Switchblade Sisters
| Switchblade Sisters | |
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| Directed by | Jack Hill |
| Produced by | Jeff Begun, Frank Moreno, John Prizer |
| Written by |
Jack Hill F.X. Meier John Prizer |
| Starring |
Joanne Nail Robbie Lee Monica Gayle Asher Brauner Don Stark |
| Music by |
Les Baxter Medusa |
| Cinematography | Stephen Katz |
| Edited by | Morton Tubor |
| Distributed by | Centaur Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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91 minutes |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $320,000 |
Switchblade Sisters is a 1975 action and exploitation film detailing the lives of high school-aged female gang members. It was directed by Jack Hill and stars Joanne Nail, Robbie Lee and Monica Gayle. The film is also known as The Jezebels.
The movie was not a success at the box office, but garnered a cult following later on. Most of its current popularity can be attributed to film director Quentin Tarantino, who named the picture a personal favorite and re-released it in 1996 under his Rolling Thunder Pictures label. This version of the film features a commentary by both Hill and Tarantino. The film's tagline is "So Easy to Kill, So Hard to Love."
Maggie (Joanne Nail) transfers from across town to a new high school that is essentially run by the Silver Daggers, a rough, hierarchical male gang, and their female counterparts, the Dagger Debs. A confrontation between the Dagger Debs and a repo man gets all the female members — and Maggie — arrested. Because Maggie is new, a lecherous lesbian warden at the juvenile detention center (Kate Murtagh) threatens to physically abuse her. Maggie fights back and eventually the Dagger Debs join her. Subsequently, Dagger Deb leader Lace (Robbie Lee) decides she likes Maggie and entrusts her with running errands while she serves a brief sentence in juvenile hall. One such errand- delivering a love note to Lace's boyfriend, Dominic (Asher Brauner), ends in Dominic following Maggie home and raping her. Maggie's close friendship with Lace upsets Lace's closest friend, Patch, who lost one of her eyes in service to the gang and now sees herself as second-in-command.
Lace is released from juvenile hall and reunites with Dominic, telling him that she discovered she was pregnant during her incarceration. Dominic disavows fatherhood and refuses to help Lace care for the child, encouraging her to undergo an abortion. Meanwhile, the Silver Daggers have to contend with the arrival of a new gang, led by the villainous Crabs (Chase Newhart), at the high school. After Crabs shoots Dominic's brother and orchestrates the gang rape of one of the Debs, Maggie devises an ambush on Crabs's men at a local roller rink. The effort proves disastrous when Crabs' men show up armed with rifles, kill Dominic, and brutally assault Lace, causing her to miscarry. While Lace recuperates in the hospital, Maggie assumes leadership of the gang, expels the men and changes its name to The Jezebels. She teams up with Muff (Marlene Clark) and her gang of African-American militants from across town to ambush Crabs. All the while, Maggie suspects that someone in her group tipped Crabs off to their plans at the roller rink, not knowing that Patch has already uncovered the real traitor: Lace, who organized the ambush to get Maggie killed in revenge for her stealing Dom and for assuming the role of leader of the Dagger Debs. Patch agrees to cover for Lace and, after the ambush proves successful, she shoots Crabs before he can confess to Maggie.
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