Switchblade Sisters

For all its Tarantino tongue-in-cheek violence and movie poster posturing, Switchblade Sisters (1975) could easily be a case study for a women’s issues in the workplace.  A new recruit, Maggie, rises to the top of the organization, outsmarting and outmuscling her male competitors, only to be sabotaged by her best friend, Lace, the woman she trusted the most.  Director Jack Hill stole from the best, lifting much of the gangland politics from Shakespeare’s Othello, but making sure to disguise it will plenty of chains, bullets and the aforementioned switchblades. 

 

The “dagger debs” – later rechristened “the Jezebels” after Maggie’s corporate takeover – are proud of their juvenile delinquent status.  But adult problems are looming on the horizon and the next arrest could land them all into the prison system.  The addition of Maggie causes an emotional rift when Dominic, head of the Silver Daggers, takes more than a passing interest, forcing Lace to choose between love, friendship and power.

 

Switchblade Sisters jumps between campy Roger Corman-style exploitation (bookended by an over-the-top prison riot and an all-out street assault complete with tanks and machine guns) and the quieter - and honestly more compelling - scenes involving the love/hate relationships between the girls in the gang.  Hill doesn’t make apologies for either gender in the end; both gangs are tragically self-destructive.  But he pulls out some convincing performances from the likes of Robbie Lee (whose subsequent voice acting work on the Smurfs and Rainbow Bright isn’t surprising) and Joanne Nail, whose kung-fu action pose is the stuff Tarantino dreams are made of.

 

Long overdue for a special edition, Arrow’s Blu-ray looks terrific and features a new commentary from astute female film critic Kat Ellinger, the archival documentary We Are the Jezebels, a location tour, interviews, still galleries, trailer and a collector’s booklet.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tormented

Image
The west coast always struggled to create a creepy atmosphere on screen.  All that southern California sunshine just doesn’t lend itself to ghostly apparitions or gothic castles.  But  Tormented  (1960) gives it a good try, staging its opening scene in an abandoned lighthouse where blackmail turns into murder - and one cover up leads to another.  Director Bert I. Gordon, better known for his giant-sized - but low-budget - monster movies, works well at this level, turning in a film that delivers small scares but perhaps his most  professional finished product. Tom Stewart (played by genre regular Richard Carlson) is a fairly successful jazz pianist whose impending marriage to Meg Hubbard (Susan Gordon) will put him in an entirely new tax bracket.  Trouble is his old flame, Vi (Juli Reding), isn’t taking this lying down.  After  allowing  her to fall to her death in the opening scene, Tom is haunted by disembo...
Read more

All Ladies Do It / Frivolous Lola

Image
Every semi-professional review of erotica probably starts off with the same question:  what’s the difference between porn and art?  The internet age has essentially done away with foreplay; sex is merely the act of completion itself, minus the threat of any malware or suspicious browser activity.  But the work of Italian director Tinto Brass, for all its leering upskirt shots of derrieres and pubic hair, still communicates something that websites like Pornhub never will:  the art of seduction.  All Ladies Do It  (1992), a breezy sexual adventure, follows Diana (Claudia Koll) whose marriage is threatened by her fantasies of dalliances with other men, stories her husband believes are nothing more than exciting role play.  But her loose definition of adultery inspires plenty of promiscuous hook-ups, taking advantage of any (ahem)  loophole  that provides a quick thrill.   Flirting with some hardcore sequences (there...
Read more

The Cat and the Canary

Image
My favorite directors have always been showoffs:  Hitchcock, DePalma, Spielberg (when he’s feeling frisky) and gonzo auteurs like Sam Raimi.  There’s just something about their cinematic ambition, constantly reminding the audience that, yes, there actually  is  someone behind the camera calling the shots.  And that directorial discontent shines through even in the early days of the medium, such as Paul Leni’s 1927 adaptation of  The Cat and the Canary .  While the rest of the industry was still learning the basics of visual language, Leni fills his frame with tracking shots, POVs and dramatic lighting that set the standard for every spook show to come!  Gathered for the reading of the last will and testament of eccentric recluse Cyrus West,  the potential heirs meet up in his decrepit mansion to discover who will inherit the estate and family jewels.  Predictably there is some petty jealousy when young Annab...
Read more