"Saturday Night Special": Savage Streets (1984)

 Brenda (Linda Blair), is the vivacious leader of the Satins, a fun-loving group of pretty high school girls. The Satins are in for trouble from the first moment they play a harmless trick on the Scars -- a vicious gang who runs loose on the Hollywood streets. The Scars and their malevolent leader, Jake (Robert Dryer), take their revenge seriously -- first with Brenda's deaf-mute sister Heather (Linnea Quigley), and then her soon-to-be-married best friend. Savage Streets is written by Norman Yonemoto and Danny Steinmann who also is the director. Aside from Robert Dryer and Linnea Quigley most of the acting is pretty bad. Actually Linnea Quigley is the only one in the flick that looks the part, she looks younger than the rest of the actors and actresses who look like young adults, which kinda softens its edge and makes it hard to take some of the stuff seriously.The Scars are a frightening gang of thugs and are the highlight of Savage Streets, Jake (Robert Dryer), Red (Scott Mayer) and Fargo (Sal Landi) obviously embrace their roles and have their own personality traits and they are truly a vicious and repulsive bunch of characters. There is also Vince (Johnny Venocur) who is something of a hang around and wanna be gang member.  The soundtrack, which is very 80s is good! The camerawork and editing is good. The pace is good but the climax as Linda Blair, armed with a crossbow, beartraps and a switchblade, takes on the Scars is a something of a letdown considering the build up to it. It´s violent but there´s only brief gore. There´s gratuitous T & A in this, including several scenes of female full frontal nudity. The rape of Heather (Linnea Quigley) is brutal and  disturbing, it features gratuitous female nudity and to add a bit of sleaze-factor it is also implied that she´s underage which in effect makes it childrape.
This review is based upon the region 1 DVD release from Scorpion Entertainment.
Rating: 6½ out of 7. I enjoyed this, it´s an entertaining vigilante flick depsite some flaws (bad acting, overaged actors/actresses). You get sleaze, violence, gratuitous T & A... what´s not to like?  Check it out if you´re a fan of '80s vigilante movies, Linnea Quigley or Linda Blair.

/JL