Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Switchblade Sisters (1975)

           A cartoonish exploitation movie rescued from obscurity by grindhouse godhead Quentin Tarantino—who re-released the picture theatrically and on home video through his short-lived Rolling Thunder Pictures imprint—Switchblade Sisters is a distaff precursor to Walter Hill’s infinitely superior gang-warfare thriller The Warriors (1979). Like the latter film, Switchblade Sisters features action and characterization that wouldn’t be out of place in a comic book, even though the lurid storyline’s tropes of rape and sexual politics are strictly for grown-ups. Directed by ’70s staple Jack Hill, who made most of Pam Grier’s best vehicles, Switchblade Sisters has been exhibited under many titles, including The Jezebels and Maggie’s Stiletto Sisters. As the various monikers imply, the story revolves around an all-girl street gang. Led by tiny but vicious Lace (Robbie Lee), the Dagger Debs get caught in a turf war with a rival male gang at the same time a new member, Maggie (Joanne Nail), discovers misdeeds by Lace and slowly usurps Lace’s role as leader. By the end of the story, the Dagger Debs have become the Jezebels, a hardcore outfit with a fierce reputation and a violent track record.
          The movie is filled with fights, prison scenes, and undercover missions, so nearly every cliché of female-centric action cinema is represented. Bull-dyke prison boss? Check. Climactic catfight? Check. Babes using their wiles to outsmart men? Check. None could accuse the makers of Switchblade Sisters of shortchanging the audience in terms of silly violence, especially since the ending features a full-fledged street war involving armored vehicles, machine guns, and—just for good measure—an all-black gang comprising nothing but militant females. There’s even room in the flick for a Dagger Deb named Patch who has—you guessed it!—an eye patch. The acting in Switchblade Sisters is generally awful, though leading lady Nail has a certain sexy swagger, but the dialogue is so cheesy it’s not as if highly developed dramatic skills were required. Similarly, while the story is highly predictable, Hill delivers the goods so abundantly that the picture never fails to generate something resembling excitement. And because Hill goes much lighter on nudity than usual, it’s easier to except the quasi-feminist posturing of Switchblade Sisters than it is to accept similar rhetoric in Hill’s other drive-in flicks.

Switchblade Sisters: FUNKY

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