Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

Coffy Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 9, 2015

Some historians have credited Shaft with having started the so-called Blaxploitation craze. But a mere comparison of Shaft’s cost to benefit ratio with another 1971 film may indicate otherwise. According to some online sources, Shaft was budgeted at about a half a million dollars, and went on to bring in around $13 million, certainly a good return on investment and enough to keep the creditors away from Metro Goldwyn Mayer for at least a little while longer. However, contrast that with this pair of figures: a cost of around $150,000, and a return well north of $15 million. Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, Melvin Van Peebles’ 1971 tale of a black man on the run from the police, managed to achieve that feat, despite a precipitous filming situation and an even dicier distribution model that was hampered by Van Peebles’ provocative use of sex in the film. Shaft may have been the “mainstream” hit, meaning that white folks actually knew about it (and went to see it), but it’s probably Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song which is more properly seen as the progenitor of Blaxploitation, at least from a tonal perspective. Van Peebles’ formulations were definitely of the “in your face” variety, and a kind of weird combination of insouciance combined with just a hint (and sometimes more than merely a hint) of rage tends to color many Blaxploitation outings. That’s certainly the case with Coffy, a 1973 film which couldn’t match the box office gusto of either Shaft or Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, but which did well enough as a “genre” film, and which also helped to establish Pam Grier as the “go to girl” for that decade’s gynocentric Blaxploitation fare.

The urban atmosphere that is so indicative of Blaxploitation fare is on display from the get go in Coffy, as a kind of nightclub is home not just to high energy tunes (courtesy of Roy Ayers, who wrote Coffy’s funk inflected score), but evidently activities of a more criminal nature. A drug dealer who’s hard up for a fix talks to his supplier, an overstuffed villain who doesn’t react kindly when the dealer says he has a girl to offer his boss (in exchange for some much needed drugs). When the kingpin finds out the girl is actually in his car out in the parking lot, he goes a little ballistic, running outside to get her out of it. However, when he lays eyes on the elegant Coffy (Pam Grier), he changes his mind, deciding that maybe a little “R&R” with this cunning vixen is just what the doctor ordered. It turns out Coffy has other plans, and the character’s vigilante status is well documented by the end of this first sequence.

It turns out Coffy isn’t just a killing machine, she’s a nurse with a bit of an avenging angel streak. While she has a relatively normal home life, including an up and coming boyfriend with political ambitions named Howard Brunswick (Booker Bradshaw), as well as an ex- boyfriend police officer named Carter (William Elliott), Coffy is out to rid her environment of illegal activity (mostly but not exclusively drug related). As is well on display throughout the film, Coffy is not above utilizing her feminine wiles to get her up close and personal with various criminals, at which point her plan is to dispatch them. Things go awry during one of these “interludes” (inter-lewds?), and Coffy ends up taken prisoner by gangland mob boss Arturo Vitroni (Allan Arbus).

Coffy gives some passing lip service to supposed motivations for its titular character’s obsession with taking out the criminal element, but the film is not really that interested with deep set psychological underpinnings, preferring instead to exploit adrenaline pumping scenes of carnage, as well as more salacious material that offers a good look at not just Grier, but other females in the cast. The film is rather rote and actually cliché-ridden when you get right down to it, coming off as an naughtier urban version of any number of revenge driven movies of the week. Director Jack Hill (Spider Baby , Foxy Brown) somehow manages to both objectify Coffy and make her the personification of a kind of incipient feminism where her “attributes” are simply a means to an end—actually several ends, as evidenced by the film’s body count.

Coffy Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Coffy is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. While I could find no data to indicate whether this was sourced off the same master as the recent Arrow release reviewed by my colleague Dr. Svet Atanasov, a cursory comparison of screenshots from the two releases shows that they are virtually identical (I've tried to come close to matching at least a few of Svet's screencaptures for easy toggling and comparison). Furthermore, though it occurs a bit later on the timecode on this version (easily attributable to elements like the Olive logo at the head of this presentation), there's the same image instability that Svet noted in his review (on this version, it occurs more around 45:25 or so). All of this said, I'm just a little less pleased with the overall look of this transfer than Svet evidently was. Colors look slightly faded to me, tipped toward the brown end of the spectrum so that reds assume a slightly orange ambience. Grain is quite heavy throughout this presentation and struggles to resolve organically in several of the darkest sequences. The elements used for this transfer have fairly recurrent issues with scratches and both negative and positive dirt (black and white flecks). The good news is that this is the typical Olive "hands off" release, one that presents the source elements in a "warts and all" fashion, but without any intrusive digital tweaking of the image.

Coffy Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Coffy features a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono mix which offers surprisingly robust support for Roy Ayers' funky score. Dialogue and sound effects like crunching bones or gunfire are also well rendered and well prioritized. Fidelity is fine on this problem free track, and dynamic range is very wide.

Coffy Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Unlike the Arrow release reviewed by my colleague Dr. Svet Atanasov, this domestic edition of Coffy contains no supplementary material of any kind.

Coffy Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Coffy is a little smarmy and it never totally rises above pure genre conventions, but it's a lot of fun to watch and Grier is of course an eyeful (maybe an eyeful and a half). Hill keeps things moving along briskly, and the film has several knockout (literal and otherwise) sequences. Roy Ayers' funktastic score only adds to the allure of this lo-fi but enjoyable outing. There are some niggling issues with the video, but audio is outstanding. That said, those with region free players should probably consider the Arrow Blu-ray release since it has such good supplements (and since it seems to have virtually identical video and audio). For those without region free players, Coffy comes Recommended.