My chapters on sexploitation and on exploitation-horror concluded that these controversial but profitable genres fatigued their commercial profile because of two things: 1) the novelty of what they are exploiting becomes embraced and remade in the form of numerous ‘B-exploitation’ take-offs, usually which are all spectacle. This factor quickly exhausts the market and 2) the major studios, or an aspirant independent filmmaker (such as Sean Cunningham or John Carpenter) popularise a more accessible version of the style that is contingent to the presentation of taboo. Blaxploitation is no exception to this and Coffy indicates a conclusive attempt to evolve the genre and its style. This evolution, most obviously, comes through characterisation – the female figure of Pam Grier removes the genre from its masculine genesis: something that probably had to be done given the criticism of Sweet Sweetback and Super Fly. The consequence, in Coffy, is of a more glitzy and lavish appropriation of the cinematic style that made Sweet Sweetback and Super Fly unique from other ‘black avenger’ films. As with The Opening of Misty Beethoven, or the specialeffects horror and surrealist flashbacks of Martin, a style that had begun as a gritty, vérité, low-fi style graduates into an ambition of special effects, set dressings, costumes, stunts and an even more grandstanding spectacle.

When Coffy emerged, blaxploitation had become typified as a ‘macho’ genre. This assumption became even more evident when a wave of cash-in features began to appear, each following the formula of a hypersexual, tough, African-American male battling against (usually) a white adversary. Described by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) as ‘Super Nigger’ films and equated to ‘cultural genocide’ the blaxploitation genre encountered boycotts, controversy and critical disdain. As I have indicated, both Sweet Sweetback and Super Fly exist within the exploitation movement. Their consequent commercialisation of, and stylistic approach to, graphic sex, violence and themes of fractured race relationships would perhaps have been more acceptable to the audience of Night of the Living Dead, Behind the Green Door and other key exploitation texts. However, because Sweet Sweetback and Super Fly represent the arrival of commercial black filmmaking they were faced with even more scrutiny than the more monetarily blatant gore and sex of comparable exploitation releases.