Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

I picked up Coffy as part of a 2-movie set packaged with Friday Foster. I was pleasantly surprised with how much I liked Coffy.Pam Grier is a strong female lead during a time when strong female leads were rare, especially in the blaxploitation era. She plays a nurse named Coffy who goes out on a revenge-driven killing spree of any and all scumbags involved in the drug trade in her city. Her baby sister was a victim of drug pushers, setting off her rage. The violence is pretty standard for the genre, but there seems to be an undercurrent of sleaze, with women getting their tops torn off just for the hell of it. Director Jack Hill is a veteran of the genre and this is nothing new for one of his films. A solid plot without many logic gaps, good action, with actors such as Sid Haig and Robert Doqui to support Grier in her efforts to come off as heroine amongst the sleaze. Recommended for those who enjoy 70's styled sleazy action.

Coffy is a classic low budget blaxploitation revenge flick. You can tell how Quentin Tarantino would be mesmerised by such as a Grindhouse type picture and the audience will be mesmerised by Pam Grier who certainly lays out her assets bare.Grier plays Coffy, a regular nurse with a boyfriend who is climbing the greasy political ladder. However her younger sister fell prey to drug addiction and she is out to get revenge but wants the kingpin not the minnows.The film has all the beats of revenge pictures. Coffy is doing well at first gaining vengeance but the tables soon turn as she is becomes a damsel in distress and then finds herself betrayed.Grier is sensational in her role. Sexy, tough and also vulnerable. Robert DoQui has a whale of a time as the super-pimp King George and Sidney Haig is sleazy henchman with the hots for Coffy.The film might now look dated yet its oddly progressive. Apart from an aspiring black politician, there is black cop, an old mate of Coffy who refuses to go on the take and puts his life at risk.There are better known revenge films from that era such as Death Wish. This is still a classic of its kind.

Foxy Brown, the unofficial sequel to Coffy, might be slightly better known thanks to Quentin Tarantino's reference-tastic Jackie Brown (also starring Pam Grier), but it can't hold a candle to this Blaxploitation classic. Jack Hill's 1973 original is so spirited, passionate, and deliberately daft that it's impossible not to be persuaded by its cool and its convictions. Grier is the titular "wild cat from the tropical jungle", spitting her lines with thrilling viciousness, and wielding a gaze that promises pain. Yet Coffy isn't cold and immune, she's emotionally sensitive. Sentimental, even. She's also smart, confident, principled, and outrageously sexy. Choice theme lyric: "Coffee is the colour of your skin." Yes, the movie is fantastically dated; a true product of its era. It's lurid and ridiculous, yet boldly progressive. Other mainstream movies of the time might give us black pimps and junkies, but here we have black cops and surgeons, and it's the lascivious whites who run amok.Coffy is a nurse. She wants revenge on the perps responsible for her little sister's drug addiction. She starts with the pushers but gradually she finds the rot goes all the way to the top: to the politicians who want to keep the common man (and woman) down, and who are just in it for the "green". It's a conveyor belt of sin controlled by men. So Coffy preys on male vulnerability – specifically the sexuality of men, via her own seductive powers. In observing this sordid sacrifice, does the film indulge the very misogyny it purports to condemn? Here lies the essence of the exploitation genre: in exploiting, it explores, and in exploring, it exploits. Coffy isn't a complex or subtle film. For a start, it's laughably moralistic about drug abuse. Saying that, there is some simplistic wisdom in its depiction of the drugs hierarchy: the real problem is at the top, not on the streets. In Coffy's world, it's all about the System, and ultimately it's a System presided over by evil white men. One couldn't argue that a girl-fight in which every combatant has her top ripped off is clever satire; but at other times the satire does stick, such as when councilman Brunswick (Booker Bradshaw) slams the white patriarchy... and is immediately told off-camera by his honky PR man that he came off as "real convincing". This is a great sub-plot, wisely promoted to the main game by the final reel, leading to a tense final showdown which cautions as to the dangers of playing a System that itself corrupts its players. The ending is also a fitting moment of gender reassertion, before we're given a classic final shot. With fabulously far-fetched plotting married to a knowing sense of humour (Coffy's Jamaican act is a keeper), punctuated by tub-thumping speeches and spasms of deeply significant violence (thugs beating a black cop; a "lynching"; a shotgun castration), Coffy is a hugely enjoyable and meaning-packed movie, and a milestone in black cinema.

Having watched a lot of by the numbers 70s thrillers I was a little jaded by the time I came to watch this. Although at times it also falls into that trap there is enough here to elevate it above that level. I think it's unfair to call this Blaxplotation. It's just a thriller where the lead happens to be a black women.Most strikingly there weren't many women (black women at that) in the 1970s blowing criminals away with shotguns. Particularly ones who are completely self-driven. Frankly there aren't too many of those in Hollywood movies even today. Also I really like the the charm Pam Grier brings to the role whenever she's talking to good guys.There are bits of comic relief such as the scene where the heavy-hitters say to the former driver of the gangster they've just brutally murdered "hey, why not come and work for us now? We're not bad guys really" - all said in a totally irony free way. Or the scene where Pam Grier does a Borat-style Jamacan impression.There's some 'LA Confidential' style high level corruption shown, which again raises this above the usual standard of cheap 70s thrillers.If you like 70s thrillers this is definitely worth seeing.