THE ARENA (1974)

 It's kinda weird seeing 70s Pam Grier in ancient Roman times but compared to some of her fellow female gladiators here she does come off as the most kickass of the bunch. This is overall an odd mashup of 2 different genres, the Italian peplum(complete with many scenes directed by Joe D'Amato himself and featuring Rosalba Neri, Paul Muller, Salvatore(THE BEAST IN HEAT) Baccaro and many other familiar eurotrash cinema faces in big roles.) and the Roger Corman(who produced this) women-in-prison flick with Grier and Margaret Markov(who had previously been paired up in the classic BLACK MAMA, WHITE MAMA). There's also some clear inspiration from SPARTACUS. You get lots of sword-fighting and female-on-female violence. Decent time-wasting midnight movie. AKA GLADIATOR WOMEN(re-release title) and NAKED WARRIORS(re-edited cut video title). 

HIT MAN (1972)

 Two things that stick out to me about this movie: 1. Bernie Casey plays the smooth sex-machine to all the chicks main character here and since I mainly identify him with the title role in DR. BLACK AND MR. HYDE, where he plays Mr. Hyde with not very much makeup at all besides some white powder on his mug, it makes it tough to see him as the irresistible ladies man this movie wants us to believe he is. 2. Pam Grier plays one of the bad guys in this, which is something I've never seen her do before. Besides these 2 weird aspects it's a pretty rudimentary tale of Casey trying to find out what happened to his brother that resulted in him ending up dead. It's a blaxploitation version of the movie GET CARTER which was released the prior year. Someone gets fed to a lion at one point. I should probably check out the original at some point just to see if that happens in that version also. 

WOMEN IN CAGES (1971)

 Somehow I never saw this Pam Grier-starring women-in-prison flick until now. It's part of the Roger Corman-produced, Filipino-made prison epics series which follows THE BIG DOLL HOUSE and was then followed by THE BIG BIRD CAGE. In comparison to those two it's definitely of lesser quality but still sordid and sleazy enough to entertain fans of these lowbrow efforts. You get multiple shower scenes, Miss Grier exposes her lovely assets, wanton lesbianism, bumbling attempted murder hijinks and there's a sorta gang-rape ending. It's also interesting in that you get Grier in a villainous role instead of her usual spot as the tough prisoner. While the direction, under Gerardo de Leon, is a bit lacking and he's no Jack Hill  you could do worse in the sleazy thrills category so give it a pervy look. AKA BAMBOO DOLL HOUSE and WOMEN'S PENITENTIARY III
 Apparently Quentin Tarantino took Pam Grier's character's name, Alabama, for his main female character in TRUE ROMANCE.

A recycled poster design from THE BIG DOLL HOUSE:

BUCKTOWN (1975)

   

                                            "No coon looks good to a decent man"

 Most of the classic blaxploitation flicks deal with the black man overcoming the evils of the racist white man and a terrible unjust society. This was obviously the most popular plot device for the intended audience of that time. This Fred Williamson and Pam Grier-starring vehicle takes that idea one step further and deals with what happens after our oppressed group rises up and kicks whiteys ass. Spoiler alert: it's not about the skin color but the content of one's character that makes for either beneficial or debilitating leaders. 40+ years after this film was made I don't think the majority of the planet's citizens have grasped this simple concept yet.  But even if you don't care about all the pseudo-political/social-comment mumbo-jumbo this still works as a great action flick where Fred "The Hammer" gets to lay the smackdown on jackasses of many different shades including Carl "Apollo Creed" Weathers, Thalmus Rasulala and your more typical Southern racist honkeys. You get full Miss Grier breasts on show and a killer funky soundtrack.I find this one highly re-watchable every couple of years.

CLASS OF 1999 (1989)

  The movie CLASS OF 1984 is a totally fucking awesome evil punk-rockers on the loose classic so the idea of doing a shitty sequel to it has always been totally repulsive to me and I've been able to avoid it until now. It was part of an 80's horror DVD collection or I'm sure I would still not bother with it. While it is a pretty awful movie and the "punk rockers" in this are exceptionally lame I will try and look at the few good things it has going for it. The main one is Pam Grier as a killer robot teacher. So this is basically the closest we get to seeing what it would be like if Miss Foxy Brown starred in THE TERMINATOR and that's kinda cool. The second thing is the cast has a couple of of big names. Malcolm McDowell as the principal and Stacey Keach(with stupid white contact lenses on his peepers) as a big jerk. Sadly none of these people are actually the stars of this film and we get a bunch of young people acting like tough gang members. While the idea of High-School kids fighting off insane Terminator teachers sounds like it could be cool on paper it's never all that exciting here.
 There is a sequel to this CLASS OF 1999 II: THE SUBSTITUTE( wait, shouldn't that be called CLASS OF 1984 III??) that I feel confident about avoiding.

