Foxy nearly hits the two men with her car and Link gets on the top of the car while one of the men grabs onto the windshield before falling off. Foxy meets with her boyfriend, a former undercover federal agent who testified in court against Stevie Elias (Peter Brown) and Kathryn Wall (Kathryn Loder). Steve and Kathryn run a "modeling agency" that is actually a front for prostitution and drugs. Meanwhile, Foxy and her boyfriend, Michael (Terry Carter) are walking down the street one day and see multiple men get into a fight. One of Foxy's friends, Oscar (Bob Minor) arrives and fights a drug pusher. He talks about drugs being the new slavery and that they are sending that man out of town. He runs a neighborhood watch of sorts with a Black Panther Party type of group.
Link sees the picture of Michael in the newspaper before his plastic surgery. Because Link wants to get back in good with the crime syndicate and get more drugs, he rats out Michael, who they know as Dalton. Two hitmen come and kill Michael. Foxy notices the drawing on the newspaper that Link had been doing. She confronts Link and asks for names and he gives her Kathryn's name. Foxy poses as a prostitute to get in good with the syndicate. She puts them in a bad position by getting one of their clients, a judge, in trouble. Foxy is kidnapped though when she stays behind to save Claudia (Juanita Brown) a woman trapped in that lifestyle who has a husband and a kid. She saves Claudia at a bar but then gets captured by the two henchman from the beginning of the movie in order to hold them off so Claudia can go free. She is knocked out and taken to a farm which is where drugs are made. Two white men drug her and rape her but she eventually escapes using her mouth to secure a razor blade and cutting off her ropes binding her. She uses a coat hanger to stab one of them in the eye and burns the other.
Kathryn at this point orders Stevie to kill Foxy. He tries to get info out of Link and kills Link and his girlfriend. Foxy asks Oscar and the Black Panthers for help. She charms her way into flying with the pilot who goes to the farm (Sid Haig). They arrive and and the Black Panthers kill Stevie's crime partners and castrate Stevie. Foxy goes back to Kathryn and gives her Steve's balls in a jar. She then kills her guards and shoots her in the arm. She says that death would be too easy for her and her and Steve are going to have live and suffer like she has.
Pam Grier has never looked better in any movie. She's always gorgeous but she looks so stacked and beautiful and that red dress and that powder blue dress later. Claudia looks great in that green dress she wears. The costume design and makeup are great in this. I also like so many lines in this movie.
Pam's hair is on point in this movie
Has anyone ever looked better in a red dress?
Here are some of my favorites from Foxy:
I love the exchange in the bar where the woman tells her she has a black belt in karate and Foxy knocks her out with a barstool and says, "I have my black belt in barstools."
The whole scene with the judge is hilarious and Foxy and Claudia seem to have so much fun messing with him.
Taken from IMDB:
Foxy Brown: [pretending to be call girl, Misty Cotton] Baby, is this what you're going to use on me?
[points at the Judge's crotch]
Judge Fenton: What?
Foxy Brown: I mean, I've heard of a meat shortage, but, that's ridiculous!
Judge Fenton: Well, you've got - well, eh, the other girls liked it.
Foxy Brown: Oh, I'm sure I'll like it. But, I just can't find it! Claudia, help me find it. I think its down here somewhere. Watch it. Don't rub on it. The charge, Your Honor, is assault with a very undeadly weapon.
Claudia: I mean, you talk about your blunt instrument!
Judge Fenton: Well, you're different, alright. I'll say that for ya.
Foxy Brown: You too, little man.
I also love what she says when she confronts Link, "They got a stick of dynamite on you and the fuse is burning.
I enjoy a lot of sociopolitical stuff in this movie as well. There is something to be said about systemic racism and the connection it has with drugs trying to keep black people down. There is something interesting in that a black fed, in this case Michael saying he couldn't even get an indictment on the syndicate. Yet he is ratted out by an addict just trying to get his next fix in Link's case. Since both Steve and Kathryn are white there is even more meaning to the idea of modern day slavery and almost a racial revenge angle of sorts. That is only exaggerated by Steve getting castrated by the Black Panthers at the end. People like Link exist in the real world. The type of person to sell out someone in their family because they are so addicted. It only gets him a few days back into his habit before he is killed.
Most of the characters are three dimensional in this. Even Link talks about the void in his life that addiction fills. "Foxy, I'm a black man, and I don't know how to sing, and I don't know how to dance, and I don't know how to preach to no congregation. I'm too small to be a football hero, and too ugly to be elected mayor. But I watch TV and I see all them people and them fine homes they live in and all them nice cars they drive and I get all full of ambition. Now you tell me what I'm supposed to do with all this ambition I got?" I also think this relates to the mental health problems people have today. Link is just like anyone else struggling when he says what other people have but everyone struggles sometimes. No one is happy all the time and no one is sad all the time either.
As I said before Foxy is a much different character from Coffy. Coffy is more of a survivor and less of a hero. People always talk about the save the cat moment from Alien making Ripley a hero. Foxy has a save the Claudia moment in this where she basically lets herself be captured, not without a fight of course, so Claudia can get back to her husband and kid. It should be noted that after Claudia and Foxy did what they did with that Judge they were onto them and Claudia was scared of what the consequences would be. She seems dependent on that lifestyle and again the allegories to slavery, with dependence and tearing someone away from their family can be found. Foxy also does the same clever things that Coffy did like hading razor blades in her afro and the small Bauer .25 caliber pistol that Michael taught her how to shoot. I like the filming locations as well, specifically the food stand in the beginning. I always enjoy seeing the prices from old times at places like that in older movies.
Foxy holding the Bauer .25 caliber pistol which she later hides in her afro during the confrontation scene with Kathryn
When this movie gets bloody and violent it really goes there. The eye stabbing scene, the bloody result when Link is shot. I am glad the movie holds off on showing you the rape scene which i didn't need to see. It is interesting that Pam really isn't topless much in this movie. At the very beginning she goes topless and that is really it as far as I know. The rest of the movie is her in very stylish clothes. My favorite scene is the one with the judge just because it is quite funny and Foxy and Claudia are awesome together. The score in this is great with more emphasis on percussion than the ones in Coffy and Friday Foster.
Rating: 10/10
Trivia: American International Pictures objected to this being a sequel to Coffy. It was meant to be a sequel and that is one of the reasons why Foxy's profession is never discussed as Coffy was explicitly shown to be a nurse.
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