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Released by: Video Entertainment
Released on: N/A
Director: Daniel Steinmann
Cast: Linda Blair, John Vernon, Linea Quigley
Year: 1984
The Movie:
Directed by Danny Steinmann (probably best known for 1985's Friday The 13th Part V: A New Beginning but who hasn't made a motion picture since), Savage Streets is probably best known for Linda Blair's topless bathtub scene and the nasty rape of a young Linnea Quigley as it is anything else but the film is good, trashy fun if you don't take it too seriously.
Blair plays a tough chick named Brenda who takes her mute sister Heather (Linnea Quigley) and a bunch of her gal-pals out on the town only to run into trouble in the form of a bunch of punk-ass thugs lead by Jake (Robert Dryer) when his car gets messed up. Jake and his pals: Vince (Johnny Venocur), Fargo (Sal Landi), and Red (Scott Mayer) decide to pay the girls back in a big, big way. The school principal, Underwood (John Vernon) knows something is up but even he isn't prepared for the brutal rape that's inflicted on poor unsuspecting Heather. Once Brenda gets word of what's happened, she gets the girls together and decides to show those punks that payback really is a bitch as she grabs a crossbow, slaps on a jumpsuit, and goes all Bronson on them...
Blair's great in a role that was originally intended for Cherie Currie (of The Runaways) even if she looks about as tough as a busty chipmunk. She talks the talk and walks the walk and looks completely out of place but that doesn't stop her from throwing herself into the role, even if the role probably didn't deserve that much effort in the first place. She and Quigley, who delivers a surprisingly convincing performance here, actually share some believable and tender moments here and their relationship is completely convincing, if more than a little contrived. The male cast members, John Vernon (who had previously worked with Blair on the equally trashy Chained Heat) not withstanding, just seem to be having fun with their performances as they're hammy menace from beginning to end but their ridiculous faux surf punk outfits and corny dialogue at least them enjoyable enough as fodder for Brenda's anger.
Steinmann wisely keeps the violence and sleaze coming at a pretty quick pace meaning that the quick succession of these scenes ensures that we don't pay as much attention to the clichés and plot holes as we might otherwise. The end result is a fairly trashy work of gritty exploitation featuring, aside from the rape, a couple of good kill scenes, Linda Blair naked in a tub, and a quality girl on girl shower scrap where Blair's white t-shirt leaves very little to the imagination making one wonder if she was hired for her acting ability or her rack.
The corny new wave/rock soundtrack is complimented nicely by a lot of neon and great eighties Los Angeles location shooting make up for a couple of slow spots but by and large what we're left with is near classic American trash filmmaking. It isn't good in a traditional sense but it's certainly enjoyable enough for what it is, and that's basically Blair doing her own sort of new wave Paul Kersey with flared nostrils thing - for some of us, that's enough.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The interlaced fullframe transfer is obviously taken from a tape source and in short, it looks like crap. The dark scenes are so murky that it's next to impossible to tell what's going on in the last twenty minutes of the film. Detail is soft, the colors are all washed out, and there are compression artifacts all over the place (odd since there are no extras on the disc to take up space). This disc looks terrible.
The audio on this disc is presented in Dolby Digital Mono with burned in Dutch subtitles. The audio is a little bit better than the video quality, but not much. There's tape hiss present throughout and the burned in subtitles are irritating.
The only 'extra' is an ugly static menu screen that offers basic scene selection. The cover art is kinda neat though…
The Final Word:
Thankfully BCI's two-disc special edition of Savage Streets renders this garbage disc obsolete.