I think you're spot on for the most part here Kristy. I'd argue that some of his movies are in fact grim, though. Pit Stop, in particular, is quite, quite bleak.
Of course, the easiest way to get comics to be more like Jack Hill movies would be to...hire Jack Hill to write them. He's still very much alive. Nobody will hire him to make movies because Hollywood sucks...but I don't know, if I were at Vertigo I'd give him a call. He's very approachable.
Besides the post you linked, I've got a really ridiculously long essay about Hill and women-in-prison films here and more on Hill and gender here.
Hill has worked on a lot of films, but the ones that he had more or less full control over are Spider Baby, Big Doll House, Big Bird Cage, Pit Stop, Coffy, Foxy Brown, Swinging Cheerleaders, and Switchblade Sisters. Thery're all awesome.
Yeah, I actually read about Pit Stop, although I still haven't seen it. He wanted them to
*spoiler*
lose at the end, but the studio wouldn't let him, so he purposely made it as bleak as possible (again, basically subverting the genre while fulfilling the requirements of it). But I didn't feel comfortable talking about something I had just read about, not seen, so I left that out.
*end spoiler*
I guess the only thing I would have to add to your observations is that, in general, if his female character isn't particularly repressed -- if she doesn't unconsciously "desire" -- she doesn't get raped (it's a little ambiguous in SBS. But it's not in Coffy). The way he handles it reminds me of romance novels, a little bit, actually. (The viewers also has a bit of distance in Swinging Cheerleaders, too, if they know that that that particular "virgin" character was being portrayed by a pregnant actress.)
I would love it if somebody gave him a whack at comics, although admittedly talent doesn't always translate across media. This column is basically fanwank, I guess, but if they keep hiring Claremont to write the X-Men as if he had stopped, why can't a girl dream?
Ellen Forney did a little one-pager about The Big Doll House, BTW.
