Thriller: A Cruel Picture (1973)

My first review is going to be on a film that has had a lot of controversy surrounding the film itself and the releasing of the film by Synapse in 2004...

In 2004 Synapse released two dvd's of Thriller: A Cruel Picture. One under that very name and another under the name Thriller: They Call Her One Eye which was "cut" by 3 minutes, mostly hardcore inserts that were shot by body doubles. The cut version is the one I'll be reviewing. Possible spoilers follow...

The film is what is known as a rape-revenge flick, and it's one of the better ones. The story is that of a young girl who is playing in a park and is sexually assaulted by an old man. This makes the girl mute due to trauma. By the way, this is all in the first 5 minutes of the film! The film then moves forward 15 years and shows the girl, named Madeleine, now all grown up and played by the very lovely Christina Lindberg and still mute working on a farm. One day she misses the bus to her doctors appointment and is offered a lift by a man called Tony (played by Heinz Kopf). He then proceeds to hook her on to heroin and prostitute her out to a number of "customers". When she violently attacks on of the customers, Tony takes one of her eyes out (this shot supposedly uses a real corpse!). This is where the title gets it's name from and that iconic image comes from. Madeleine eventually starts to learn how to fight, drive and shoot thus setting up the last half of the movie which is all about Madeleine's revenge.

Now, where do I start?

This film is one very bleak flick. As soon as it starts we see a young girl get raped by an old man, this is exploitation at it's most exploitive. Madeleine is basically being abused up until the final half hour or so, but this is what makes the revenge part of the film so satisfying in my opinion. The acts of humiliation and abuse inflicted on Madeleine are far more graphic than the violence, I feel. We see a number of "customers" with Madeleine and each customer has a certain fetish that are carried out on/with her. The worst being in my opinion that of the woman customer. I know this may seem like an odd choice to some, because the others include being hit during sexual intercourse and being photographed in the nude. But I personally feel up until the point where the woman comes in and we get introduced to her fetish and we see what she does to/with Madeleine, the film has been mainly about the evil that men do and the exploitation of women. But as soon as a woman abuser was brought into the mix, I suddenly felt a lot more uneasy.

That's not to say that the other violence featured in the film is not graphic, because it is. Plus, it has the added bonus (or annoyance depending on your patience) of being in slow-motion! Blood packs explode from white clothing and boxes (among other things) explode in glorious, glorious slow-motion. I have to say that I very much enjoyed these scenes. Although a few of the shots I felt had eventually lost it's impact from being perhaps too slow, but all in all I enjoyed the slow-motion.

The film had a very distinctive look to it. It was very dream-like. This was good for me as it allowed me to detach myself from the movie and not be sucked into the bleakness of the film on a whole. I still felt for Christina's character but I wasn't so much effected by the film. I'm not sure if this is good or bad. Some people will watch a film and will want to identify with characters and the happenings featured in the film, but I don't think this film is for people like that. I feel that to be able to enjoy this film you need to switch off your emotions and not get too caught up with Christina's character.

Christina's character is definitely one of the best things about this film. Christina has a certain vulnerability about her and she does look really quite young despite being in her 20's during filming. But on the other hand during the revenge part of the film her face is filled with the same emotion that it is filled with during her abuse. This I feel is important to her character as it shows she is using her hatred and anger to carry out this revenge. This is very important I feel and separates this film from being simply exploitation.

My final thoughts on this film...

Well, this film is very good, but one that is not viewed for pleasure. The subject is one that I feel you need to be very mature minded to take seriously and it's not a film that I feel can be viewed with mates over a drink. It's a serious film, with a serious subject, but one that should be viewed by everyone with a love for exploitation and Christina Lindberg.