Review: Jack Hill’s Exploitation Classic Switchblade Sisters on Arrow Blu-ray

Switchblade Sisters is the rare grindhouse joint that fully lives up to its reputation.

Switchblade SistersEconomic instability. Anarcho-political movements. The dismantling of oppressive patriarchal systems. No, it’s not the nascent 2020s in macrocosm. It’s Switchblade Sisters, in which exploitation-style thrills give way to something more profoundly revolutionary.

At the start of Jack Hill’s grindhouse classic, Lace (Robbie Lee) and her crew of underage hell-raisers, the Dagger Debs, rough up a debt collector who’s just separated Lace’s mother from the $40 dollars she had squirreled away to feed her family for the month. With cash in hand, the Debs head to a local burger joint to meet up with Lace’s boyfriend, Dominic (Asher Brauner), the head palooka of the Silver Daggers, the Deb’s all-male counterparts. There, they run into Maggie (Joanne Nail), a scrappy loner who, along with the rest of the Debs, wind up in juvie after a scrape. Maggie, being fresh meat, attracts the unwanted attention of the lecherous warden (Kate Murtagh), and when Lace and the other girls jump to her defense, Maggie becomes an unofficial member of the gang. Back on the streets, Maggie quickly proves her worth, but jealousy, fed by Lace’s right-hand woman, Patch (Monica Gayle) threatens to tear the Debs apart.

Though initially a bomb at the box office, Switchblade Sisters has endured, not just because of Quentin Tarantino’s well-documented affinity for it (he re-released it in 1996 under his short-lived Rolling Thunder Pictures label), but also for its timely—and timeless—dramatic and political resonance. The film’s primary cultural touchstone is Shakespeare’s Othello, which F.X. Maier’s screenplay cleverly evokes with its evergreen focus on intergroup power struggles. Lace, Maggie, and the rest of the girls occupy a post-Vietnam Nixonian hellscape of virulent misogyny and sexual assault, where the streets are liberally strewn with filth, the cops are apathetic, and neutered authority figures stoop to curry favor with Dominic and his cronies. In the film’s most telling sequence, a rival gang leader, Crabs (Chase Newhart), oversees the local Youth Reclamation Corps, where he drafts letters for extra cash to fund his Operation Bootstrap programs while pushing dope on kids and accepting sexual favors. An “America the Beautiful” needle drop has never sounded quite so pointed.

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But it’s in the homestretch where the film’s radical freak flag reaches full mast. After a masterfully shot showdown inside a roller rink leaves the Silver Daggers in shambles, Maggie takes it upon herself to chart a new horizon for the Debs. Rechristening themselves the Jezebels and seeking the assistance of a gang of black Maoist feminist revolutionaries (whose leader is played by Marlene Clark of Ganja & Hess), the women launch an all-out assault against the oppressive patriarchal structures that keep them down and reconstitute themselves as a band of female warriors unbound to their male counterparts. It’s a thunderous rallying cry of a finale that elevates Switchblade Sisters from well-crafted but simplistic exploitation fare to something far more complex and radical—reaching out across the decades to press a still-glinting knife against the viewer’s throat.

Image/Sound

Most of the noticeable print damage is contained to the opening credits sequence in Arrow Video’s high-def presentation of the film, after which the instances of defects or wide variances in clarity are few and far between. Switchblade Sisters hasn’t received a full restoration, but the upgrade ensures that we get a far sharper and cleaner picture than the one on the 2000 DVD release by Miramax’s Rolling Thunder imprint. Given the film’s low-budget origins, the mono track is no warhorse, though the dialogue is consistently clear and the presentation brings commanding weight to the funk-heavy score by Medusa and Les Baxter.

Extras

Those who own the 2000 DVD edition are sure to rue the absence of the commentary track by Jack Hill and Quentin Tarantino, but Arrow has assembled more than enough (mostly archival) goodies to make fans happy. First among these is a brand-new audio commentary with historians/critics Samm Deighan and Kat Ellinger, who ably show why they’re regarded as experts on horror and grindhouse cinema. Also included here are two archival documentaries—We Are the Jezebels, in which Hill and other crew members look back at the film’s production, and Gangland: The Locations of Switchblade Sisters, in which Hill and filmmaker Elijah Drenner revisit the shooting locations—as well as interviews, galleries, and theatrical trailers. Rounding out the package is a booklet featuring writing by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and Heather Drain that fascinatingly grapples with the film’s more “problematic” elements. The disc comes with a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by the Twins of Evil (a collaboration between graphic designers Luke Insect and Kenn Goodall), whose psychedelic renderings have now graced the covers of more than a few Arrow releases of films, such as Toys Are Not for Children, with a little something extra on the brain.

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Overall

As sharply incisive as it is entertaining, Jack Hill’s Switchblade Sisters is the rare grindhouse joint that fully lives up to its reputation.

Score: 
 Cast: Robbie Lee, Joanne Nail, Monica Gayle, Asher Brauner, Chase Newhart, Marlene Clark, Kitty Bruce, Janice Karman, Don Stark  Director: Jack Hill  Screenwriter: F.X. Maier  Distributor: Arrow Video  Running Time: 91 min  Rating: R  Year: 1975  Release Date: April 27, 2021  Buy: Video

Rocco T. Thompson

Rocco is a freelance writer on film, and an Associate Producer for CreatorVC’s In Search of Darkness series.

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