Switchblade Sisters

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DarkImbecile
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Switchblade Sisters

#1 Post by DarkImbecile » Fri Jan 29, 2021 2:10 pm

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THE WILDEST GIRL GANG THAT EVER BLASTED THE STREETS!

From Jack Hill, legendary director of Spider Baby, Coffy, Foxy Brown, and The Swinging Cheerleaders comes another iconic cult classic, Switchblade Sisters!

Lace (Robbie Lee), the leader of inner city girl gang The Dagger Debs, meets her match when new girl Maggie (Joanne Nail) moves into the neighbourhood. Mistrust and conflict turn to friendship as the girls end up in Juvenile Detention together at the mercy of abusive guards. Meanwhile, The Dagger Debs’ male counterparts The Silver Daggers have to contend with the arrival of a new gang, led by the villainous Crabs (Chase Newhart). But when the girls get back on the streets, a planned retaliation strike in tandem with The Silver Daggers backfires and puts Lace in hospital. Maggie assumes control, teaming up with Muff (Marlene Clark) and her gang of African-American militants from across town to declare all out war. But there’s a traitor in their midst...

Filled with sharp, clever dialogue and tongue in cheek humour, this Shakespeare-influenced girl gang/women in prison/action movie medley is a stone cold grindhouse classic!

SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS
  • High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation
  • Original uncompressed mono audio
  • Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • Brand new audio commentary by historians/critics Samm Deighan & Kat Ellinger
  • We Are The Jezebels, an archival documentary featuring director Jack Hill, producer John Prizer, casting director Geno Havans, production designer B.B. Neel, stunt coordinator Bob Minor, and stars Joanne Nail, Asher Brauner, and Chase Newhart
  • Gangland: The locations of Switchblade Sisters, an archival documentary in which Jack Hill and filmmaker Elijah Drenner revisit the shooting locations of Switchblade Sisters
  • Jack Hill and Joanne Nail at the Grindhouse Film Festival, a 2007 archival interview with the director and actor
  • Interview with Jack Hill, Robbie Lee, Joanne Nail, an archival 1990’s interview with the director and stars in conversation with Johnny Legend
  • Galleries of behind the scenes stills, international posters, video covers, and lobby cards
  • Theatrical trailers
  • Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by The Twins of Evil
    FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Illustrated collectors' booklet featuring new writing by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and Heather Drain

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Switchblade Sisters

#2 Post by therewillbeblus » Fri Jan 29, 2021 2:16 pm

Not that it's a necessity or perhaps even of interest to the label, but I'm curious if Arrow reaches out to Tarantino about some of these obscure films he has a fondness for. I watched this many years ago because it was listed on his Archives as a favorite, and while I don't exactly remember where I stand on the film's merits as a whole, it was at least interesting and one that I never would have found otherwise. It's possible that he'd charge too much for extras, but it wouldn't surprise me if he'd be generous on that front - as someone who part-wishes he was a critic, who prides himself on being a 'discoverer' and 'influencer' of many of these underseen flicks, and loves to hear himself talk.

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CSM126
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Re: Switchblade Sisters

#3 Post by CSM126 » Fri Jan 29, 2021 2:20 pm

The criterion laserdisc had a commentary track with QT and Jack Hill plus video pieces featuring Tarantino. Wonder if those would be available to license.

beamish14
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Re: Switchblade Sisters

#4 Post by beamish14 » Fri Jan 29, 2021 4:23 pm

Tarantino doesn't merely have a fondness for this film; he distributed a small North American re-release of it under his Rolling Thunder banner (which was really a subsidy of Miramax). Sonatine and Chungking Express received their initial American releases through this company as well

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The Elegant Dandy Fop
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Re: Switchblade Sisters

#5 Post by The Elegant Dandy Fop » Fri Jan 29, 2021 5:03 pm

therewillbeblus wrote:
Fri Jan 29, 2021 2:16 pm
Not that it's a necessity or perhaps even of interest to the label, but I'm curious if Arrow reaches out to Tarantino about some of these obscure films he has a fondness for.
Through a friend, I know Tarantino does buy a lot of Blu-rays, and I've actually have had this suspicious theory about other labels, but not Arrow. I feel like both Kino and Warner Archive will have releases that always align sort of close to New Beverly schedules. Strange theory, but something I've felt.

I love this film and already own the very nice German Blu-ray. Who owns the rights now? With Chungking Express owned by Janus Films, I wonder what happened to the Rolling Thunder catalog? Is it at Paramount now with the other Miramax releases? I'd love to see a release of Detroit 9000.

