A FEW CHIPPIES OFF THE OLD BLOCK FROM EXPLOITATION MOVIE HEYDEY.

Byline: Stephen Holden The New York Times

There's nothing like a vintage exploitation movie to resurrect the fashion eyesores and stale political rhetoric of a bygone era with what in retrospect seems like a vengeful sense of parody. In Jack Hill's 1975 film ``Switchblade Sisters,'' ``Blackboard Jungle'' meets ``Foxy Brown'' meets ``Charlie's Angels'' on the streets of a graffiti-spattered Anycity, U.S.A.

The movie, whose director was in fact responsible for the blaxploitation films ``Foxy Brown'' and ``Coffy,'' was a flop when first released 21 years ago but has become a cult favorite, blessed by Quentin Tarantino. It focuses on the Jezebels, a bunch of knife-wielding teen-age ``chippies'' (to use the language of F.X. Maier's screenplay), who strut, swagger and sneer like Valley girls imitating Humphrey Bogart. Although they occasionally don leather motorcycle caps and boots, most of the time they dress and talk like Sandra Dee's heirs, bickering and squealing in petulant fits of hair-pulling hysteria.

The Jezebels' male counterparts, the Silver Blades, are a group of torpid, flabby leather boys who run drug and prostitution rings in the local high school. Their rivals are a slightly more modish-looking bunch who favor gaudy shirts with floppy shoulder-width collars unbuttoned to the chest to show off their hideously clunky medallions.

The movie's opening scene finds the Jezebels playing teen-age Robin Hood as they surround a bullying bill collector in an elevator, brandish their knives, slice up his clothes and steal his money. Their sisterly solidarity only begins to crack when new-girl-in-the-neighborhood Maggie (Joanne Nail) shows up and catches the eye of the Blades' leader, Dominic (Asher Brauner), who follows her home one night and rapes her.

Dominic happens to be the boyfriend of the Jezebels' leader, Lace (Robbie Lee), who is so besotted that she dispatches Maggie with a gooey love poem that he reads aloud for his buddies' mocking amusement. Although Maggie rather enjoyed being molested, she remains loyal to Lace. But Lace, sensing trouble, allows her icy lieutenant, Patch (Monica Gayle), to stoke her jealousy. And the tensions between Lace and Maggie steadily escalate.

``Switchblade Sisters'' finds plenty of ways to keep the movie afloat until the climactic knife fight between the two. It throws the Jezebels into jail, where they beat up a sadistic lesbian matron. Later on, it puts them smack in the middle of two ludicrous gang wars. The first, set in a roller rink, has the pratfalling comic energy of a ballet improvised on banana peels. In the second, the Jezebels team up with a black female gang of Maoist guerrillas whose Afro-coiffed leader, Muff (Marlene Clark), rumbles through the streets in a crude homemade tank.

To watch ``Switchblade Sisters'' is to visit a never-never land of shopworn media images colliding in a tabloid high school of the mind where chippies and soul sisters gather to ``off the pigs'' and bring power to the people. It is also a place where the only thing that really matters is holding onto your unworthy louse of a boyfriend.

The facts The film: ``Switchblade Sisters'' (R; strong language and violence).

The stars: Robbie Lee, Joanne Nail, Asher Brauner, Monica Gayle and Marlene Clark.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Jack Hill. Written by Hill, John Prizer and F.X. Maier. Edited by Mort Tubor. Music by Les Baxter. Produced by Prizer. Released by Miramax Rolling Thunder.

Running time: One hour, 30 minutes.

Playing: Laemmle Sunset 5 and Monica.

Our rating: Two stars