-Grindhouse Fest spotlights the cult gems, sleaze classics, and deranged wonders that defined exploitation cinema’s golden run. Proceed with delight and caution-
Directed by Sande N. Johnsen
Written by Hy Cahl
Starring:
- Diane Conti as Terry
- Joey Naudic as Nino
- John Batis as Johnny Giorgiano
- George Winship as Slates
- Linda Gale as Angel
- Alek Primrose as Bartender
- Sandra Kane as Annie
Rating: 
Teensploitation mutates through the roughies into a scuzzy slab of unfiltered street-level realism set against one of the darkest portraits of NYC ever burned onto film. Like a rough-and-tumble cinéma vérité detour through the pulpy underworld of juvenile delinquent trash, weaving through roughie sleaze in a battered monochrome that gives everything an even harsher metropolitan decay. This Macbeth-inspired Brooklyn gang saga turns teenage delinquency into full-blown exploitation noir, overflowing with rival gangs, drunken biker chaos, switchblade violence, and sweaty street-corner melodrama. Diane Conti’s Terry slithers through the movie like a low-budget Lady Macbeth, a rebellious Manhattan girl with dangerous femme fatale ambitions who manipulates The Rebels from within, setting off a chain of betrayal that leaves destruction in its wake. This is the sort of scuzzy urban exploitation New York specialized in during the mid-’60s, wandering through sleazy back alleys and roach-infested apartments with that ragged guerrilla-filmmaking energy only these movies seemed to possess. Sande N. Johnsen balances random incompetence with flashes of real streetwise craft, resulting in a rough-edged little piece of monochrome Shakespearean trash and one of the juiciest mergers of teen-crime hysteria and roughie sleaze around.
