Mutant Vampire Zombies from the ‘Hood! is a tough act to follow but here goes…..it’s time, boys and girls, for the oh so classic Switchblade Sisters!  It’s hard to decide my favorite thing about this movie.  Is it the fact that a member of a girl gang goes by the name Donut and her only discernible skill is cake decorating?  Or that fact that this girl gang is run by a 12 year old?  Maybe it’s the pure awesomeness of the 1970s having been a post-apocalyptic era (why wasn’t this mentioned in history class?)?  All I know is that I immediately fell in love with Switchblade Sisters.

The baddest 12 year old bad ass you’ll ever find

I’m a fan of girl gang cinema and while they’re mostly fun to watch, this movie is downright hilarious in a straight up must be mocked way.  See, there’s this gang called “The Dagger Debs” (a fearful moniker if ever I did hear one!).  They’re the bad ass sister (wife?) group to “The Silver Daggers” and they fight just as rough of their boys.  So one day a new girl named Maggie arrives in town.  Of course by the end of day one, she’s been arrested along with the Dagger Debs and thrown in juvie where a lecherous female warden tries to make it with her.  Cause that’s how it ALWAYS plays, boys and girls, always.  Anyway, Maggie earns the trust of Lace, the leader of the DD’s and since she gets out before Lace, she’s entrusted with some super important girl gang errands, including taking a note to Lace’s boyfriend who promptly rapes her.

There’s also a one eyed girl named Patch (cause there’s always a one eyed girl) who’s jealous of Lace’s new friend, Maggie.  Uh-oh……Lace eventually gets out of juvie and tells rapist boyfriend that she’s pregnant and he’s all, “Dude, I’m not the dad.  That’s crazy talk, yo.”  Boyfriend’s got enough to worry about with the new deadly rival gang led by a guy named Crabs (hermit crabs?  STD crabs?).  Anyway, from there all hell breaks loose and people die and more people get raped and then there’s the addition of an African-American militant girl gang and then there’s a wicked awesome knife fight and the DD’s get a name change to “The Jezebels” (which I much prefer) and more people die and so on and so forth.

Interesting notes:

Girl gangs in the 70s had full access to automatic weapons and hand grenades.

Guy gangs had fronts for their activities and secretaries to handle their oh so busy nefarious schedules.

Chains are cool, y’all.

A jacket can be used as a weapon.

So sit back, relax and enjoy the hell out of Switchblade Sisters!