Friday Foster

A rich white businessman has a plan to wipe out all the most powerful leaders of the African American community and the only thing standing in his way is a shapely news photographer who can punch as well as she can shoot.

Fans of Pam Grier already know what movie I'm talking about. The rest of you will just have to catch up.

Friday Foster is not Grier's best Blaxploitation movie (that would be Coffy...or maybe Jackie Brown) but it's still a good example of what's right and what's wrong with the genre.

As Friday Foster, Grier finds herself doing a lot more acting, and a lot less fighting, than in most of her films up to this point (1975), and that's a good thing. The bad thing about the movie is that, like most Blaxploitation movies, Friday Foster hasn't aged well at all. Watch two minutes of Ted Lange's embarrassing performance as the pimp Fancy Dexter and you'll know what I'm talking about. Of course watching it and realizing that it's the same Ted Lange who grew up to be Isaac the bartender on The Love Boat and you may cut him some slack.

In fact, one of the joys of watching Friday Foster is watching the familiar faces do some very unfamiliar things like Carl Weathers (Apollo Creed from the Rocky movies) as the silent hit man chasing after Friday in a truly terrible plaid sports jacket, or Yaphet Kotto playing the romantic lead as private detective Colt Hawkins.

And nothing beats the brief, but twisted appearance of Jim Backus – Mr. Thurston Howell III from Gilligan's Island – as the white racist behind it all.