I was in the mood for some '80s schlock and came upon this title, a rape revenge movie starring Linda Blair. It looked like I had struck gold, but, alas, it was a disappointment. Not a massive one, mind you, but its many awesome elements never gel into anything particularly amusing. Blair plays a teenager who, along with her friends and younger, deaf sister (Linnea Quigley, much more innocent than usual), trashes some punks' car after they mess with them on the street. The punks (led by Robert Dryer, whose neck muscles are so taut they look like could snap at any moment and put an eye out) find the girls at school and retaliate by raping Quigley. The big problem with the film is it's just so basic. Rape revenge plots are pretty common in exploitation cinema, but, really, there's only one good one: Ms. 45. Most of them are boring, because there's just not much going on in them. In Savage Streets, there's way too long a time when Blair and her buddies are sitting around moping about the crime, wondering who did it. When it finally kicks into full throttle, it's fun, but it's all over in a few minutes. Blair's 1980s hairdo is fantastic, and the horribly cheesy rock music is glorious (the song that plays over the credits includes a line about neon rainbows).
Review of Savage Streets
