Foxy Brown (1974)

FOXY BROWN is Pam Grier's landmark Blaxploitation film, in which she creates the iconic character imitated in films by directors from Spike Lee to Quentin Tarantino.

Grier plays Foxy, a toughened woman living in a drug-plagued Los Angeles ghetto who goes on a one-woman mission of vengeance after her undercover cop boyfriend (Terry Carter) is shot down in the street. The badass lass goes undercover herself, as a call girl for the evil mistress of the drug cartel (Kathryn Loder), and with the help of a neighborhood vigilante committee, wreaks some hell on the bad guys. Highlights include a lesbian bar brawl and Foxy's sexual belittling of an old white judge. Co-stars include Antonio Fargas, Sid Haig, and Sally-Ann Stroud. Don't miss the crazily colored opening credits, which feature Grier boogying down in all sorts of super-sexy outfits to the Willie Hutch title track (Hutch also composed the groovy funk score). This was directed by cult icon Jack Hill, who also scored with Grier in the previous year's COFFY.

Chock full of sex, nudity and rampant violence, FOXY BROWN is visceral in a way that today's movies cannot be. Its treatment of graphic subjects is purposely shocking, to undermine studio conventions of the time, making Foxy's revenge especially exciting to watch.