tavm What I'm reviewing now was the very last movie Pam Grier made for American International Pictures. She plays the title character as a photographer for a magazine who's on assignment to shoot the arrival of the "black Howard Hughes" Blake Tarr (Thalmus Rasulala). Accompanying her on some of her assignments other than the one I mentioned above is private detective Colt Hawkins (Yaphet Kotto). I'll stop there and just say how fun I found the whole thing and why not with a cast that includes Eartha Kitt, Scatman Crothers, Jim Backus, Ted Lange without his mustache that he became famous for when he was cast in "The Love Boat" a few years later, a pre-Apollo Creed Carl Weathers, and Godfrey Cambridge several months before his untimely death. I can't admit that everything that happened made sense but I found myself smiling if not always laughing the whole time I was watching. So on that note, Friday Foster is well worth a look.

winner55 Of the four films from the mid-'70s that starred Pam Grier in the heroic lead - Coffy, Foxy Brown, Sheba Baby, Friday Foster - this last film is undoubtedly the best - best screenplay, best direction, best production values, and an excellent cast delivering wonderful (campy but restrained) performances. So why is this traditionally given the lowest rating of these films? I suspect that this has to do with the expectations of the fans of the '70s "Blaxploitation" genre. "Friday Foster" toys playfully with Blaxploitation conventions, but doesn't adhere to them. The movie is actually targeted at a developing black middle class that was college educated and both aware of the stereotypes confronting them and ambitious to overcome these. Most enduring Blaxploitation fans now are actually white. politically left, and 40 or older; they secretly enjoy the stereotypes they argue are mocked in Blaxploitation, these remind them of an era when it was easier to deal with social classes rather than individuals.But long after Blaxploitation is forgotten as a genre, "Friday Foster" will be an enjoyable action film. The violence and danger are real enough - and very well paced, but the script and the actors performing it are witty enough to avoid taking any of it too seriously. The political message is still there, but there's no attempt to beat us over the head with it.Finally, it has to be noted that with this film Pam Grier at last came into her own as an actress. While her range is still limited by her age and experience, she has learned to push this range to its envelope and toy with expanding beyond it. Her inflection and diction in delivering her lines, along with her careful use of of her eyes and expression, are subtly rich in wit and focus, revealing as much of the character as the script itself."Coffy," Grier's best known film of that era, is not really a good film, and is not amusing enough as "bad but funny" for multiple viewings. "Friday Foster" is not "bad but funny" at all, it's just a good, well-made, fun action comedy.

