Don’t mess with… Foxy Brown (1974)

This is one of those films that, as with Death Race 2000, Shaft and Rollerball, epitomises so many seventies’ attitudes: sex, ultra-violence, revenge on a Grecian scale and all disco-style and funk of substance.

It was the decade of decadence and just getting away with it, using the freedom of the sixties with the developing commercialism of the eighties and beyond. Bubble gum cinema with all the delayed gratification taken out: what you get is what you want and what you want is pretty much exactly what you get.

Miss Grier

You watch this film for Pam Grier and her beauty; her Jackie Brown shows that she’s not quite the actress she will be in a long and substantial career but she’s already good here, holding the narrative together almost on her own.

You watch to see the darker side of drug dealing with Pam’s brother Link – short for Lincoln – Brown (Antonio Fargas as himself basically…) getting in all kinds of trouble in his attempts to monetise the opportunities of supply and demand.

Link on the run...

You also watch for the moral certainties of the time: everything so colourfully black and white. Link’s only a cog in a much larger wheel with the supply fed from a twisted white sister "Miss" Katherine Wall (a superbly-wired Kathryn Loder) who, whilst by day is a millionaires fashion tycoon, by night is pulling the strings on the city’s class A drugs and prostitution.

Helping her maintain this big business is a weirdly-smooth Steve Elias (Peter Brown) who, whilst being the object of Miss Kathy’s infatuation – she loves it when he hurts people – has his own agenda beyond falsified reciprocation. He’s too shallow even for the hollow.

Baddies: Kathryn Loder and Peter Brown

They send their goons Eddie (Tony Giorgio) and Hays (Sid Haig) to extract monies owed from Link who has to call in the aid of big sis. We don’t know quite what Jackie does (a legacy of the film’s origin as a follow up to Grier’s previous Coffy (1973)) but she must do it very well. She can handle herself as the film’s superb sub-Bond title sequence shows: not just cleavage and curves but plenty of kick!

Pam Grier and Terry Carter

Jackie is romancing an undercover detective Michael Anderson (Terry Carter) who is undergoing facial surgery to change his appearance – he needs to infiltrate the drug syndicate and no price is too high. Luckily, bandages removed leave Foxy with a still handsome boyfriend but the effort is sadly wasted as Link quickly recognises his sister’s supposedly passed-on paramour.

Here’s a chance for Link to re-finance and he can’t resist selling his sister’s man down the river exchanging £20,000 in exchange for Mike’s life. Foxy is naturally aggrieved and resolves to avenge her fallen lover just as soon as she’s kicked Link around his apartment.

Under cover (just about etc...)

She poses as a call girl to gain entry to Miss K’s legion of lovelies for lease and pals up quickly with Claudia (Juanita Brown) in order to learn the ropes and dig deeper. Claudia’s trapped in this world and longs to get back to her daughter and Foxy persuades humiliate a well-placed client, Judge Fenton (Harry Holcombe) who is willing to go easy on the gang’s foot soldiers in exchange for favours.

After this there’s no going back and after sending Claudia off to safe haven, Foxy is caught by the syndicate after Link one again fails her, this time fatally.

Juanita Brown, Harry Holcombe and Pam Grier

It’s looking bleak for Foxy who is sent off to the “Farm” to be force-fed heroin before being sold off to sex slavery. She’s tortured and raped by two extravagantly-odd white characters and tied to a bed with a growing addiction in the middle of nowhere, there’s only one way out and that’s flicking the razor blade used to cut the heroin into her mouth, using it to cut her ropes, pulling together a make-shift weapon from some coat hangers that rip the face of one abuser allowing her to immolate the second and make her escape in their car.

Things look bleak until inspiration strikes

The explosive finale only begins there as Foxy enlists the aid of a local black power defence movement in staging an audacious attack on the syndicate’s mansion. Baddies are liquidized by airplane propellers, tables are turned and one character’s manhood is removed as Foxy slips the cold rapier blade of revenge between Miss Katherine’s under-nourished rib cage… metaphorically-speaking.

Fight the power

Dusty verdict: Jack Hill directs with dynamism and sets the standard for not only Blaxploitation but also for female action heroes. The music from Willie Hutch is to this film as Isaac Hayes’ is to Shaft and perfectly encapsulates the sass and the soul of Foxy.

Superbad!

Pam Grier is focused on in an unrelenting way throughout from the funked up title sequence in which we appears in fuzz-toned multi-colours and in triplicate as if one copy was not enough. She’s a clothes horse throughout showcasing cat suits, deep-cut cleavage and endless flares - "a whole lot of woman" whose sexuality is a pure extension of her attitude.

You can frown and focus on the marketing aspects but the actress emerges as proudly as her character and you can see why Quentin Tarantino was so keen to make Jackie Brown for her 20 years later.

Foxy Brown is available on DVD and Blu-Ray from Amazon and elsewhere it is genuinely "Superbad” in the seventies sense!

The runaways… Caged Heat (1974)

This is a Roger Corman-produced exploitation flick from the “women in prison” genre (I never knew there was one… although it seems to have been quite a thing…) which is notable for having been written and directed by Jonathan Demme. Now, Mr Demme may well have directed Silence of the Lambs and many others but he also directed Talking Head’s Stop Making Sense which has to be one of the best concert films ever made.

