The Switchblade Sisters (1975) Reviews

Exploitation auteur Jack Hill wrote and directed this wild, often satiric girl-gang movie, whose story is loosely (make that very, very loosely) based on Othello. The Silver Daggers are a gang of young hoods who control an inner-city high school, where they sell drugs and sex to the student body and fight anyone who gets in their way. The Daggers have a ladies' auxiliary, The Dagger Debs, who rumble just as hard as the men, but one day chief Dagger Deb Lace (Robbie Lee) meets her match in Maggie (Joanne Nail), a new kid who won't back down. When a scuffle lands Maggie and the Debs in jail for the night, Maggie comes to Lace's rescue, and Maggie becomes Lace's new right-hand woman. However, fellow Deb Patch (Monica Gayle) is jealous of Maggie's friendship with Lace, and begins spinning a web of deceit to destroy Lace's trust in the new deb. In the midst of the infighting, the Silver Daggers find their turf challenged by a rival gang who pose as a community action team, and the Debs join forces with a revolutionary political group. Kitty Bruce, Lenny Bruce's daughter, plays Doughnut, one of the Debs, and Marlene Clark plays a Mao-spouting revolutionary leader. This exploitation cult item gained a new life in 1996, when Quentin Tarantino, a big fan of director Hill, sponsored a theatrical re-release through his company Rolling Thunder Pictures. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi