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The Candy Snatchers (1973)

Dir: Guerdon Trueblood

A much loved, but sadly obscure, Grindhouse/Exploitation title comes under scrutiny from yours truly…Is it a lost diamond?

We open with 16 year old Candy Philips (Susan Sennett) strolling home from school in a carefree manner to the bouncy Country strains of the title song that declares "Money is the root of all Happiness".

Little does she know that 3 pairs of sinister eyes are upon her as, via a bizarre shot of them through the van's windshield showing them wearing false joke shop nose/glasses disguises, we are introduced to Jessie (Tiffany Bolling) who is the very sexy brains of the outfit, her Brother Alan (Brad David) and their friend Eddy (Vince Martorano) who plan on kidnapping Candy for a ransom of diamonds from her Jewellery shop manger Father.

Roughly manhandled, gagged, blind-folded and trussed up in the back of their van she is driven to a remote spot and buried in a wooden coffin in the ground, which is covered up with dirt leaving just a metal pipe for Candy to breath through.

Little do the pot smoking trio of low lives know, a young lad named Sean (Christophe, who would seem to be the Director's Son and looks like the infamous Giovanni Frezza from Lucio Fulci's "House by the Cemetery" and who gives a very effective facial/body language performance) is hiding in a nearby hole and witnesses the burial.

Sean promptly decides to play with Candy's air supply by putting his hand over the pipe (bloody kids) before returning home.
He then gives his nasty, shrieking Mother, Audrey (Bonnie Boland) and workaholic Father, Dudley (Jerry Butts) a lot of grief as he unsuccessfully tries to lead them to Candy (it turns out he's mute, something his parents hate and for which he gets beaten by his Mother) as they are rushing to dinner with his Dad's (VERY scary) Boss.

But in a shocking twist it turns out Candy's scumbag 'Daddy dearest' Avery (Ben Piazza) does not want her back! (This twist was actually used to comic affect in the 1958 British comedy "Too Many Crooks" …where the Husband did not want his kidnapped wife back).
And instead of delivering the diamonds to the drop off, as per the kidnappers demand, he takes the afternoon off to screw his mistress and give HER diamonds!

So, as their plan falls apart, the kidnappers dig up Candy and try to figure out what to do as a series of internal conflicts, hidden lusts and a nasty twist about Candy and her Father, set off events that will explode apart the lives of everyone involved…

 

This is Exploitation that uses its plot and characters more than explicit content (though it certainly has its moments) to put across it's grim, sleazy and dark view of life.

The ruthlessness of the kidnappers is driven home from the outset by a piece of dialogue between Alan and Jessie as they watch Candy come out of school…
Alan: "Little Candy Philips…Do we get to ball her"?
Jessie: "We won't have time".
Jessie may be a woman, but her refusal for Alan to rape a schoolgirl is purely down to the practicalities of their schedule!

Eddy later builds a bond with Candy, but he's certainly compliant in her general mistreatment and ultimately does little to help her. And at the back of the viewer's mind is a fear that he may have other motives.
Jessie (a nice ballsy and at the same time vunerable turn by ex-"Playboy" model and popular porn actress Bolling, who delivers a brief topless scene) is as ruthless as any Man when it comes to abusing Candy and seeing her as nothing but an asset.
And it's made explicitly clear in every scene that the most vile of the three, Andy, sees Candy as a piece of meat, only there to be used for his sexual and monetary needs.

The cold and callous attitude of the kidnapper's is in fact echoed in many of the characters. The screenplay by Bryan Gindoff paints an amazingly dour and pessimistic view of Humankind.

The most wicked of the characters has to be Candy's scheming Father, and his brutal disdain for Candy's fate shocks the audience as much as it does the kidnappers. He's at his coldest during a confrontation with a desperate Eddy who is trying to convince him to pay the ransom…
Eddy: "You still don't understand! We are going to kill her".
Father: "I was hoping you'd say that".
This is a total scumbag dear reader. A total…scumbag.
Candy's Mother, is nothing but a disinterested, frustrated lush as well.

Even the secondary characters are grossly unpleasant.
A weird Morgue attendant is open to corrupt mutilation of the bodies in his care if the price is right (Involving a grissly ear cutting sequence) and is shown massaging a corpse's feet, "These are the best people in the World. They don't hurt nobody…they don't make no trouble…they don't tell me what to do…they don't cost no money…they mind their own business. Yes sir, all they do is lie there, and just think about all those people its too late to fuck". Nice.

Dudley's Boss is a cackling bearded bastard who in maniacal fashion laughs in Sean's face as his embarrassed Parents inform him that their Son can't speak.
His Mother is a grotesque 'white trash' creature made up of wild hair, gnashing teeth and scolding shrieks (calling him in for bath time with a cow bell!) and who takes every opportunity to beat and verbally abuse her Son for daring to be a mute. It's a wildly enjoyable Trash performance by Boland.

This heartless attitude that adult characters have towards the children in the film (Candy is meant to be 16, though Sennet is a very youthful looking 28-year-old!) is all encompassing. Both Sean and Candy live in a World that contains a mixture of verbal/ physical abuse, threats and nothing but loveless apathy in-between.

The abuse dished out to Candy (being buried alive, having a knife held to her throat and made to scream for Daddy as they threaten to cut her ear off, to name just two) is genuinely nasty and made all the more shocking by the superb scream filled performance by Susan Sennett., who is without doubt the film's main strength. From hysteria and fear to trying to stay calm as madness erupts around her, she does an excellent job.
This is deeply unpleasant stuff for sure, and although the film certainly delivers the exploitative goods and also entertains in that trashy and most welcome way, the screenplay cleverly paints a very serious picture of kidnappers and their victim and how the events that unfold take their toll on them all.

There's a brief bit of light relief during a sequence where the gang attempts to beat up a big Phone Engineer ("The Hills Have Eyes" James Whitworth!) with less than successful results, but otherwise the small amount of humour is only of the darkest and sickest kind.

And as the cruelty unfolds, and the twists get more wicked, you may think the film can't get any darker and just plain nasty…But you haven't got to the finale yet….

This is Grindhouse at it's most twisted in it's take on life. The explicit exploitation is there, but more so is the less obvious but extremely effective exploitation crafted by a barbed script, acidic dialogue and dark, dark characters.
So thankfully "The Candy Snatchers" is indeed a diamond, but sadly it's almost as elusive as the diamonds in the film as well. So if you can find it (try Ebay) your efforts will most certainly be rewarded.