Thriller: A Cruel Picture (1974)
Review by the Fiend of Grue
Frigga (Christina Lindberg) is a peaceful and carefree little girl until one day she is sexually assaulted at a park; from then on she doesn’t talk again. One day, some years later when she misses the bus to school, a very suave and professional looking man pulls up beside her and says, “Give me one reason why you shouldn’t come to town with me?” Apparently she can’t think of one because soon after that, they are at lunch together. The smooth-talking man is named Tony (Heinz Hopf) who doesn’t care in the least that Frigga doesn’t utter a word during their meal because he has his own warped agenda in mind.
Once they finish lunch, Tony gets the silent Frigga to accompany him back to his luxurious crib. He sits Frigga down and gives her a drink in which is drugged and once she passes out, he calls in his crocked doctor friend to inject her full of heroin. Tony continues to drug Frigga for a few days to make sure she’s addicted and once he thinks he’s succeeded, he lets her wake up. After Tony explains to her that her has been pumping her full of heroin that is “not the stuff you can find on the streets, but it’s the cleanest, strongest stuff you can find” and has her addicted to it, she quickly makes a dash for the door, but Tony punches her out cold and fill her with even more heroin. A few days pass again and when she wakes up Tony explains the situation to her: she is to work for him as a prostitute in exchange for a daily fix of drugs. She can try to get away, but the grip of her newly forced addiction will over come her and make her crawl right back Tony explains, but Frigga is having none of it and tries to escape again and this time succeeds. Tony gets in his slick car and chases her down until she can run no more and takes her back to his home once again.
Without knowing what to do, Frigga becomes complacent with Tony and signs a letter to her own parents that Tony typed up that says she is a grown woman now and has grown tired of the family farm and wants to see the world, so that way no one will be looking for her. She reluctantly signs the letter and very soon after, Tony sends in the first client to be serviced. As the man enters the room and as he gets close to Frigga, she claws at his face, ripping it open and sending the man screaming for the door. Tony is furious and comes in to the room with a knife, traps Frigga on the bed and cuts her eye out in retribution.
For the moment, Tony has broken the will of Frigga and she doesn’t try to escape anymore nor does she try to harm any of the clients, but she obeys his command and services every “John” that he sends in for a payment of dope until she gets word that her parents are so devastated over her leaving that they have lost the will to live. Apparently at this point, she is allowed to come and leave as she pleases since she is terribly addicted because she goes to see her parents, but arrives too late and sees the funeral procession coming from their home. This time…she has had it!
After wrecking her entire life, Frigga is a woman determined to survive, to be reborn, to get revenge! Frigga gets herself trained in a multitude of self defense classes and rises up against Tony and all the other scumbags who have done her wrong. Beware…this bitch is badass!!
Mean, crude, exploitative and nasty is how I would describe this little gem of cinema history. The story of a pimp kidnapping a woman, getting her addicted to drugs for his profit is a very deprived concept to say the least and is meant to be disturbing (like any great X movie should) but it is also an entertaining thrill ride of retribution.
It’s interesting how the character of Frigga transforms from a broken, lost little girl into a strong, determined woman by the end of the movie. Christina Lindberg is not only an absolute beauty to behold, but she’ll kick your ass if you do her wrong, making her all the more lustworthy. What’s most notable is that Christina doesn’t utter a single word in the entire movie and still manages to give a most real and convincing performance. Through facial expressions, body language and her actions, Christina does one hell of a job here and it’s no wonder that this movie is revered as one of the best from it’s time.
The scenes of prostitution in this movie leaves nothing to the imagination…they are XXX rated. In several instances you’ll see hardcore penetration scenes that are straight out of the adult video section at your local porn parlor. Some might argue that it wasn’t necessary for director Bo Arne Vibenius to include these scenes in the movie, but I must say that they seemed to make Frigga’s situation all the more disturbing. And let it also be known that the woman in those hardcore scenes was NOT Christina Lindberg, but were rather insert shots added in by the director later on. Christina was a softcore princess in that era, but never did she partake in any hardcore movies and she still hates the director to this day for doing that to her.
I really liked how the entire mood and feel of the movie changed once Frigga began her training. As the training intensifies so do the sex scenes, all the while capturing a vivid picture of Frigga’s desperation and determination to get out of this situation. Not only that, but the music in the sex scenes also becomes very erratic and nerve-racking, not your standard corny porn fare.
It’s interesting how when Frigga does finally get away from Tony, there is hardly anymore dialogue in the film. For nearly the whole second half of the film, the dialogue is scarce. The remainder of the story is told through images, for the most part, and a great score. It was with great vision that Bo Arne Vibenius was able to tell the second half of the story with very little dialogue between the characters and was also able to make it even more tense and interesting than the first half. It’s also great how he makes it a point to show that Frigga might have gotten away, but perhaps not before all of the things that she has went through made her insane. The prime example of this is when she goes nuts behind the wheel of a stolen police car and begins running innocent people off the road causing them to either crash into ditches or into parked cars that explode into a ball of fire!
There are several memorable characters in this movie which include a woman “John” that looks strangely like a transvestite and gets off on slapping Frigga around. Then there is the man who just likes to snap thousands of photos of Frigga in compromised positions and how I could not mention Tony, the perfect slimeball pimp that you can’t wait to see what’s coming to him.
Not only are some of the characters very memorable but this movie also has quite few scenes that you won’t soon shake, one of which is when Frigga’s eye is gouged out at the hands of Tony with a knife. The scene plays out in a way that will make you cringe as Tony, very slowly, brings the knife towards the camera which is shot from Frigga’s point of view. The knife pierces her eye in one of the craziest and most realistic scenes in a horror movie that you will ever see. It is very much like the eye gouge scene in Lucio Fulci’s Zombie except more realistic. It is rumored that a real corpse was used for the scene and if that is true, I must say I wouldn’t be surprised. Also, the scenes of revenge are shot in slow motion for a heavier impact, some of which are in super slow motion, like the best fight scene of the movie where Frigga kills two police officers trying to arrest her. As she punches them, a thick rope of blood spews from their mouths as they hit the ground…good stuff! The only scene I thought that could have been improved upon was the final showdown at the end of the movie. I don’t want to spoil it for anybody that hasn’t seen it, but I just expected more out of the ending and was left slightly dissatisfied as the movie ended.
Thriller: A Cruel Picture is called one of exploitation’s best films for a reason…this movie flat out rocks. Easily one of the best revenge flicks that I have seen, this movie is the quintessential grindhouse gem that all other are judged by, basically. Filmed in Sweden, Thriller was heavily censored for its theatrical release in 1974 due to having not only explicit violence, but also the hardcore, XXX sex scenes. Stateside, the movie was released as They Call Her One Eye. Synapse films was able to locate the original vault-kept negatives and completely restored and re-released the uncut version of the film under its original title, Thriller, with all of the violence, gore and hardcore sex re-incorporated into the movie making it over 20 minutes longer in running time. It’s easy to see the influence that this movie had on Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill films in which he has said that the character of Elle Driver (played by Daryl Hannah) is a direct take on Christina Lindberg’s performance in this movie.
If you like exploitative, grindhouse era movies with over-acting, bad sound editing and a scratchy picture, then this is a movie you MUST see. This is a great exploitation/revenge flick but I didn’t think this movie was quite as disturbing as say I Spit On Your Grave or Last House On The Left but was rather easier to watch than those films.
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