You know you’re in for a special kind of cinematic hangover when a Herschell Gordon Lewis rock‑and‑roll exploitation flick includes Colonel Harland Sanders himself wandering through the frame like he took a wrong turn on the way to a franchise meeting. Blast‑Off Girls doesn’t ease you in; it throws a real‑life fast‑food icon into the middle of a sleaze‑rock meltdown and dares you to keep up.
Blast‑Off Girls is pure, uncut sleaze‑rock nonsense—the kind of movie that feels like it was shot behind a bowling alley at 3 p.m. on a Tuesday after everyone involved called in sick to their real jobs. And you love it for that!
With this release, AGFA drags this Herschell Gordon Lewis oddity back into the light, and honestly, it belongs nowhere near the light. This is a film that thrives in the sticky darkness of a dive bar where the floor is permanently tacky, and the band is three chords away from a fistfight. The plot is basically this: a garage band with more enthusiasm than talent gets scooped up by Boojie Baker, a manager so greasy you can practically feel your TV screen getting slick. He promises fame, fortune, and gigs that don’t involve playing next to a vending machine, and of course, the boys fall for it because they’re young, dumb, and wearing matching shirts.
The band members look like they were recruited from the parking lot of a roller rink, and Boojie—played by Ray Sager with the energy of a man who has never once paid taxes—slithers through every scene like a human cautionary tale. The IMDb summary politely calls it a “rock band exploited by a crooked manager,” which is adorable, because what actually happens is a slow‑motion train wreck of bad deals, bad hair, and even worse life choices. Every rehearsal looks like it smells like warm beer. Every gig seems like it pays in coupons. Every character looks like they’ve slept in their clothes for at least two days.
And yet, it’s weirdly charming. The music is legitimately catchy in that “I found this 45 in a thrift store bin and now it’s stuck in my head forever” way. The performances are stiff but earnest, like everyone’s trying really hard not to look directly into the camera. And Herschell Gordon Lewis directs the whole thing with the swagger of a man who knows he’s not making art—he’s making content decades before that word ruined everything. It’s scrappy, sloppy, and absolutely convinced it’s cooler than it is, which honestly makes it cooler.
AGFA’s Blu‑ray treatment gives this trash gem the kind of respect it never got in its lifetime. The transfer is crisp enough to see every wrinkle in Boojie’s polyester nightmare suits, but still grimy enough to feel like you’re watching a bootleg tape someone dubbed in 1989. The audio keeps the GarageBand crunch intact—loud, raw, and slightly off‑key, like a live set where the amps are held together with duct tape and hope. It’s perfect.
As a bonus, fans of Lewis get another feature: The Girl, The Body, and The Pill. This is one of Herschell Gordon Lewis’s most bizarre detours into “social issue” filmmaking—a sex‑ed melodrama disguised as a public service announcement, then wrapped in enough exploitation energy to make PTA meetings burst into flames.
Released in 1967, The Girl, The Body, and The Pill follows a well‑meaning teacher who tries to introduce birth‑control education to her high school, only to trigger a small‑town moral panic that spirals into hypocrisy, voyeurism, and the kind of pearl‑clutching hysteria only mid‑century America could produce. Lewis plays it straight on the surface—earnest lectures, concerned parents—but underneath, the movie is pure drive‑in mischief, loaded with leering cutaways, melodramatic subplots, and the unmistakable sense that everyone involved knew they were making “educational cinema” for an audience that absolutely did not show up to be educated.
As a result, this feature is half cautionary tale, half exploitation hustle, and all awkward sincerity, a time capsule from the moment when the pill was new, the culture was terrified, and Herschell Gordon Lewis was more than happy to stir the pot for the price of a ticket.
If Teenage Gang Debs is the girl‑gang gutter classic you watch when you want to feel dangerous, Blast‑Off Girls is the rock‑and‑roll hangover you put on when you want to feel like you’ve made better life choices than literally everyone on screen. It’s trashy, it’s chaotic, it’s weirdly lovable, and AGFA’s release treats it like the cult artifact it absolutely is.
Includes The Girl, The Body, and the Pill / Limited - 2,000 copies
Home Video Distributor: AGFA
Available on Blu-ray - February 24, 2026
Screen Formats: 1.66:1
Subtitles: English SDH
Video: MPEG-4 AVC; 1080p
Audio: English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0
Discs: Blu-ray Disc; single disc
Region Encoding: Locked to Region A
When a scrappy garage band crosses paths with Boojie Baker, the sleaziest manager this side of a pawn‑shop neon sign, their dreams of rock‑and‑roll glory go up in cigarette smoke. Boojie promises fame, fortune, and gigs that don’t involve playing next to a soda machine—but what the boys actually get is a crash course in exploitation, humiliation, and the kind of showbiz “contracts” that should come with a tetanus shot. Herschell Gordon Lewis turns the amps up on this 1967 rock‑and‑roll misadventure, delivering a world of polyester suits, sticky bar floors, and music‑biz hustlers who’d sell their own mothers for a free drink ticket. The band stumbles from one disaster to the next, guitars in hand, dignity in question, and matching outfits slowly losing the will to live.
