Friday Foster Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

Friday Foster Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 26, 2015

By the time Pam Grier made what would be her American International Pictures swan song, 1975’s Friday Foster, the blaxploitation template had been well set, perhaps especially within the confines of Grier’s own contributions to the genre: someone was going to get killed, and Grier would end up being the avenging angel, all while wearing fabulous seventies attire. Friday Foster kind of pretends it's going to adhere to that formula, at least in the early going, but then takes off in some unexpected ways. What also sets Friday Foster at least somewhat apart from its cinematic kin is the fact that this outing was based on a pre-existing franchise, a pioneering comic strip by Jim Lawrence which ran for several years (ending in 1974) and which offered mainstream mass media one of its first African American heroines.

Of course Pam’s Friday Foster is more of an action heroine than her comic strip progenitor, and indeed ends up trying to not just rid the streets of mundane crime (as in many a Grier effort), but to actually prevent the kind of political conspiracy which would become fodder for such more or less simultaneous fare as The Parallax View. A colorful supporting cast includes Godfrey Cambridge hamming it up, Eartha Kitt not far behind, but a nicely subdued and effective Jim Backus.

Friday Foster Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Friday Foster is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. Grier fans who have already picked up Coffy and Foxy Brown will know generally what to expect here, with sometimes slightly problematic elements combined with an obviously older master to offer decent but rarely overwhelming fine detail. Colors are quite vivid, especially in some brightly lit outdoor sequences. There's variable sharpness and grain structure on display here, looking as if this may have been sourced at least partially (and in very short bursts) from dupe elements. While the grain is quite heavy and clumpy at times, it's reasonably organic looking.

Friday Foster Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Friday Foster features a robust lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track. Dialogue and score are vividly presented, and there's some appealing low end helping to add weight to both the music and some of the sound effects. Fidelity is very good and dynamic range fairly wide on this problem free track.

Friday Foster Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There are no supplements of any kind on this Blu-ray disc.

Friday Foster Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Friday Foster is just flat out goofy a lot of the time, but it's kind of an interesting departure from the Grier template. What seems on its face to be yet another "revenge opera" takes some unexpected turns into political thriller territory, and while still unabashedly lo-fi and silly, Friday Foster has energy to spare. Technical merits are very good to excellent on this release, and Friday Foster comes Recommended.