Thriller: A Cruel Picture (1973) [Limited Edition]

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Thriller: A Cruel Picture (1973) [Limited Edition]

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Thriller: A Cruel Picture (1973) [Limited Edition]

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Thriller is much like a rhythmic hallucination, where Director Bo Arne Vibenius twists the innocence of all that is expected from childhood life into a hypnotic psychosis of self-abandonment, unrighteous divulgence and pessimistic liberation. The squalor of virginal infatuation and the intermixing of child molestation and pedophiles is enough to turn anyone away. It is a subject matter so delicate that even the safest hands cannot manage to soften the devastation a vision may conceive. These controversial actions that spring from frailty and desperation are unequivocally incomprehensible in the public eye, so much that such a result embodies a crucial ricochet of human self-doubt and withdrawal. This intangible and desolate attitude on life is conveyed from a subdivision of our own inhuman conscious and sexual magnetism that appears to blossom when the frustrations of life’s trials and tribulations become insupportable of our own desires. This is a film not built upon proper etiquette or marketed for neo-evangelical consumerist looking for hokey statements regarding the questioning of ones faith so reminiscent in Meir Zarchi’s Day Of The Woman (1978), instead Thriller is a surrealists dream of creative sovereignty that defies explanation.

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Thriller: A Cruel Picture (1973) [Limited Edition]

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At its core — with its eyes wide open — Thriller exposes the malevolence of an uncovered Pandora’s box while accepting all of the compensatory that satyriasis, brutality, and nihilism has to offer. It isn’t a rarity to feel repulsed when watching Frigga a.k.a. “One Eye” subject herself to the barbarity and harshness by the cold touch of a man probing over her unsullied body with vanity. These acts are purely unwanted and that’s what makes the concept of these scenes work so well. The annotation that these unwilling participants are merely victims to the enhancement of drugs and materialistic manipulation is a statement about society’s abject comprehension and mental imbalance towards synergism, sexism, and temptation. There’s this innocent complexion in Frigga’s congenial quietness that seems to arouse a man’s fantasy, completely out of obsession, while erecting his appetite to please an inner yearning. In Thriller, masculinity is examined as a potent image of authority that overshadows a nauseating hypocrisy. Women are the minority, strung up in lethal dosages of cocaine and self discontentment while forced to exhale in unclenched ecstasy that serves to only distance themselves from a world of rational emotions and genuine feelings.

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Thriller: A Cruel Picture (1973) [Limited Edition]

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Thriller uses women to not only exploit the sexual empowerment of a man, but to glorify the tasteless satisfaction of lust as well. These women are slaves to the world of chaotic sex and drugs, and must wait lifelessly through an unwelcoming sexual advancement, while biting their tongue in hopes that they don’t succumb to the enchantingly seductive vibrations of climatic enjoyment. It is a fantasy that exists within a nightmare, neither pleasuring nor tasteful, but persistently haunting. A reality that eradicates the innocence of our flower, while cultivating an internal abhorrence for those who unjustly took from us what we value and protect the most. Christina Lindberg does a phenomenal job portraying a well-balanced level of incorruptibility. Her character “One Eye” has a captivating presence that’s alluring to the viewer’s senses and has an appealing erotic undertone. She has the ability to convey how she feels through her posture, her shyness and troubling gaze that sometimes, even words themselves could not express more thoroughly. I believe the loss of conviction and dignity that she feels is powerful even throughout her uncomfortable quietness. One might assume it is like staring into a mirror and finding reassurance in the face that greets you, only the outer shell of your appearance often expresses less of a pain than what you are actually feeling on the inside. Here it is the complete opposite. Frigga’s pain is exposed through layers of alienation, until finally being stripped to the nucleus of all that troubles her.

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Thriller: A Cruel Picture (1973) [Limited Edition]

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There’s something captivating about Bo Arne Vibenius’s Thriller, not just the solicited sodomizing, but the motivated assaults and retaliation that seem to float timelessly, as to encircle and commend the justice being sought. One should wonder if retribution is morally virtuous, because in life we question retaliation as though it were unreasonable. Seeking revenge for an act committed against yourself or someone dear to you is hard for me to grasp in that violence is never reacted to with a fulfilling sense of satisfaction, but more something derived out of necessity or anger. Furthermore, I question how easy it is to shed human blood and to take the life of someone without accepting the consequences and the mental recoil of your own actions in a time of complete anguish. It would appear “One Eye” rightfully deserves her revenge, not just because of the explicit violations despicably committed against her body, but because of the malicious actions taken against her family as well. But you have to wonder, how does taking the law into your own hands solve anything? It doesn’t, it only serves to create more problems. We don’t probe over these questions when our minds are fixated on a cold hatred, but even if we did, would we accept them? I don’t believe so.

