The Bronx cats
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The Bronx cats |
| Original title | Switchblade Sisters |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1975 |
| length | 91 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Jack Hill |
| script |
FX Maier Jack Hill John Prizer |
| production |
Jeff Begun Frank Moreno John Prizer |
| music |
Les Baxter Medusa |
| camera | Stephen M. Katz |
| cut | Morton Tubor |
| occupation | |
| |
The Bronx Cats (original title: Switchblade Sisters ) is an American exploitation film directed by Jack Hill from 1975. Robbie Lee , Joanne Nail and Asher Brauner play the leading roles .
action
The Silver Daggers are a youth gang with a girls division, the Dagger Debs , led by Lace (Robbie Lee). The film begins with the Dagger Debs attacking a debt collector with switchblades and stealing money and a revolver. Lace gives the revolver to her friend Dom (Asher Brauner), the boss of the Silver Daggers, whose gang meets at a snack bar. When the Dagger Debs try to drive away the rest of the diners, a fight breaks out between the one-eyed Patch (Monica Gayle) and Maggie (Joanne Nail), who is sitting at a table. After Patch is defeated, the police arrive and arrest the Dagger Debs for robbing the debt collector. Maggie is mistakenly counted and taken away.
In the juvenile prison, the beefy guard Mom Smackley (Kate Murtaugh) sets the tone. She is known to sexually molest the girls . When Maggie defends herself against her attacks, she is mistreated by the guards. But the Dagger Debs protect them and the prison staff is forced not to assault the girls anymore. Maggie is released earlier than the others and has to give Dom a letter from Lace.
Dom reads the letter at Silver Daggers Headquarters, mockingly, whereupon Maggie slaps him on the face. He then follows her home and forces her to have intercourse in her room.
When the Dagger Debs are released from prison, Maggie and Lace are best friends, making Patch jealous and scheming against Maggie . Dom, on the other hand, is concerned about the hostile gang of Crabs (Chase Newhart) about to be accepted into his high school . It is decided that as a test of courage to join the Dagger Debs, Maggie should steal the locket from Crabs. She makes it and gives it to Dom. This is yet another reason for Patch to assert an alleged relationship between Dom and Maggie in front of Lace.
On the first day of Crabs' gang in high school, Dom shows the leader that he now has the locket. Crabs takes revenge by shooting down a Silver Dagger and raping his girlfriend. Meanwhile, Lace tells her boyfriend Dom that she is pregnant and would like to have a baby with him. But he gets angry and throws her money down to abort the child.
To get revenge on Crabs' gang, Maggie devises a plan for the Daggers. She knows that Crabs and his people always meet unarmed at a roller skating rink. The Daggers want to smuggle weapons in there and shoot Crabs' gang down. But the plan fails: Crab's gang is well prepared and returns the Daggers' revolver fire with rifles. Dom is killed and Lace is kicked in the stomach so that she loses the baby. In the hospital, she confesses to Patch that she betrayed the plan to Crabs, but that Maggie was supposed to be killed and not Dom.
While Lace is in the hospital and Dom is dead, both the Dagger Debs and the Silver Daggers are without a leader. The Daggers men are intimidated and no longer want to take action against Crabs' gang. But Maggie humiliates the deputy leader ( Don Stark , later Bob Pinciotti in The Wild Seventies ) at gunpoint , takes command and the girls chase the men away. From now on they call themselves The Jezebels and join forces with a feminist - Maoist Afro-American women gang . Together they decide to destroy the Crabs gang.
When Lace came back from the hospital, her girls had been trained by the women's gang in shooting with M-16 rifles . Maggie hands the gang back to Lace. The women jointly plan to attack Crabs' gang while he is serving food for poor children and distributing drugs to them. All members of Crabs' gang are killed in the shooting, and Crabs is also killed by Patch before he can tell Maggie who betrayed her previous plan.
Back at headquarters, the gang celebrates victory. But Patch urges Lace to get rid of Maggie. They claim that Maggie betrayed them to the Crabs at the time. But the girls don't believe her and a fight ensues between Maggie and Lace, in which Lace is killed. When police storm headquarters and arrest the girls, everyone proudly confesses to being Jezebels and claims they have never seen Patch before.
The film ends with Maggie announcing, before being pushed into the police car, that she and the Jezebels will rule the streets once they get out of prison.
background
The idea of making a film about a girl gang came from filmmaker Frank Moreno, who was inspired by the story of Patty Hearst , which hit the headlines in 1974. The plot of the film is based on Shakespeare's drama Othello with reversed gender roles. Shakespeare adaptations were often "hidden" in Hill's films.
Although director Jack Hill interviewed several girl gang members as he prepared for this film and planned a serious drama, he decided to make a "freaky fantasy film" out of it. The film offers a lot of comedic elements and relaxed sayings. In contrast to other exploitation films, the strip does not show any explicit representations and either fades out violence and sex scenes or shows them from perspective.
The film was shot in twelve days on a budget of $ 320,000. No stuntmen were used. The titles Playgirl Gang and The Jezebels were used during filming , but it was decided to release it under the name Switchblade Sisters , although this name does not appear in the film. Jack Hill justified this with the fact that too few people knew the mythological figure of the Jezebel .
In 1994, Quentin Tarantino's B-movie distribution company Rolling Thunder Pictures, in cooperation with Miramax, released the film on DVD with commentary by Hill and Tarantino.
Reviews
- Lexicon of the international film : "Dilettantisch staged and acted film about a New York schoolgirl gang, whose only" learning goal "is the exercise of violence. A testimony of an inhumane attitude."
- filmbessprechungen.de: "" Switchblade Sisters "is a film by Jack Hill, you don't expect highlights in this respect, but simply damn good entertainment and Hill delivers that again. The film obviously lacks a charismatic leading actress like the 70s -Icon Pam Grier in Hill's most famous works “ Foxy Brown ” and “ Coffy ”, and Joanne Nail never even comes close to the coolness of Grier, but that's the biggest weak point of the film. Otherwise “Switchblade Sisters” makes a lot of cool slogans and a whole lot of action. At the latest when the Silver Daggers disband and the girls take over, the film rocks. Hill proves once again that hardly anyone can stage girl power with cool music as well as he can. "
- Marjorie Baumgarten from the Austin Chronicle: A nice little film, full of all the sensational elements, impromptu production elements and the biting subject matter that make exploitation films the fascinating cultural time capsules and film treasures that they are. "
Web links
- The Bronx-Cats in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The Bronx-Cats at Rotten Tomatoes (English)
- Comparison of the cut versions Unchecked VHS - R-Rated by The Bronx Cats at Schnittberichte.com
Individual evidence
- ↑ culturecourt.com Switchblade Sisters
- ↑ imdb.com Switchblade Sisters - Trivia
- ↑ culturecourt.com Switchblade Sisters
- ↑ Original commentary on the DVD version
- ↑ filmbessprechungen.de Die Bronx-Katzen (Switchblade Sisters) ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ The Bronx Cats. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ filmbessprechungen.de ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ austinchronicle.com
