Coffy - the big cat

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Movie
German title Coffy - the big cat
Original title Coffy
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1973
length 87 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Jack Hill
script Jack Hill
production Robert Papazian
music Roy Ayers
camera Paul Lohmann
cut Chuck McClelland
occupation

Coffy is a 1973 American film . It is assigned to the blaxploitation genre and is about the revenge campaign of the Afro-American Coffy , embodied by Pam Grier .

action

The nurse "Coffy" Coffin wants to take revenge for her dependent sister on the drug mafia that keeps her city under control. She uses her attractiveness to lure drug dealers into their homes and kill them there. Coffy has a relationship with Howard Brunswick, a city attorney whom she admires for trying to solve social problems by the means of the law.

The next target should be the pimp "King George" and the mafia boss Arturo Vitroni. To get information about King George, she interviews a drug addict she knows as a former patient. This is treated extremely brutally by her, which Coffy justifies by saying that she continues to take drugs.

Coffy poses as a Jamaican , which enables her to arouse King George's interest. One of the prostitutes becomes jealous as a result and the two women start a brawl. This in turn attracts the attention of the mobster Arturo Vitroni, who invites her over for the next night. Coffy wants to use this opportunity to murder the gangster, but is overwhelmed by his men at the last moment. She claims that King George charged her with the murder, after which Vitroni's men brutally kill him. When Coffy Howard Brunswick is brought up to meet some gangsters, she finds out that her boyfriend was bought by the Mafia. He denies knowing her, whereupon Coffy is taken away to be killed. But she in turn uses her charms to overwhelm her murderer and kill them with a shard of glass.

Then she murders the boss Vitroni in his house and drives to Brunswick to kill him too. He begs for forgiveness and can first convince Coffy to spare him. But when a naked white woman emerges from his bedroom, Coffy shoots Brunswick in the abdomen, completing her revenge.

criticism

"Very questionable action drama that propagates vigilante justice and the right of the fittest."

history

Director Jack Hill said the idea for the project came about when American International Pictures lost the rights to the film Cleopatra Jones . Larry Gordon, the company's chief executive officer, hired Hill to make a film about a strong African American woman to drive Cleopatra Jones off the market. Hill wanted to work with Pam Grier, whom he knew from previous filming ( The Big Doll House , 1971). Coffy was realized for $ 2 million and made more money than Cleopatra Jones .

Because of the strong female (and colored) leading role, which was very unusual at the time, the film caused a sensation and made Pam Grier an icon of the genre. In 1981 a remake was shot with an all-white cast ( Lovely But Deadly ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Release certificate for Coffy - the big cat . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , March 2012 (PDF; test number: 46 413 V).
  2. Coffy - the big cat. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  3. Big Rental Films of 1973, Variety , Jan. 9, 1974, p. 19
  4. ^ Samuel Z. Arkoff and Richard Turbo, Flying Through Hollywood By the Seat of My Pants , Birch Lane Press, 1992, p. 202