Switchblade Sisters

Jack Hill's SWITCHBLADE SISTERS is the outlandish, action-packed story of a tough gang of teenage girls -- the all-female Dagger Debs -- who are looking for love and fighting for turf on the mean streets of the city! Bad girls to the core, these impossibly outrageous high school hoodlums go where they want ... and create mayhem wherever they go! A riotously entertaining mix of sex, jealousy, and massive firepower that critics loved -- don't miss your chance to see one of the wildest films ever made!

Jack Hill's 1975 drive-in opus, Switchblade Sisters, has all the requisite cheese and then some: girl fights, gun duels, sex-starved reform school guards, flashes of nudity, and even African-American-Maoist-revolutionary-butt-kicking chicks who don't take nonsense from anyone. The story is a prime example of how the influence of great filmmakers can be reprocessed into pure exploitation: Maggie (Joanne Nail), a smart, new member of a distaff gang, presents a threat to the group's established leader (Robbie Lee). The intricacies of their subsequent relationship--love, betrayal, and a battle for control--has numerous echoes of the films of Nicholas Ray and Howard Hawks, and Hill plays it all with a seriousness that underscores the heart within this trash classic. No wonder Quentin Tarantino became this film's latter-day benefactor, promoting its 1998 theatrical re-release under the auspices of his revival imprint, Rolling Thunder Pictures. --Tom Keogh