p e n g u i n d e v i l

I figured that I may as well round up my Pam Grier week with another old classic, Foxy Brown. Not as good as Coffy (which is just the best) it is still a good tale of vengeance (of course), and it starts off with amazing title sequence (how often does the stars of the film dance for you before the movie starts?). Pam plays Foxy, a lady whose boyfriend has just undergone plastic surgery and gotten a new identity after being deep undercover for two years. Pam and her guy are looking to stay out of trouble and start over again, but sadly, her brother is the punk-ass drug dealer, Link (played by the great Antonio Fargas in his usual trademarked style). See, Link is in a bad situation and owes a lot of bread to the same folks who Foxy’s boyfriend was up against. When the baddies are chasing Link, he runs to his sister for help.

Once she helps him out, it becomes obvious that the only kind of help Link knows about is helping himself. When Foxy introduces him to her “new” boyfriend, Link puts two and two together and, burdened with his usual big mouth and “out for himself” attitude, he decides that this is something he can cash in on. Once Pam’s pal get offed, she is in for some serious troubles and out for some serious vengeance.

Of course, as in Coffy, she needs to go undercover as a hooker again, as the big villain here is a madame. She has to go up against the madame, her “medallion and pajama wearing” boyfriend and a couple of roughneck, hillbilly, drug-dealers whose shack she is imprisoned in. Luckily, with the moving line “You just take care of the justice, and I’ll handle the revenge myself”, she manages to enlist the help of the local neighborhood vigilante committee and their cool Isaac Hayes poster.

And at this point, the baddies (featuring Sid Haig, yet again) don’t stand much of a chance! Pam and pals are out to exact a hard vengeance against these pimps, drug-dealers and murderers, using knives, shotgun, handguns and even an airplane!

We also watched Time Out (L’ Emploi du temps), a great french film based (I think) on the case of Jean-Claude Romand, who spent 18 years unemployed, pretending to everyone that he was a doctor for the World Health Organization. All the while supporting himself and his family with other people’s money that he was supposedly investing for them. The story in the film isn’t nearly as dramatic, but it is a dramatic and engrossing film. Using very little dialog in the first half, and no “action”, we basically follow “Vincent” around as he quietly lives and sleeps in his car, making phone calls to his wife pretending that he is at work or on business trips. As tends to happen with these things, he begins to make his lies more outlandish bringing attention upon himself that he would rather not have. Of course, his facade begins to fall apart as people start putting the pieces together and he begins to feel some guilt about stealing money from his acquaintances. The movie is quite fetching. It travels at a slow and quiet pace, and Vincent is frustrating as you cannot help but wonder where he thinks all of this will lead. But Cailtin gave the best review when she said that it was so involving that she didn’t even feel like she was watching a movie.