Movie review - "Switchblade Sisters" (1975) ***1/2

How good is this film? Not originally one of the more famous 70s exploitation films (it lacks stars, was not produced by Roger Corman and director Jack Hill never left the exploitation genre), it has recently been championed by Quentin T (who else?) and for good reason - it still holds up brilliantly, mostly because of its top story: the sisters of the title are a tough high school girl gang, associated with the boys.

It starts like a woman in prison film, specifically Hill’s The Big Doll House with Joannie Nail as the new innocent who isn’t so innocent and joins the gang, led by Robbie Lee (the funny-voiced hellcat from Big Bad Mama). They wind up in the reform house but soon get out and back to school where the fun begins. The boy gang gets into a fight with another boy gang which results in the girl gang having to learn their independence – they get into cahoots with a female black revolutionary gang (no Pam Grier unfortunately). There are subplots about Lee’s boyfriend falling for Nail (after raping her – the most unpleasant aspect of the film ), a traitor in the gang.

This film keeps delivering knock out punches – the girls attacking a debt collector in an elevator, the riot at reform school, the shoot out at the roller rink (a wonderful set piece), the shoot em up finale with tanks and guns, the final switch blade fight, Nail’s monologue delivered with a snarl despite her face being bloody and cut up – it’s wonderful.

Is this a feminist movie? Well, Nail is raped and doesn’t seem that bothered, indeed its implied she’d go out with the guy if he wasn’t already with Lee – though she does threaten the guy with a knife if he does it again. (Jack Hill in his DVD commentary with Quentin Tarantino says he was inspired by the rape scene in The Fountainhead; he also admits he regrets the rapes.) The females learn to stand on their feet, they grow increasingly political, one of the girls whose bloke makes money by getting her to take her clothes off dumps the bloke, the girls beat the boy gang and kick some serious butt.

Robbie Lee’s character is fascinating – she talks in a little girl voice and looks young but is the evident leader, though in love with her guy so much she causes his death. Monica Gayle plays a gang member with a patch over her eye, an evident inspiration for Daryl Hannah in Kill Bill. The finale is deliriously over the top and quite wonderful.