B-Review: Thriller: They Call Her One-Eye
Original Title: Thriller - en grym film
Alternate Title: Hooker's Revenge
Alternate Title: They Call Her One Eye
Alternate Title: Thriller
Alternate Title: Thriller: A Cruel Picture
IMDB rating: 6.5
My rating: 3 stars
Nudity: Medium
Violence: High
Foul Language: Medium
Deliberate Comedy: Low
Accidental Comedy: Medium
Effects: Low
Year: 1974
Before seeing this movie, I thought Sweden only produced porn and dense, non-understandable art films. This movie is kinda both, with a veneer of real B-movie plot.
The story opens with an elderly man apparently playing with his granddaughter or possibly daughter and then suddenly coughing up blood and collapsing, with her screaming and running away. Apparently though, in Sweden this is supposed to represent a rape and not a death for some reason. The little girl is Frigga, who later grows up to be mute from the shock. Quite a daring move to make your movie's main character be completely mute, but sadly unlike "Brother From Another Planet" it doesn't quite work - there were far too many long silent scenes.
Frigga grows up to be a beautiful girl, and is promptly kidnapped by a smooth talking guy in a fast sports car, who gets her hooked on heroin and pimps her out. During an escape attempt he removes one of her eyes with an X-Acto knife, and the POV shot of this was genuinely disturbing. On the whole, though, he seemed a nice pimp. She was able to get her own money somehow, and she had one day off a week to do whatever she wanted, and he provided her with copious amounts of heroin.
After she gets news of her parents' deaths and the death of one of her co-workers, Frigga goes on a series of training sessions to learn kung-fu, guns, and driving. What in an American movie would be a 2-minute montage turned into a 20 minute ultra slow training sequence. She turns into an amazing shot even with only one eye. Eventually (4-5 lessons at least) she learns enough to go on a killing rampage, starting with her customers and ending with her pimp. All action sequences were shot in extreme slow motion, and I do mean extreme. Almost Matrix-esque, except that instead of bullet-trails we get pints of blood spat out of peoples mouths in artistic ways.
The "music" soundtrack was very odd, atonal experimental music, yet another artsy touch. In general I liked this movie, and was going to give it 4 stars, but it just dragged too often. For example, when Frigga was stealing her guns from her gun nut teacher (a big mistake if you ask me), every second of her loading each individual bullet and every second of her sawing her shotgun is shown.
Lesson I learned from this movie: Sweden had touch-tone phones in 1973.
Alternate Title: Hooker's Revenge
Alternate Title: They Call Her One Eye
Alternate Title: Thriller
Alternate Title: Thriller: A Cruel Picture
IMDB rating: 6.5
My rating: 3 stars
Nudity: Medium
Violence: High
Foul Language: Medium
Deliberate Comedy: Low
Accidental Comedy: Medium
Effects: Low
Year: 1974
Before seeing this movie, I thought Sweden only produced porn and dense, non-understandable art films. This movie is kinda both, with a veneer of real B-movie plot.
The story opens with an elderly man apparently playing with his granddaughter or possibly daughter and then suddenly coughing up blood and collapsing, with her screaming and running away. Apparently though, in Sweden this is supposed to represent a rape and not a death for some reason. The little girl is Frigga, who later grows up to be mute from the shock. Quite a daring move to make your movie's main character be completely mute, but sadly unlike "Brother From Another Planet" it doesn't quite work - there were far too many long silent scenes.
Frigga grows up to be a beautiful girl, and is promptly kidnapped by a smooth talking guy in a fast sports car, who gets her hooked on heroin and pimps her out. During an escape attempt he removes one of her eyes with an X-Acto knife, and the POV shot of this was genuinely disturbing. On the whole, though, he seemed a nice pimp. She was able to get her own money somehow, and she had one day off a week to do whatever she wanted, and he provided her with copious amounts of heroin.
After she gets news of her parents' deaths and the death of one of her co-workers, Frigga goes on a series of training sessions to learn kung-fu, guns, and driving. What in an American movie would be a 2-minute montage turned into a 20 minute ultra slow training sequence. She turns into an amazing shot even with only one eye. Eventually (4-5 lessons at least) she learns enough to go on a killing rampage, starting with her customers and ending with her pimp. All action sequences were shot in extreme slow motion, and I do mean extreme. Almost Matrix-esque, except that instead of bullet-trails we get pints of blood spat out of peoples mouths in artistic ways.
The "music" soundtrack was very odd, atonal experimental music, yet another artsy touch. In general I liked this movie, and was going to give it 4 stars, but it just dragged too often. For example, when Frigga was stealing her guns from her gun nut teacher (a big mistake if you ask me), every second of her loading each individual bullet and every second of her sawing her shotgun is shown.
Lesson I learned from this movie: Sweden had touch-tone phones in 1973.