AGFA resurrects this sleaze‑rock relic with a restoration that preserves every grimy frame, every off‑key riff, and every bead of flop‑sweat on Boojie’s brow. It’s loud, it’s messy, it’s weirdly lovable—and it’s a perfect time capsule from an era when rock movies were made by people who had never met a successful musician. If you crave low‑budget chaos, garage‑band charm, and the pure joy of watching a crooked manager get exactly what’s coming to him, Blast‑Off Girls is ready to take the stage and blow out your speakers.
Video
The AGFA restoration of Blast‑Off Girls looks exactly like the kind of glow‑up a 1967 sleaze‑rock relic deserves: not a plastic surgery job, but a deep‑tissue scrub that keeps every wrinkle, stain, and questionable lighting choice intact. The transfer preserves the film’s grain like it’s a sacred texture—thick, lively, and absolutely inseparable from the movie’s dive‑bar DNA.
Colors pop in that unmistakable late‑60s way, where reds bloom, blues hum, and every polyester suit radiates a kind of radioactive shame. Shadows stay murky, highlights flare just a little, and the whole thing feels like a lovingly resurrected 16mm time capsule rather than a sanitized museum piece.
AGFA doesn’t try to make the movie look “better” than it ever was; they make it look right—scrappy, sweaty, and alive, like you’re watching a bootleg print projected in the back room of a bar that definitely doesn’t have a liquor license.
Audio
The AGFA Blast‑Off Girls Blu‑ray doesn’t so much “upgrade” the audio as it rescues it from the bottom of a beer‑soaked amp cabinet, wipes off the worst of the grime, and hands it back with a proud little shrug. The DTS‑HD MA mono track keeps every ounce of garage‑band crunch intact—raw guitars, clattering drums, and vocals that sound like they were recorded in a room with one mic and zero acoustic treatment.
Dialogue sits forward and surprisingly clear, but never polished to the point of losing that Herschell Gordon Lewis “we shot this in a basement” charm. There’s a warm analog hiss running under everything, the kind that feels less like a flaw and more like a signature of the era, and AGFA wisely leaves it alone.
No fake bass, no modern sweetening, no attempt to pretend this soundtrack was ever meant to be pristine. Instead, the mix feels alive, scrappy, and perfectly imperfect—like a live set where the amps buzz, the vocals distort, and the whole room vibrates with chaotic energy. It’s the exact kind of audio presentation that makes you grin because it sounds right, not because it sounds “good.”
Supplements:
While short on extras, the commentary is just a plethora of film history talking about everything from Whale to the actors to Pre-Code history and much more. It more than compliments the film well.
Commentary:
- See below
Special Features:
The AGFA Blast‑Off Girls disc comes stacked with the kind of special features that feel like they were dug out of a mislabeled film can in the back of a condemned drive‑in, polished just enough to play. There’s a whole sleaze‑rock ecosystem built around the movie, complete with a full bonus feature film that doubles the chaos (The Girl The Body, and The Pill, plus a grab‑bag of archival shorts, trailers, and deep‑cut ephemera that make the release feel like a midnight‑movie festival crammed onto one disc
- BLAST-OFF GIRLS: Preserved from a 35mm print courtesy of UCLA, as the original negative is decayed
- THE GIRL, THE BODY, AND THE PILL: Preserved from the only known 35mm print, as the original negative is lost
- Commentary by Gentry Austin & Casey Scott of The Sin Syndicate podcast
- Audio interview with actress Nancy Lee Noble
- THE GIRL, THE BODY, AND THE PILL: Alternate opening credits
- Short: A HOT NIGHT AT THE GO-GO LOUNGE, directed by H.G. Lewis
- THE H.G. LEWIS TRAILER VAULT, a 51-minute collection of Lewis trailers from the Something Weird archives
- Photo gallery
- Booklet with essays by Janna Jones & Gentry Austin
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Composite Blu-ray Grade
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MPAA Rating: Not rated.
Runtime: 83 mins
Director: Herschell Gordon Lewis
Writer: Herschell Gordon Lewis
Cast: Dan Conway; Ray Sager; Tom Tyrell
Genre: Comedy | Action
Tagline:
Memorable Movie Quote: "It's What's Happening, Baby!"
Theatrical Distributor: Box Office Spectaculars
Official Site: https://vinegarsyndrome.com/products/blast-off-girls-the-girl-the-body-and-the-pill
Release Date: October 5, 1967
DVD/Blu-ray Release Date: February 24, 2026
Synopsis: A sleazy record promotor tries to make it big with a local Chicago garage band and plans to make them famous while keeping the profits for himself.
