Overview
“Thriller – A Cruel Picture” (original Swedish title: Thriller – en grym film) is a 1973 Swedish rape-and-revenge exploitation film.
It tells the story of a young woman, who is forced into heroin addiction and prostitution by a pimp, and revenges the people who abused her.
The direction and screenplay by Bo Arne Vibenius (under the name of Alex Fridolinski).
Produced by Bo Arne Vibenius.
Starring Christina Lindberg and Heinz Hopf.
Cinematography by Andreas Bellis.
Music by Ralph Lundsten.
The production company is BAV Film.
Distributed by Europa Film and Stockholm Film.
The language is Swedish. 107 minutes.
Plot
Frigga (alias name: Madeleine) (Christina Lindberg) is a girl living on her parents’ farm in Sweden. As a child, she is sexually assaulted by an old man and the trauma makes her mute.
15 years later, in 1972, Frigga is kidnapped by a pimp named Tony (Heinz Hopf).
Tony makes Frigga addicted to heroin and forces her to prostitute herself.
Tony blinds Frigga in her left eye by cutting out the eyeball with a scalpel because she refuses to have sex with her first client.
Frigga wears an eyepatch over her left eye. Tony calls her “One Eye”.
As a prostitute, Frigga is forced to be sexually abused by clients on a daily basis.
Another woman who is forced to prostitute herself by Tony, Sally (Solveig Andersson) tells Frigga about her plan to escape from Tony.
Tony sends a hateful fake letter to Frigga’s parents under the name of her. Her parents commit suicide in despair about losing their daughter.
Frigga makes a plan to escape from Tony and to take revenge on Tony and her regular clients who have abused her.
Behind Tony’s back, she saves money, takes lessons in driving, shooting, karate, and martial arts.
One night, she finds Sally’s bed soaked with blood and she discovers that Tony has murdered Sally.
Frigga buys a car and heroin with the money she saved from a trafficker. She steals weapons including a double-barreled shotgun from an armory. She shortens the barrels of the shotgun with a saw.
She shoots three regular clients, who have abused her, to death with a shotgun.
Tony hires two henchmen and orders them to kill Frigga after luring her with heroin.
Two henchmen ambush Frigga at a warehouse on a dock, but Frigga shoots them to death with a shotgun.
Two officers arrive at the warehouse by the police car and try to arrest Frigga, but she beats them off with her martial arts and gets away after stealing the police car.
She flees police and Tony, causing car accidents by her runaway car.
She flees to a fishing village, where she has a shootout with Tony. Tony escapes in a car.
Frigga sends a letter to Tony and challenges him to a duel.
In the wilderness, she sets up a booby trap on a stone wall and waits for Tony.
Tony comes to her, hiding a pistol on his back.
A one-on-one duel between Frigga and Tony begins.
Commentary
After working with Ingmar Bergman as a unit manager on “Persona” (1966) and “Hour of the Wolf” (1968), Vibenius directed his first feature film “Hur Marie träffade Fredrik (How Marie Met Fredrik)” (1969), but it died at the box office. To recover his financial loss, he produced “Thriller – A Cruel Picture” as “the most commercial film ever made”.
The leading actor Christina Lindberg began working as a centerfold model for men’s magazines in the late 1960s. After that she appeared in 26 feature films, including American and Swedish drama film “Maid in Sweden” (1971) and Swedish sexploitation film “Exponerad” (1971). Most of her films were erotica, sexploitation or softcore productions.
This film includes hardcore pornographic sequences. That reflects the trend of hardcore pornography, which was being liberalized in Denmark and Sweden at the time.
The original uncut version (107 minutes) of the film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1973.
In Sweden, the original version was banned by the film censorship board. In 1974, the 82-minute edited version was released in Sweden and the U.S.
This film is characterized by its hardcore pornographic sequences, dismal plot developments, action scenes shot in super slow motion, and the heavy use of sound effects with noisy electronic sounds.
In this film, the leading character Frigga doesn’t speak a line because she is set as a mute.
The highlight of the film is the presence of Lindberg, who played the role of Frigga as a silent revenger with a black eyepatch, a black trench coat, and a sawed-off shotgun.
Though “Thriller” is a low-budget exploitation film, it earned a cult following for its unique atmosphere.
This film is one of the sources of inspiration for the films “Kill Bill: Volume 1” (2003) and “Kill Bill: Volume 2” (2004) directed by Quentin Tarantino.
A villain wearing an eyepatch in “Kill Bill”, Elle Driver (played by Daryl Hannah) is modeled after the leading character of this film.
Tarantino described “Thriller” as “the roughest revenge movie ever made”.
In 2004 and 2005, Synapse Films released the film on DVD.
In 2022, Vinegar Syndrome released the film on 4K UHD and Blu-ray.