Erica Gavin

This was a full decade before that film but Demme was still cool enough to have one of the Velvet Underground, John Cale, provide the soundtrack for Caged Heat – was this enough to save him from producing another formulaic chunk of Corman cheesecake? From what I saw the answer is a qualified yes, the film is pacey and raw and doesn’t linger too long on the pulchritudinous prisoners… then again the version I watched is 79 minutes long versus the full-length 83… what happened in those missing four minutes?

The Doctor greets his new patients...

Whatever, this film has a decent pace and plot and features some good performances throughout its large cast, Demme had to work hard to persuade Corman to make another prison chick flick but the latter agreed on the condition that his director produced something novel… just so long as there was enough sex and violence to keep the punters happy. And Dame duly obliges with a film that has something for liberals as well as lechers… these women are victims as much as their, er, victims and they are punished too harshly by an unforgiving system that revels in their suffering.

Pandora protects Belle from Maggie

There’s something of the humour of Russ Meyer aided by the presence of Vixen herself, the excellent Erica Gavin, but the film doesn’t treat its women as objects in the same way and there’s more characterization and believability than in a Meyer boob-fest.

The story begins in breakneck fashion as a woman and two men try to evade the police after a botched drug deal. They are pursued by a long-haired cop dressed up to match his prey... he downs one of the men and, as the other escapes, traps the woman, Jacqueline Wilson (Gavin).

Cheryl Rainbeuax Smith

The scene shifts to a prison and a sexual dream of one inmate Lavelle (Cheryl Rainbeuax Smith) which ends with her trying to knife her lover through the prison bars… ooer this is going to be complicated and steamy… but, in truth the heat kept within this cage is more driven by resentment and anger at the treatment than any suppressed sexuality no matter what the salacious trailer says.

Dream sequence for Miss Wilson

Of course the women are frustrated but they are also abused by comedy guards resembling extras in Smokey and the Bandit as well as short-haired butch women officers and a wheelchair-bound governor who is deeply imprisoned by her own denial. Barbara Steele plays this role with tongue ever so slightly in cheek, clearly relishing the chance to play the baddie after surviving so many Hammer horrors as the victim. Mr Demme is no fan of authority figures and the Governor is clearly taking out her own physical and mental inhibitions on her inmates.

Two sides of Barbara Steele

But she’s not the weirdest oppressor in the Connerville Institute for Women, far from it as the prison Doctor (Warren Miller) uses his situation to conduct illegal experiments on the inmates and to fulfill his twisted impulses… a genuinely creepy turn from Mr Miller.

Jacqueline Wilson arrives to face the well-worn dehumanization of prison regime as the new inmates remove their clothes and leave dignity at the door for their first strip-search. Once inside she finds her new roommate Lavelle unwilling to talk but neighbours Pandora (Ella Reid) and her best buddy Belle (Roberta Collins) are full of useful tips on survival.

Roberta Collins and Ella Reid

Jackie’s no push-over though as she demonstrates in her first encounter with Maggie (Juanita Brown) the toughest nut in Connerville. The two clash after Demme’s camera manages to drag itself away from the bodies in the shower room. The guards stop the contest before too long and the combatants claim they both slipped in front of the governor… you sense the old routines of solidarity in the face of the screws will get them through…

Show time...

The only light relief comes from a show in which Pandora and Belle perform in drag – they’re a knockout but go too far for the Governor who withdraws in shock, then falls asleep to reveal her own frustrations in a memorable dream sequence, unleashing her possible self with a leggy cabaret show for her inmates.

Solitary

Life moves fast in the prison, Pandora ends up in solitary for her exhibition but Belle works out a way of sneaking her food in one of the lighter moments. Jackie gets caught up in Maggie’s attempted escape and both end up in barbaric “correction” – electric shock treatment from the Doctor… His treatments have broken many women before them and he’s itching to try his revolutionary lobotomy treatment on someone but only after he’s drugged and molested them.

The Doctor's unethical treatments are exposed

There has to be a way out of here… and Maggie makes a desperate break for freedom in the middle of their closely guarded "agricultural therapy”… Jackie hitches a ride after one girl gets killed and she realises she cannot face anymore “correction” and punishment…

The two ride off but will it be that simple to escape both the prison itself and their responsibility to their fellow inmates… I think you know what the answer might be.

In front of the flag

Dusty verdict: Caged Heat is about friendship in the most difficult of circumstances and, whilst there is some sexual content, the overall feelings between the girls are loyalty and solidarity. As Maggie reveals to Jackie, she tried to make herself the toughest person she could be because she had to – that was the only way to survive.

Maggie gets a gun

They are exploited by a system only designed to punish and to remove their potential for further wrong-doing – literally in the case of the bad Doctor and the only sensible route forward is rebellion and escape. The kind of escape and second chances everyone dreams of… whatever their personal “prison”. So far so seventies… but so what it is good fun and well-acted by its committed cast.

Erica gets ready to drive

Juanita Brown is a force of nature, fierce and yet with a heart of gold whilst Ella Reid and Roberta Collins are the films’ Redford and McQueen. Erica Gavin is the audience’s route into this world and she shows how good an actress she is as you quickly forget the excesses of her earlier work and you root for them all.

Caged Heat does not live up to its title and it’s all the better for it! It’s available on DVD from the usual sources and well worth watching for all the right reasons.