Switchblade Sisters (1975) on Netflix
At a high school run by the Silver Daggers and their girl crew, the Dagger Debs, Maggie is arrested after a fight with a repo man. Their leader Lace takes an interest.
- Netflix3.1/5
- IMDb6.5/104,895 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes57%
Trailer
Plot summary
Maggie enrolls at a high school dominated by the Silver Daggers, a male gang that sells drugs and sex at the school and fights anyone in its way, and by the Dagger Debs, the girls who rumble beside them. A scuffle with a repo man lands Maggie and the Debs in juvenile hall, where a warden threatens Maggie and the Debs back her up. Lace, the Debs' leader, takes a liking to the newcomer and, while she serves a sentence there, sends Maggie to bring a note to her boyfriend, Dominic. Lace's closest friend Patch, who lost an eye in the gang's service and sees herself as second in command, resents the attention.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Switchblade Sisters (1975)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The movie was not a success at the box office but gained a cult following, mostly thanks to Quentin Tarantino, who named it a personal favorite and re-released it in 1996 under his Rolling Thunder Pictures label; the DVD carries an audio commentary with him and Hill.
- Jack Hill reportedly interviewed real-life female gang members before filming to give small details an air of authenticity. Playgirl Gang and The Jezebels were considered as titles, but Hill assumed too few people would know what a Jezebel was, and the phrase is never spoken in the film.
- Hill said the film was broadly influenced by William Shakespeare's Othello, and both he and Tarantino liken the character Patch to Iago in the commentary. He credited Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead for inspiring the scene in which a female gang member shrugs off being raped.
- A line from the film became the unofficial slogan of proto-punk band Death Valley Girls: reviewing their album Glow in the Dark in 2016, Consequence of Sound critic Ben Kaye quoted it as "Everybody's gotta be in a gang."
