On the hard streets of, I think, L.A., girl gangs with amazing hair rule the fast food joints in 1975's Switchblade Sisters. The hair and the clothes are part of the film's fetching sense of style but it's the genuinely absorbing tangle of emotions between the large group of characters that make it compulsively watchable.
The star gang is actually called the Dagger Debs and, after they've menaced a repo man in an elevator (on one of the film's many conspicuously cheap sets) we find them cooling their heels at what appears to be a Wienerschnitzel.
It could be the one on Convoy Street in San Diego. At the very least, this film was shot in California.
A new girl, Maggie (Joanne Nail), starts a fight with the gang just before everyone winds up in juvie. Maggie starts to quickly move up in influence in the gang after Dominic (Asher Brauner), the leader of the Debs' associated male gang, the Silver Daggers, rapes her.
The Debs' leader, Lace (Robbie Lee), isn't sure what happened between the two but she starts to feel like a sucker for having trusted Maggie so early on. Another Deb, Patch (Monica Gayle), also has it in for Maggie because Maggie bested her in a fight at the Wienerschnitzel.
The heart of the movie is Lace. No-one here is a genius performer but Robbie Lee as Lace genuinely comes off as someone with a lifetime of emotional scars, the kind that makes it tough for any emotion to get in or out except a steady fury. It wouldn't surprise me to learn if the actress was kind of like that in real life. In any case, it emphasises the tragedy in her complicated feelings for Maggie.
Director Jack Hill does a good job, though, of creating a world where everyone is at least a little messed up. Asher Brauner is electric as a dumb scumbag. Kitty Bruce as a Deb named Doughnut is a good mixture of sad sack and apathy.
The Switchblade Sisters is available on Shudder.
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