A 1975 exploitation film directed by Jack Hill.
The Silver Daggers are a gang of young hoods who control an inner-city high school, where they sell drugs and sex to the student body and fight anyone who gets in their way. The Daggers have a ladies' auxiliary, The Dagger Debs, who rumble just as hard as the men, but one day, Chief Dagger Deb Lace meets her match with Maggie, a new kid who won't back down. When a scuffle lands Maggie and the Debs in jail for the night, Maggie comes to Lace's rescue, and Maggie becomes Lace's new right-hand woman. However, fellow Deb Patch is jealous of Maggie's friendship with Lace, and begins spinning a web of deceit to destroy Lace's trust in the new deb. In the midst of the infighting, the Silver Daggers find their turf challenged by a rival gang who pose as a community action team, and the Debs join forces with a revolutionary political group.
Provides examples of:
- Babies Make Everything Better: If Lace had it her way, she'd gladly raise her's and Dominic's child. Dominic squashes this thought and demands she get an abortion, offering to pay for it himself.
- Distaff Counterpart: Dagger Debs (Jezebels) for Silver Daggers.
- Ineffectual Loner: After the initial scuffle in the burger joint, Lace offers Maggie a place in the Dagger Debs, stating that even the toughest girl can only do so much on her own. She's proven right during the Near-Rape Experience in the juvenile detention center, prompting Maggie to accept her offer.
- Just Like Robin Hood: Capitalist gangster Crabs gives free food to the poor while stealing dope on the side.
- Love Letter: Having to wait until she's free from arrest, Lace asks Maggie to deliver a love letter to Dominic. He reads it out loud to his gang, and it is not received well when Maggie sees their reaction.
- Love Triangle: Lace is madly in love with Dominic. Dominic mostly feels neutral about Lace, at one point questioning whether Lace's supposed baby is even his. Thanks to Patch's meddling, Lace suspects that somehow Maggie had derailed their relationship, which isn't far from the truth. Dom at one point rapes Maggie in her apartment.
- Prison Rape: a close call by a lesbian warden in juvenile hall. Lace and the rest of the Dagger Debs bail Maggie out, and Maggie in turn decides to join the Dagger Debs.
- Dominic drops in on Maggie's apartment and forces himself on her, all the while waking up Maggie's skeezy landlord and shouting at him to mind his own business. Dominic gets defensive about raping Maggie, which only invokes a furious reaction from her. Maggie doesn't seem to hold it against him for long, seeing how she seems to want to join the Dagger Debs and impress Dominic in earnest, as well as get to the bottom of his murder after the failed ambush at the roller rink.
- Bunny also gets thrown into a van belonging to Crabs' gang. Bunny is later found in a state of shock.
- Token Evil Teammate: Patch wants to keep Maggie as far away from achieving high rank in the Dagger Debs/ Jezebels as possible, and is more than willing to emotionally manipulate Lace to do it.
- Traitor Shot: The first one is when Maggie is saying "Dominic's dead because somebody tipped Crabs off about the roller rink and I'm gonna find out who"note , watch Patch's face. Another instant is when Maggie, Lace and Patch have a defenseless Crabs cornered, Patch shoots Crabs before he has a chance to squeal.
- We Do Not Know Each Other: At the end of the film The Jezebels deny Patch as one of theirs as they're arrested for the death of Lace. Patch is left alone by the police, with the shame of no longer being a Jezebel.
