A number of feminist reviews or reviews by oversensitive dykes really dumped on this one for negative portraits of lesbians, whereas fans of psycho killer movies have assessed it as a cult classic available for some years only as a pirated video. After ten years it finally had an above-ground dvd release.

Personally I thought Wanda & Pearle (Nina Angeloff & Lori Scarlett) were cute as the dickens & I was very amused by their psychotic joyfulness. I felt their relationship was if anything more realistic than the typical & more often praised politically correct & unimaginative "romantic comedy" tales of femme baby-dykes having their first sexual encounters. Girlfriends is a refreshing departure from the usual recipe for films about cute young lesbians.

Wanda & Pearle are a happy-go-lucky couple who make a living attracting whoremongers & killing them for whatever cash is in their pockets. When our devoted lovers decide to give up their life of felonious murder & theft to raise a family & become moral upstanding mommies on welfare, their idiotic dream is most endearing. But nuts is nuts & repurcussions of personality & past deeds won't be erased just because it would be nice to change.

Girlfriends is a fine little comedy thriller. Anyone not oversensitive should be charmed by the two central performances. Nina Angeloff, who can also be seen as the drunken redneck girl in Matthew Jason Walsh's similarly whimsical pseudo-feminist Bloodletting (1997), & Lori Scarlett from Mark S. Bosko's notorious Townies (1997), were both given considerable leeway by the director in developing these two characters. Their comic timing is perfect & they did a wonderful job of making twisted oddballs real.

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