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Thriller: A Cruel Picture (1973) [Limited Edition]

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As a viewer I suppose you have to, in a sense, escape from the realism of laws and physics and accept the primitive culture that exists within exploitation movies, because in many ways they are our only outlet to discover life beyond this proliferated generation. In Thriller, punishment isn’t just a reaction to something it is a way of life. Self-abuse, trickery, these things go hand in hand, creating for us a fabricated world of our own wishes, unanswered questions and distant second voices that plague a destabilized mind. If your mind is frail, remember it must not falter and it must not waver; for to ignore the brilliance of Thriller; the implied systematically disguised social and vigilante narrative is a fault of the viewer’s own lack of responsiveness and not the film; for if you cannot see beyond the sexism and the anarchism you will never grow to appreciate and understand Thriller. I ask you to pay attention; to absorb the crudeness, the credence of the commentary, and the integrated justifiable redemption like a sponge bathed in water and then and only then shall you see Thriller as it is and shall remain — a compendium decoy of passionate and feverish desires with the utmost logical grace, harboring a message of ethical depravity and sexual contentment that serves to question the addiction of intercourse, societies appeal to drugs, and the worlds constant cynicism towards the human acceptance; our own bodies and each other.

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Thriller: A Cruel Picture (1973) [Limited Edition]

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Thriller is a provocative and an unintentionally enthralling exploitation film that’s emotionally absorbing and physically threatening as well. You have to allow yourself, whether it be consciously or unconsciously, the ability to be immersed by the lyrical impartiality of Thriller’s narrative. As a viewer you have to find the medium that sustains you and change your life accordingly to understand the buried messages in what it is your eyes see. Thriller paints for us a portrait of ambiguity — it is a motif of life’s purity slowly being corrupted by the sins of the world. The motivation behind every depraved gaze and every indirect gesture is a polluted and adulterated correlation of the human conscious’ desire for sex and the eclipsing gluttony cast over all of us. The emphasis couldn’t be placed any more strategically to not understand that perspective. So if you are aware of the boundaries ahead and the obstacles that the mind must not forfeit to, then Thriller will likely be a movie you will grow to appreciate.

HorrorTalk

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Thriller: A Cruel Picture (1973) [Limited Edition]

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A pretty, mute farm girl misses the bus to Stockholm and ends up a one-eyed junkie hooker.

Young Frigga (Christina Lindberg) lives quietly on a farm with her doting parents; she has been mute since a childhood sexual assault. On the fateful day, she misses the bus to the city and catches a ride with Tony (Heinz Hopf), a handsome stranger in a sports car. Tony takes Frigga to dinner at a fancy restaurant then back to his home, where he slips a knockout drug into her drink and begins injecting her with heroin. Soon poor Frigga is hooked and learns the price she must pay to keep the supply of junk flowing: turning tricks for Tony, her new pimp. Her first encounter doesn’t go well and she attacks the john. In a shocking scene, Tony gouges out her eye as punishment (hence the film's original U.S. release title, THEY CALL HER ONE EYE). From that point on Frigga appears to be more docile, suffering through sessions with an abusive lesbian, an aggressive photographer and an overweight, leering middle-aged cretin. In the meantime, Tony has faked a letter from Frigga to her parents, telling them that she wants nothing to do with them. In response they kill themselves. Meanwhile, Frigga's fellow white slave, Sally (Solveig Andersson), tells Frigga she does extra services and keeps the cash, building a nest egg to escape from Tony. Frigga begins doing the same and soon uses the cash to work out an elaborate revenge. Unbeknownst to most of us, white-slave whores apparently get days off, and Frigga makes the most of hers. Using her purloined cash, she learns martial arts, marksmanship, and auto racing. Using her new skills she enacts her revenge on her clients and, in a very creative way, on Tony himself.

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Thriller: A Cruel Picture (1973) [Limited Edition]

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Lindberg is the highlight of the film, giving an expressive, sad performance, though she’s a bit awkward in the action scenes. By the end, with her black eye patch and long black coat, she looks like an avenging angel from a particularly dark-hearted western. Director Bo Arne Vibenius served as assistant director on Ingmar Bergman's PERSONA and THRILLER has the slow pacing one might expect from that association. The scenes of Frigga’s revenge are filmed in super slow motion, to the point of almost being comical. Given the amount of freedom Frigga seems to have, one might wonder why she doesn’t just go to the police at her first chance. But after a lifetime of being brutalized by men one can understand her desire for a more visceral revenge. Not for the fainthearted, or the easily bored, this brutal and depressing film nevertheless is not easily forgotten. [Note: The European release of THRILLER: EN GRYM FILM contained scenes of hardcore pornography, using body doubles for the film’s actors. This version (retitled THRILLER: A CRUEL PICTURE – LIMITED EDITION) as well as the shorter, soft-core US release (now called THRILLER: THEY CALL HER ONE EYE – VENGEANCE EDITION), were both released on DVD by Synapse in 2005.]

TV Guide

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Thriller: A Cruel Picture (1973) [Limited Edition]

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Special Features:

• Alternate Footage:
  – Outtake Reel (1.07)
  – Alternate Harbor Fight (5.23)
  – Movie in Pictures (0.40)
• Still Galleries:
  – In Bed with Christina
  – Behind-the-scenes
  – Advertising & Promotion
  – Deleted Fight Scene
  – Production Photos
• Vibernius Filmography
• Lindberg Filmography
• Trailers:
  – TV Spot
  – Theatrical Trailer
  – Double Feature Trailer
  – "Thriller" Trailer
• DVD Cover, DVD Label, Booklet