FOXY BROWN (1974)

                                  "I got my black-belt in bar-stools"

 Right after COFFY(this was originally intended as a sequel to 73's COFFY) this has to be my favorite Pam Grier movie. I think it was probably after seeing this in a theater years ago that I first fell in love with the blaxploitation genre. Grier goes on a one-woman revenge rampage. Highlights among the hit-list of violent acts include a lesbian version of your typical barroom brawl, a couple of guys killed by an airplane propeller, lots of bloody gun-play, a slit-throat and it's all topped off by a castration. There's an all-star 70's cast besides Grier you get Antonio "Huggy Bear" Fargas, Sid Haig, "Hard Boiled" Haggerty of HARD TIMES and Mr. Clean fame and it's all directed by the great Jack Hill. A nice slice of 70's exploitation cinema with an equally groovy soundtrack by Willie Hutch. The  original shooting title for this was BURN, COFFY, BURN! which sounds awesome!

Before there was rap there were blaxploitation trailers:

SHEBA, BABY (1975)

My main problem with this Pam Grier action flick is its PG rating.  It means I'm not gonna see any boobs, not much bloodshed and I might as well watch STARSKY AND HUTCH or something like that.  There is a bloody shootout early on but that didn't help this movie from being a big flop when originally released and thanks to that it helped stall Grier's career for many years up until Quentin Tarantino gave her the starring role in JACKIE BROWN.  Director William Girdler had done some nifty horror films before this like THREE ON A MEATHOOK and ABBY which are both worth checking out.  On the positive side here you do get that bad D'Urville Martin from DOLEMITE as one of the bad guys and a memorably flashy pimp character named Walker but besides that you'd be way better off watching COFFY or FOXY BROWN for some quality classic Grier action.

THE BIG DOLL HOUSE (1971)

"One of these days, I'm gonna come in here, and ZAP!" "Zap?" "You know, Zap. R-A-P-E: "zap"

While, technically, there were women-in-prison flicks before this one this is the movie that really kick-started the whole cycle thanks to it being a huge drive-in hit when originally released. It was made for Roger Corman's New World Pictures company and he was pretty much disgusted by the more gratuitous content. But you can't argue with success. Pam Grier plays lesbian inmate Grear and Sid Haig plays a sleazy salesman who dreams of getting raped by an inmate some lucky day. You get some mild torture scenes, junkie-dancing, full cavity searches, shower scenes, mud-wrestling and lots of other cat-fighting. Also all these type of movies after this had to have a big food fight scene. Compared to the later WIP pictures, by the likes of Jess Franco and similarly low-brow Italian directors, it is all pretty tame stuff but done well enough by director Jack Hill to be entertaining.  There's a nonsensical bit of dubbing at the end to give the whole movie a sorta happy ending which was apparently forced on the filmmakers for some strange reason. AKA WOMEN'S PENITENTIARY III (VHS release)

BLACK MAMA, WHITE MAMA (1973)

AIP cranked out a bunch of these cheaply-shot action flicks in the Phillipines around this time.  This is one starts out as a women-in-prison movie and then turns into a fugitives on the run from the law tale.  There's the obligatory shower scene of course and plenty of female nudity to go around, lesbian guards and a stupid prison-slop food fight.  Pam Grier is the black mama, who's a hooker and Margaret Markov is the white mama who's a revolutionary freedom fighter.  They get chained together and make a break for it, catfighting with each other the whole way.  Neither one of them is very convincing in their roles but then again nothing is very realistic about this film.  You also get Sid Haig in some funky shirts playing this cowboy/criminal type.  He has a great scene in his tidy-whities wrestling with some half-naked Filipino chicks. There's also a strange scene where he examines guys dicks and threatens to shoot off the smallest one!?  Overall there's enough going on to keep things from getting too boring and make this worth checking out even if it's not the best example of a Pam Grier action flick.  AKA WOMEN'S PENITENTIARY 10 (video release title)

JACKIE BROWN (1997)

While Quentin Tarantino's idea to bring Pam Grier back from the 70's action star she was and put her into the spotlight with a starring vehicle is a good one there are a few problems I've always had with this flick.  The main one is the stupid replaying of one scene towards the end of the movie over and over from different points of view.  A more capable director could have easily edited every different viewpoint into one coherent scene instead of spreading it all out.  This could be simply done with some decent editing.  This also adds to the film being overlong which is a problem with most all of Tarantino's output.  There's also the issue of people doing things that seem way too dumb for them to be doing.  The cops being the most blatant but also Samuel Jackson's character who seems so street smart through most of the movie and then puts himself directly into a dangerous situation at the climax.  There are also some things I do appreciate about this movie though.  For one thing, I think it's the last time Robert DeNiro actually played a character and not just a parody of himself in stupid Hollywood comedies.  Sid Haig shows up as a judge and Bridget Fonda looks especially hot even though I don't have a foot-fetish like Mr. Quentin who shoots her from the feet up many times.  Also the soundtrack to this is awesome with blaxploitation tracks, Johnny Cash and even some music from VAMPYROS LESBOS thrown in.  And ultimately I understand most people that hate this film saw it after seeing PULP FICTION and that is a tough act to follow.  It doesn't have the violence or pace of that movie but I think taken on its own it's an interesting if not perfect movie from a decade that was otherwise full of garbage cinema.