MartinHafer Just a couple years earlier, Pam Grier starred in COFFEY--one of the best of the so-called blaxploitation films. Then, she made FOXY BROWN--a very similar film but still very watchable nonetheless. Now, by 1975, she was making lousy films like SHEBA BABY and Friday FOSTER--films that were just pale imitations of these earlier successes.Friday FOSTER finds Ms. Grier as a hot-shot photographer for Glance magazine. She gets a lead on the arrival of some big-wig and sneaks onto the runway at the airport. However, she walks into an attempted assassination! After that, she's pulled into all kinds of intrigue that never really scores. Too bad her character is more like a Black Barbie doll instead of the usual bad @ss she played in her good films. All her brashness is replaced by high fashion clothing and a by-the-numbers plot that could have been a "Charlie's Angels" plot--seriously.Now this film could have been a lot better. After all, it had a very good cast (including Carl Weathers, Julius Harris, Yaphet Kotto and Godfrey Cambridge. However, it all just seemed so unreal and poorly written. Pam with a camera instead of a gun just didn't pack much entertainment punch. Heck, you know it's lame when instead of blowing away bad-guy Weathers, she shoots him with pepper spray. Lame! And, when the evil assassins strike, they only chose methods with the lowest probability of success!!! Knives, runaway cars that inexplicably miss the heroine and explode and gunmen who can't hit anything make for one of the weakest gangs in film history! The only good hit (and it was GREAT---almost worth seeing the film just for this one) involved a phone booth and a huge truck--but naturally this was aimed only at a minor character and not Ms. Grier.If there was a reason to watch this movie, it's so you can see the zombie fashion show about 25 minutes into the film! It's a high fashion show starring a strange Eartha Kitt (by her performance, I think she thought she's supposed to be Catwoman). As she introduces the models, each comes out in atrocious 70s dresses and moves about exactly like the undead as Kitt purrs like Batman's rival---seriously! It is meant to be hot, but frankly it's one of the funnier scenes in a bad blaxploitation film you can find.Another possible reason might be to see Ted Lange (from "Love Boat") playing a completely stereotypical 70s pimp. Instead of mixing drinks and dispensing wisdom, here he spouts Huggy Bear-like dialog that can't help but elicit laughs. I really wish he'd acted this way on "Love Boat"--it would have been hysterical! Or, perhaps people who hate Godfrey Cambridge would want to see it because this film couldn't help but sink his career. His mincing homosexual routine is pretty embarrassing--as well as awfully offensive when seen today--at least to some in the audience. Others might just laugh at its lack of subtlety.A final reason to see the film is to witness the most amazing and warmest winter in Washington, DC history. I grew up there and was amazed to see all the trees were filled with green leaves and people were dressed like it was May! I was there in 1975 but somehow missed out on this anomaly! My recall is that the temperatures were in the 30s...like every other winter in this city!! I also loved the mountains in the outskirts of DC (and no, I am NOT talking about the Appalachians). Strange how they looked like the same ones in Los Angeles! Great continuity, huh?!However, other than for laughs or curiosity or a hatred of Mr. Cambridge, I just can't see why you'd want to see this until you've first seen and enjoyed GOOD blaxploitation films! Trust me--you can do a lot better than this overly-polished but bland film.You know this is a REAAALLLY lame film where "Mr. Big" turns out to be Jim Backus!! So apparently THAT'S how Thurston Howell III got all that money!!

C. Sean Currie (hypestyle) Friday Foster, based on the 1970's era comic strip by Jim Lawrence and Jorge Longaron, is about a young black woman magazine photographer. In the original strips, Friday was the assistant to a white photographer; in the film, it's Friday herself who's the shutterbug. Friday (Pam Grier) works for Glamour magazine, and her boss (Julius Harris) sends her to cover the airport arrival of Blake Tarr (Thalmus Rasulala) a self-made billionaire, and apparently the richest black man in the world. Friday gets more than she bargained for as this presumably ordinary assignment turns into an attempted murder, with Tarr as the target. Friday got photos of the hit men, so she becomes a target as well. As it so happens, Tarr is organizing a massive meeting of influential African-Americans at his vast estate; it figures to be an agenda-planning affair for black America. The bad guys (who are for now anonymous) don't take kindly to a black think-tank getting traction, and Friday's misadventures lead her to discover that someone plans to murder everyone who attends this event.Her partner in (fighting) crime is Colt (Yaphet Kotto), a private detective who likes Friday, but with him she keeps it strictly platonic. She reserves her romantic side for Tarr and for Senator David Lee Hart (Paul Benjamin). A pre-Rocky Carl Weathers (as the hit-man Yarbro) gives chase to Friday for much of the film, and a pre-Love Boat Ted Lange is a young pimp who openly pines for Friday to join his enterprise. Other notable actors in the film include Earth Kitt, Scatman Crothers, Godfrey Cambridge, and Mr. Howell himself, Jim Backus. The action in the film is fast and slick, and the narrative manages to maintain a certain knowing campiness, despite the presumably serious political intrigue of the plot.Produced and released during the wane of the black-action film trend of the 1970's, the film met with modest response at the box office; the summer success of "Jaws" lit the fuse that would explode with "Star Wars" two years later, and Hollywood abandoned low-budgeted action fare aimed at ethnics for bigger-budget 'mass-appeal' blockbusters.