Coffy [VHS]
In the opening minutes ofCoffy, 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 heroin. 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 makesCoffya  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 byNashville'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 inThe Big Doll HouseandThe Big Bird  Cage. Their next and last picture together,Foxy Brown, was  originally written as the sequel toCoffy.--Sean Axmaker