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JamesF
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Re: Switchblade Sisters

#6 Post by JamesF » Fri Jan 29, 2021 5:56 pm

CSM126 wrote:
Fri Jan 29, 2021 2:20 pm
The criterion laserdisc had a commentary track with QT and Jack Hill plus video pieces featuring Tarantino. Wonder if those would be available to license.
We certainly tried, and the answer is no, they’re not available anymore.

beamish14
Joined: Fri May 18, 2018 3:07 pm

Re: Switchblade Sisters

#7 Post by beamish14 » Fri Jan 29, 2021 5:58 pm

The Elegant Dandy Fop wrote:
Fri Jan 29, 2021 5:03 pm
therewillbeblus wrote:
Fri Jan 29, 2021 2:16 pm
Not that it's a necessity or perhaps even of interest to the label, but I'm curious if Arrow reaches out to Tarantino about some of these obscure films he has a fondness for.
Through a friend, I know Tarantino does buy a lot of Blu-rays, and I've actually have had this suspicious theory about other labels, but not Arrow. I feel like both Kino and Warner Archive will have releases that always align sort of close to New Beverly schedules. Strange theory, but something I've felt.

I love this film and already own the very nice German Blu-ray. Who owns the rights now? With Chungking Express owned by Janus Films, I wonder what happened to the Rolling Thunder catalog? Is it at Paramount now with the other Miramax releases? I'd love to see a release of Detroit 9000.

I remember a comment he made to the effect that he'd rather watch a VHS tape of something than see it via streaming or even Hi Def (I think). Like Martin Scorsese, he personally requests for new prints to be struck and added to his collection, and I've wondered if he's even partially gotten paid for his work with prints of titles.

I don't think you're off with your New Bev theory at all.

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CSM126
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Re: Switchblade Sisters

#8 Post by CSM126 » Sat Jan 30, 2021 5:17 pm

JamesF wrote:
Fri Jan 29, 2021 5:56 pm
CSM126 wrote:
Fri Jan 29, 2021 2:20 pm
The criterion laserdisc had a commentary track with QT and Jack Hill plus video pieces featuring Tarantino. Wonder if those would be available to license.
We certainly tried, and the answer is no, they’re not available anymore.
:(

Too bad, but it’s obvious this will be a very nice package regardless.

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The Fanciful Norwegian
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Re: Switchblade Sisters

#9 Post by The Fanciful Norwegian » Sat Jan 30, 2021 5:37 pm

The Elegant Dandy Fop wrote:
Fri Jan 29, 2021 5:03 pm
I love this film and already own the very nice German Blu-ray. Who owns the rights now? With Chungking Express owned by Janus Films, I wonder what happened to the Rolling Thunder catalog? Is it at Paramount now with the other Miramax releases? I'd love to see a release of Detroit 9000.
All of the Rolling Thunder releases are still listed in the Miramax catalog except for Chungking Express (obviously), Switchblade Sisters, and Mighty Peking Man. Jack Hill and some of the other folks involved in Switchblade Sisters have empty listings on the site, so I suspect Miramax's rights lapsed fairly recently. Rolling Thunder was also involved in the '90s reissue of The Beyond, but that was put out through Grindhouse.

Orlac
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Re: Switchblade Sisters

#10 Post by Orlac » Sat Jan 30, 2021 5:50 pm

beamish14 wrote:
Fri Jan 29, 2021 4:23 pm
Tarantino doesn't merely have a fondness for this film; he distributed a small North American re-release of it under his Rolling Thunder banner (which was really a subsidy of Miramax). Sonatine and Chungking Express received their initial American releases through this company as well
And The Mighty Peking Man!

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dwk
Joined: Sat Jun 12, 2010 6:10 pm

Re: Switchblade Sisters

#11 Post by dwk » Sat Jan 30, 2021 6:57 pm

The Fanciful Norwegian wrote:
Sat Jan 30, 2021 5:37 pm
All of the Rolling Thunder releases are still listed in the Miramax catalog except for Chungking Express (obviously), Switchblade Sisters, and Mighty Peking Man. Jack Hill and some of the other folks involved in Switchblade Sisters have empty listings on the site, so I suspect Miramax's rights lapsed fairly recently. Rolling Thunder was also involved in the '90s reissue of The Beyond, but that was put out through Grindhouse.
On the plus, I noticed that Drunken Master II is no longer listed among Miramax's catalog. I know that late last year WB started streaming it, so maybe that WAC Blu-ray release will happen this year. (And, hopefully the remaining HK titles get free from that cursed catalog soon.)

Also, off topic, but why are are those Woodfall films still up on Miramax's site, Janus has those now?

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zedz
Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 7:24 pm

Re: Switchblade Sisters

#12 Post by zedz » Sun May 16, 2021 4:47 pm

I have very fond memories of this film from a very early date with my future wife, though what was most drilled into our brains was Robbie Lee's extraordinary line deliveries. She says every line in what can probably best be described as a screech delivered through clenched teeth, which leaves zero room for nuance, but adds camp value to even the most boilerplate dialogue ("Get me a soda, Donut!!!").

