Thriller: A Cruel Picture

Year: 1974

Grade: C-

Country: Sweden

Director: Vibenius

Review

one of the few swedish pictures to actually be banned in that country, and that’s about all this film has going for it. i don’t know what it was about the 70s that caused these sorts of films to be made…i spit on your grave, last house on the left, thriller, etc. all female revenge films that are known more for their shock value than anything else. this one is more explicit than those other ones i listed, but that doesn’t make it any more effective. one of the more memorable moments was seeing the scalpel pierce a woman’s eye…reminiscent of un chien andalou or zombi, but better than either because the filmmakers actually used a real corpse to get the full effect. the revenge rampage portion of the film fell really short and the artistic merits of this picture didn’t approach that of last house on the left. the pimp character constantly appears at a desk in front of a typewriter which got me thinking about the film on another level – the pimp as the author and what ramifications that might have for the rest of the film. i couldn’t really get it to work out symbolically and i don’t think the correlation was really made, but i did give the film the benefit of the doubt…for a while. not really worth your time unless you’re really into this stuff. if you’re at all curious be fore-warned – it’s extremely explicit.