In 1998, Miramax swept one of its finest films under the rug, plopping it in theaters like an unwanted runny egg with no promotion, then shuffling it off to home video. Director Sarah Kernochan, who was one of the co-directors of Marjoe among many other accolades, has laid the blame for this at the feet of none other than infamous sex pest Harvey Weinstein. It appears that, although he promised her distribution to at least 2000 screens, Weinstein recanted when Kernochan refused to hand over editorial control so that he could turn the film into something less like The Trouble with Angels-meets-The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys and more like a distaff Porky’s, with a broader appeal to a more mainstream (read: male) audience. As a result, a true classic has largely fallen through the cracks, not helped by the fact that it’s had three different titles: the original The Hairy Bird (which was rejected as it’s a slang reference to a phallus), then the generically nondescript All I Wanna Do for release in some regions, and the spoilery title Strike! in others. It’s out there, though, and if you can find it, it’s worth digging into. 

It’s 1963, and Odette “Odie” Sinclair (Gaby Hoffman) has been packed off to board at Miss Godard’s Preparatory School for Girls following her mother’s discovery of her diaphragm, to get her as far away from her boyfriend, Dennis (Matt Lawrence), as possible. Upon arrival, she is given a tour of the place by Abby Sawyer (Rachel Leigh Cook), an uptight legacy student who’s parlayed that status into a student leader position that allows her to act as militaristic hall monitor of other students. Odie is placed into a room with Verena von Stefan (Kirsten Dunst) and Tinka Parker (Monica Keena), the school’s foremost shit-stirrers who mockingly insert vulgarities into the school song as the students sing before dinner, smoke cigarettes on the school grounds, and (accurately) call Abby a fascist to her face. They induct Odie into their group, which also includes bulimic aspiring psychologist Tweety Goldberg (Heather Matarazzo) and science-inclined Maureen Haines (Merritt Weaver), and show her their secret hideout in a disused attic room that is accessible only through the ceiling of a linen closet. This secret clubhouse also allows them access to the school kitchen and its many canned goods, leading them to dub themselves the Daughters of the American Ravioli. Each is ambitious in her own way, declaring their intention to reject society’s intention to turn them into cookie-cutter wives and mothers with the motto “No more white gloves.” 

The first half of the film is largely made up of your standard mid-century boarding school hijinx. The girls sneak around and smoke, talk about their hopes and dreams, attempt to get a lecherous teacher fired through an elaborate hoax that involves a fake care package, and learn from each other. One of the major elevating factors in the movie is the presence of Lynn Redgrave in the role of headmistress Miss McVane. She’s amazing and powerful here as a stern but insightful and warm mentor figure who doles out advice to Odie when the girl first has friction with her roommates and peers. “Don’t reject them,” McVane tells her. “They’re not ‘just girls.’ They’re you. If you get to know them, you’ll be discovering yourself.” She’s right, too, and it’s amazing to watch just how much these characters bond, quickly but profoundly, with the distraction of boys completely removed from the equation, even if they’re never far from the girls’ minds (especially not Odie’s). The girls hatch a plan to get her off campus to one of their houses for a weekend so that she and Dennis can see each other, but when this plan is ruined, Odie ends up confined to campus for the remainder of the year. Discussion is made of finding a way to get Dennis on campus and into the attic room so that Odie can meet him there, but everything changes when Tweety overhears that the school is in such dire financial straits that the board is forcing the school to merge with nearby boys’ school St. Ambrose Academy. 

The girls’ fellowship is broken over different reactions to the news. Verena is incensed at the idea of losing what little space there is in the world that isn’t overrun by men and delivers a rampaging speech about how being forced to start worrying about primping and preening instead of studying and learning will have a net negative effect on all of them, and Maureen is distraught about how applying to MIT as one of eight students from St. Ambrose instead of as the only applicant from Miss Godard’s will dilute her chances of matriculating there, even before getting into how being absorbed by a school with a more middling academic reputation will bring down the perception of her education. The other girls, in particular the boy-crazy Tinka, are more excited by the prospect of going co-ed and the resultant opportunities for sexual gratification. Tensions run high following this schism, and they come to a head when a busload of St. Ambrose students arrive at Miss Godard’s for an introductory dance and choir concert. Verena and Maureen have a plan to make the students of St. Ambrose look bad, and the other girls realize Verena may be right when Tweety is taken advantage of by a boy who tricks her into exposing herself for a photograph. This puts Tinka on the warpath, and soon all of the girls are united in their effort to do anything they can to prevent the schools from merging. 

The resultant payoff to these plans is exactly the kind of thing that would, in any other movie, act as the climax of the film and save the school, but it’s not so simple. Although they are able to frame and/or expose (depending on the nature of the boy in question) the students of St. Ambrose as drunks and creeps, everything is covered up by the boards of both schools. Verena is expelled for her role in the plan, leading to the conversation in which she and the audience learn that she failed and that the school(s) will be going forward with co-education. As McVane explains it, it’s not “the first time women have had to marry for money,” delivering a wonderful speech about how the alumni have forsaken the school because they don’t see the use in investing in the futures of other women. “The men give generously to their schools. It’s a solid investment. They are ensuring that a steady supply of the nation’s leaders will be men.” She extols Verena, in a final impassioned plea to keep the faith: “After the men plant their flag in this school, they’ll bury us. It will be subtle and insidious, as in real life. Now, I may be at the end of the road here, but you’re young, you have the talent and power to lead; don’t stop the fight.” It may seem like it’s sitting there limply on the page, but this is powerful stuff in Redgrave’s hands, and she milks it for everything that it’s worth, and it is glorious.

The young cast is great as well. In addition to the above-mentioned students at Miss Godard’s, there’s a recurring character named Snake (Vincent Kartheiser) who leads a gang of local beatniks who are all named after common roadkill animals, and the St. Ambrose boy that Verena attempts to frame is played by Vincent Kartheiser, best known as Smalls from The Sandlot. Other boys from the academy include a pre-Animorphs Shawn Ashmore, a pre-Star Wars Hayden Christensen, and Robin Dunne, who you’re bound to recognize from something (and who has been in no fewer than nine movies with “Christmas” in the title). One of Snake’s hoodlums is also Zachary Bennett, the future star of Cube Zero, which may be of interest to longtime Swampflix fans. This is a stacked cast, and it’s a shame that dick-wagging has pushed it out of the public eye for so long. There’s not a bad performance in the bunch. It’s telling that, for all the clout that he amassed during his reign of terror, Weinstein couldn’t see what was so special about this movie and what quintessential magic that the film has would have been lost if he had gotten his way; he wanted to “sex up” the narrative, not realizing that this movie already is sexual, it simply handles its topic with great care. This is a movie about a group of young women who are fully in control of their sexuality. They’re not “desexualized,” but they don’t exist for the male gaze at all, and that’s likely why no one had any faith in it. Regardless, this is an undisputed classic in my opinion, and deserves to be tracked down. 

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond