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Thriller: A Cruel Picture/aka "They call her One Eye" (1974)

Dir: Bo Arne Vibenius

The movie opens with sun dappled woods, a little girl, a kindly old man…It opens in warmth and light, with care-free fun and innocence. And then tears those all away.
The girl is abused, the kindly old man is her abuser and the light and innocence have been snuffed out forever.

Time passes, the girl is now grown up. Her name is Madeleine (Christina Lindberg) and the abuse that tore at her physically has done the same psychologically. She is now mute and distant.
One fateful morning sees Madeleine miss her bus into town and, as she checks the timetable, a car draws up and a man named Tony (Heinz Hopf) offers her a lift.
The lift ends in a cosy dinner for two, drugged wine and, 2 weeks later, in a very different Madeline.
She is now hooked on heroin and forced to prostitute herself for Tony to pay for her habit.
Tony soon learns that Medeline is a fighter after she messily scratches the face of her first client, though she now pays a heavy price. Tony slices away her eye.

As the horrors continue for her and Sally (Solveig Andersson), the other girl she shares her rooms with, Madeleine slowly makes plans
Training herself in martial arts and how to handle guns she bides her time, playing the obedient 'Pirate' (as Tony cruelly dubs her, now she needs to sport an eye-patch) until the time is right for her to take revenge…

This most curious of Swedish 'Exploitation' films has been rarely viewed in it's complete form (it was banned outright in Sweden) and has also suffered the fate of multiple titles.
Edited of it's more extreme content the film played most famously as "They call her One Eye" in the American market. But only now, thanks to 'Synapse' and their new DVD release, does the full film have a chance to dazzle the audience.
But all is not as it may seem and many of that new audience will be as surprised today as the original Grindhouse/flea-pit cinema audience must have been, even in the movie's edited form, all those years ago.

The film most certainly screams out the 70's that's for sure, with Tony's apartment especially being a (delightful) nightmare consisting of orange furniture, wood panelling and a huge white pointy light shade that hangs just a couple of feet from the top of the coffee table. Tony's funky check jacket and flares just add to the hell.
But the décor and fashions are basically the only really dated (though charming) aspect of the movie. Generally this is as sharp and deadly serious as it was 30 years ago.

Vibenius's sedate and serious handling of the film makes it a very different beast indeed from the more conventional revenge flicks that America would give us.
And as director and screenwriter Vibenius not only delivers the expected 'exploitation' and action aspects in a very different way from what an American 'Exploiteer' would do, but also the dramatic set-up of the film as well.
Languid close-ups and extended single angle long shots make up much of the movie's first hour. There is nothing flashy or knowingly clever in the way the film looks or the way dialogue scenes are handled.
This is low budget filming with an almost (an haphazard 'point of view' sequence aside), stage bound feel.
It's a film made to look and feel as natural as possible.

There is genuine lyricism to be found here too, and it's not just because of this subtitled/original language print now made available. For example, the sub-plot involving Madeleine's deserted parents is handled with astute tragi-emotion and such handling really makes the cruelty of the events more hard hitting than if it had been expressed by the more common, overly melodramatic, tragic hyperbole seen in many American revenge flicks.
To be sure, such a 'theatrical' approach can work, and can shock…but there is always a feeling that the tragedy is just another 'entertaining' set-piece. Here, although almost fairytale in it's coincidental unfolding, the tragedy in "Thriller" plays with genuine drama.
It's also a text book example of how to have a long build up to the actual revenge, but cleverly making sure the audience is never left bored and frustrated. Vibenius makes sure that there is always something, be it visual or dramatic, happening to hold the audiences' attention.

35 minutes into the film the most controversial aspect of the original edit comes into play. Hardcore sex.
And it's a shockingly curious addition.
Less than flattering close-ups (including anal sex and a resulting cum shot) make up these scenes of Madeleine with her customers and they have that rough and bodily realistic look common to most 70's porn, and like the rest of the film these scenes are handled in a very naturalistic fashion
After the initial introduction the hardcore is kept to shorter inserts used as an extreme 'passing of time' device as Madeleine services her generally abusive clients, who are all male except for one, horribly skinny, female who likes to slap her around the face.
And although the explicit scenes are obviously inserts (Lindberg's face and the hardcore are never in the same shot) they still work in a dramatic sense, never feeling cheap and out of place.
And the way they are used (especially with the editing in of the bleak music cues) they do become a legitimate part of the story and the way it unfolds. Their removal would certainly change the feel of the first half of the film, and not for the better.
Away from the hardcore, there is a bit of full frontal nudity from Despina Tomazani as the lesbian client (with the smallest breasts ever to pass before the eyes of mortal man) and various topless shots and one full frontal glimpse of Christina Lindberg.

Madeleine's 'training' is, although it's never really explained (a martial arts class aside) where these people come from to train her, essayed in a very naturalistic fashion. Nothing fancy or showy to be seen here and it's also realistically practical with the addition of her having to learn how to handle a car.
The loading/preparing of the weapons is also cold and practical. Again, a million miles away from the flash-bang montage of 'cool' weapon worship and bombastic crowd pleasing (not that there is anything wrong in that) 'preparation for the fight' sequences seen in something like "Commando".

Violence wise the film is pretty tame in the first hour (though the psychological violence dished out is unsettling, as is the gruelling use of an empty, blood soaked bed), aside from the shocking eye destruction. Supposedly permission was got to use a real corpse for this scene, and it makes for a genuinely cringe inducing moment as the, very obviously real, eyeball is punctured by the scalpel and clear ocular fluid spurts out.
Later on we get some messy bullet wounds (though they could have been messier and the blood is a bit weak in colour) that are all shown in extreme slow motion accompanied by distorted sound effects.
And this brings us to the action sequences.
It's something that has divided critics recently with the release of the DVD. Is it all too slow? Should it have been fast and punchy?
Both methods have been shown to work in films over the years, and here the slow projecting of the action does work, but it is a close thing
Even a rare case of 'real time' action is played out to slow and distorted sound effects.
Sometimes the action is so slowed down and emotionally cold that it's a contradiction, because the naturalism of the staging becomes almost surreal as the extreme slow motion unfolds!
This is most certainly not the 'stylised' and operatically emotional slow-motion seen in John Woo's "The Killer", or even Sam Pekinpah's "The Wild Bunch", because the shootouts in "Thriller" are crafted to be chillingly deliberate and not remotely flashy.
At times they even seem to go out of their way not to entertain in any traditional sense of the word.

But this course of action (as it were) fits in with the rest of the bleak and naturalistic film that has gone before it.
Within an American style of 'Revenge' film it would stick out badly and simply seem annoyingly out of place, but here it complements the way the rest of the movie has been presented to the audience.
It seems as if Vibenius sees the revenge as being as cold, rough and unfeeling as the acts that gave birth to it.
A strikingly bloody, but weirdly dreamlike, hand to hand despatching of two Policeman, filmed in the slowest of slow motion and scored only with electronic beeps and whirring, has to be the most unusual sequence in any 'Action' film ever. It will either annoy like hell, or fascinate.
For me, it was a close thing, but fascination just won out.
And it seems just as many new viewers today have been thrown by this handling of the action as surely as some of the original Grindhouse cinema audiences must have been.
Certainly this style of action does not go with a movie called "Hooker's Revenge"; another of the films U.S re-titles!

This is a very European take on the 'Exploitation' movie and the 'Action' film. Dark, seedy, naturalistic and hauntingly deliberate, "Thriller" is as different from "Death Wish" or "Kill Squad" as "Salo" is to "Ilsa She Wolf of the SS".
Even the final act of revenge is handled unlike anything you would have seen before in this type of movie. It's an act of sadism staged like the mournful coverage of a funeral.
Again, it will either work for you or it won't.

Madeleine as a character is also complex. Why she would get in car with Tony? The look on her face and general attitude when he offers her the lift seems to convey to the audience that she knows what will probably happen, at least as far as what an obviously sleazy guy like Tony's basic reasons would be for offering a pretty girl a lift, but seemingly accepts it.
Is this the victim in her? The grudging acceptance after her abuse that she is to be used by men if fate decrees it?
And the film also paints Madeleine as now basically insane and out of control during a very weird sequence involving her handling of a stolen Police car.
There are certainly stormy waters churning under her outwardly calm and resolved exterior.

Performance wise there is nothing that special here away from Christina Lindberg, but Hopf does a suitably sleazy turn as the repugnant Tony and Solveig Andersson essays the haggard Sally with tragic aplomb.
But the striking Ms Lindberg is the real highlight here. She is an outstanding physical presence (especially when decked out in her black clothes with black leather trenchcoat and matching eye-patch) and manages to give Madeleine an emotional core even without any dialogue.
Coldly beautiful and hauntingly stoic in her mute role she conveys the ruthless killer and the tragic victim with equal ease. And the many, almost portrait like, shots of her cradling her sawn-off shotgun are wonderfully provocative.

So what we have in "Thriller" is a intricately crafted, dramatically compelling, most certainly unusual and very European take on the oft told 'Revenge' tale and a film that uses it's sexual and violent content to great effect. Despite the familiar plot it is very much a unique movie and one that should satisfy both the exploitative side of the viewer as well as their artistic needs.
But be warned, chances are the staging of the action scenes will either make or break the film for many.

But to me, this is a definite must-see.

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