Pam Grier

Jackie Brown

  • Title: Jackie Brown
  • IMDb: link

Jackie Brown

Taking advantage of Pam Grier‘s history blaxploitation films, Quentin Tarantino cast her in the title role of his 1997 adaptation of Elmore Leonard‘s novel Rum Punch. More than a quarter of a century later it remains the only non-original film Tarantino has created (which is interesting as some, although not me, argue it just may be his best work). Grier’s inclusion easily lets the viewer tie this film to her earlier works in film like Coffy and immediately understand the tone Tarantino is going for with the stylish Jackie Brown.

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Big Doll House

  • Title: Big Doll House
  • IMDb: link

Big Doll House movie reviewThrowback Tuesday takes us back to 1971’s Big Doll House. Produced by B-movie legend Roger Corman, the film kicked-off a jungle subset of the women-in-prison genre starring Judith Brown, Roberta Collins, Pam Grier, Brooke Mills, Pat Woodell, and Gina Stuart as inmates in a prison of an unnamed tropical country run by an evil warden (Christiane Schmidtmer) and overseen by the Nazi-like torturer Lucien (Kathryn Loder). Collins, Grier, and Brown would all return for the similarly themed Women in Cages released the same year.

Pushing the boundaries of what was allowed in the loosened ratings of the time, the independent film follows the basic format of the exploitation genre putting the women in various compromising positions guaranteed to get their clothes off such as strip searches, group shower scenes, catfights (one even in mud), lesbian and bondage scenes, and torture. We also get a revolution and escape plot, which would become part of the sub-genre, culminating in the group’s attempt to escape the prison during the movie’s climax. Although not the main character, the film is notable for launching Grier’s career in this genre and blaxploitation films.

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