Hong Kong cinema was a huge influence on the Blaxploitation movies of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s – a short-lived Hollywood dalliance with Black Power.
This wave of ethnically-minded films arose after Melvin Van Peebles’ supremely militant indie-hit Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1967) took unprecedented box-office. Never ones to let a good niche market go untapped, the studios immediately rushed out a flood of imitations, featuring such seminal black heroes as Shaft, Superfly and, er, Blacula, the funky vampire.
Flying the flag for the gals was Tamara Dobson as Cleopatra Jones, and Pam Grier as Coffy (1973) and later Foxy Brown (1974).
Like Kill Bill, these were girls-seek-retribution type movies, with the gorgeous, statuesque Grier (already a veteran of such classics as 1972’s Women in Cages) portraying a nurse in both. In Coffy, she’s on a (frequently half-naked) mission of vengeance against the local drug-pushers, who have ruined her 11-year-old sister. Grier seduces her way into their various apartments before dispatching her prey with shotguns, needles or whatever else comes to hand. Coffy’s unofficial sequel, Foxy Brown, was infinitely more violent still, with the villains being burnt to death, having their throats slashed, and their genitals chopped off and pickled for posterity.
Grier languished for years in obscurity after the blaxploitation phenomenon had run its course, and was reduced to bit-roles in the likes of Miami Vice, until some bloke called Quentin Tarantino wrote the gorgeous, wistful Jackie Brown for her in 1998. And, hey, what a comeback!