The film itself is way smarter than it needs to be, with lots of pleasing / amusing / ridiculous ornaments most movies of this ilk wouldn't bother with. It seems to exist in the same kind of hellish Teen Utopia as Massacre at Central High, where the law of the schoolyard has been extrapolated to society at large.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Switchblade Sisters

#13 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Jul 21, 2021 11:13 pm

zedz wrote:
Sun May 16, 2021 4:47 pm
The film itself is way smarter than it needs to be, with lots of pleasing / amusing / ridiculous ornaments most movies of this ilk wouldn't bother with. It seems to exist in the same kind of hellish Teen Utopia as Massacre at Central High, where the law of the schoolyard has been extrapolated to society at large.
That's a good point- these 70s exploitation films often imbue an internal logic of camp, but usually there's a dissonance between the key players and their social environment that indicates inherent discord, hence the conceptualization of pitting trends or populations as outcasts within a larger system via the necessary methodological intervention of exploitation cinema. In Switchblade Sisters though, the idea that some of these people are pariahs is quickly smashed, as Joanne Nail forges a seamless affinity with the gang she decried just moments earlier, and her vehement opposition transforms into unconditional, boundless loyalty within seconds. The 'normal' folks, cops, and prison guards all seem to understand where they stand, or if they don't they are quickly reminded of their subservience.

On some level, everyone is playing a part in the theatrics that occur like clockwork within their world, whether they expect it or continuously forget the expectations in order to drum up excitement before yielding to the assumed power dynamics: The officers apathetically announce that they're just going through the motions again, call the Dagger Debs a gang, get the response "what gang?" and nobody bats an eye as if it's a recycled script; the guards are bested in slapstick mayhem and tap out with a look of, 'Same time next week?'; the assaulted victims want to press charges in a robotic manner just to get the Debs (who approach this situation like business as usual, as a daily checkpoint) to their next task; a teacher questions the authority of a gang-connected student, but the power shifting occurs so rapidly as everyone stands up to signal his disempowerment, that he's clearly just playing a role in the theatre games of these youth who need some light, predictable pushback to allow them to flex their force.

Hell, in a rather unsettling and audacious scene, Nail is raped and the subsequent conversation indicates that, perhaps in this world, she did "ask for it" as the perpetrator/gang leader nonchalantly says. It's expected, for this "law of the schoolyard" has become the ethos of the culture, infecting all facets of socialization via reduction to a simplified caste system and structure of repetitive cause and effect. So as opposed to the endlessly-dissected rape scene in Straw Dogs, this film's subjective worldview reframes any form of aggressive violation as acceptable, and even covetous, if it's an engagement with the right person. Two minutes later, she's in love with him, and a few minutes after that she's engaging in sex acts with strangers to fulfill her mission to win him an amulet; an allegiance that guts her identity and replaces it with a vocational motivation that she didn't have to start the day.

The Warriors would later reclaim this internal logic of gang life as the prime cult film of its kind, but Switchblade Sisters is a more interesting work because it's narratively looser, admits to objectively lower stakes, and thus leaves room for unpredictability in how it's going to spread its diluted predictability for us. Instead of the later film's conviction to lay out a clear path of obstacles for its principals to traverse through their creative milieu, Jack Hill continues to develop the specific dynamics between these principals in his social context under a vague set of rules where Everyone Knows What's Going On regarding codes of conduct. So we become exhilarated not by the rules themselves- or the superficial details of the dystopian atmosphere (for the record, I like The Warriors, and find these attributes to be a great strength of that film by contrast, though significantly a more foreseeable avenue); but we become intoxicated and destabilized by just how deeply ingrained the rules are into the schemas of these characters, and of the extent that they fatalistically manipulate the existential course of everybody, no matter how violated or disconnected they are from the superfluous plot mechanics (which Warriors conversely approaches with the same sincerity its characters do).

Nail's trajectory ascending the ranks isn't dramatized, but presented as the determinist nature of any fellow who encounters the Dagger Debs or Silver Daggers, and opts for inclusive survivalist empowerment rather than to be oppressed to reside as an non-participatory bit part in the margins of their world. The lawlessness erupts into a wonderful third act that disintegrates the organization as a few screws fall out of the revolving wheel, and proves two things: One, that like many dystopian novels, this film has drawn an inverted system of order from our own, keeping its population in check with a sense of security from socially-assigned functions that are easily vacated into pandemonium once a shift occurs in the expectations set by dominant apparatuses; and two, that this monotonous theatrical pattern is unsustainable under a dialectical formula where fallible humans vie for increased power and emotional catharsis as the only meaningful currency to achieve an existential release higher than a purely physiological one of adrenaline rushes.

After we witness so many duplicated interactions pile up in the film's second half, I wonder if this 90-minute slice of narrative isn't the outlier for this habitat but the average breaking point, for how long it can endure its hold over subjects before their submissive complacency wears off under the spell of innate drives for power, control, and expelling of emotional needs. The idea that a different, mercurial kind of Hobbesian anarchy can be a horrifying revelation for such an evidently already-anarchistic, horrifying alternative to our reality subverts the very notion of these dystopian worlds as hells, and banks them in the familiarity of our own philosophical and psychological needs to ground us to some semblance of sanity.

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