Believe the trailer and you'll expect wall-to-wall primo vigilante justice, and while there's a little of that (maybe ten minutes total?) you'd be hard-pressed (or maybe just hard-up, if you know what I mean) to register anything like disappointment at the bounty of alternative pleasures you do receive: Linda Blair playing the toughest teenaged girl in the world (and not pulling it off), a dude wearing a razor blade for an earring (and totally pulling it off), the most gratuitous (and grossly misplaced) nudity in the history of awkward cinematic titties, over-the-top depictions of typical teen shenanigans like grand theft auto, gang rape, and murder-by-crossbowing-an-arrow-into-a-dude's-fucking-dick... The list is endless, and frankly unsatisfactory as an explanation of what makes Savage Streets special - you cannot algebraically backtrack its magic, with one notable exception*, into discrete integers. (That's why it's called "movie magic" and not "movie math.") This "pic" really gets across by following the basic blueprint of the "slice of life" flick - but they happened to cut this particular slice by crossbowing an arrow into a pie of hysterical fantasy. It's so fucking good.

(*John Vernon, as Principal Underwood, telling the scary street punks to "get [their] faggot asses out of here" and "go fuck an iceberg.")