Thriller: A Cruel Picture (1974)

by Steve Habrat

Cruel is indeed one way to describe Thriller: A Cruel Picture, the ultra violent and ultra graphic tale of revenge from Swedish director Bo Arne Vibenius. The tagline of Thriller: A Cruel Picture describes it as, “The movie that has no limits of evil!” I think it is safe to say that the uncut version of the film has no limit on anything including unsettling drug use, slow motion brutality, and pornographic sex scenes that don’t cut away. Truth is, Thriller: A Cruel Picture ranks as one of the best exploitation films I have ever seen, and exploit it certainly does. The film puts the hero Frigga (Played by Christina Lindberg) through the ringer, exploiting the traumatic events that plague her (rape, forced drug use, addiction, prostitution, and revenge) and follow her around. When Frigga, or One Eye as she is often called, finally picks up a sawed off shotgun and begins hunting down all the people who have wronged her, you want to stand up and cheer her retribution on. We feel this way because director Vibenius shoves our faces in the explicit torment inflicted on her early on and even if we deem it obscene, it fuels our urge to root for her in the last forty minutes. Bravo, Vibenius!

Thriller: A Cruel Picture shows us the agony of Frigga (Played by Lindberg), a young girl who early in her life is sexually assaulted by an older man. In the wake of the encounter, Frigga is mute and withdrawn, living a fairly peaceful life in a small, secluded town. She grows up into a pretty young woman and one day, she misses a bus that is supposed to take her to a doctor’s appointment in town. As she stands at the bus stop, a suave pimp named Tony (Played by Heinz Hopf) pulls up and offers her a ride into town. He invites Frigga back to his apartment, drugs her, and then forces her into a life of prostitution and drug addiction. When Frigga resists, Tony stabs out her eyeball and begins calling her One Eye. As the fury builds in the mute One Eye, she begins attending karate classes and learning how to handle firearms. When she is ready, she takes to the streets and unleashes uncontrolled vengeance on the people who have wronged her. She soon finds the police bearing down on her, but that isn’t going to stop One Eye. Anyone dumb enough to get in her way finds themselves staring down the barrel of a sawed off shotgun.

The success of Thriller: A Cruel Picture rests on the shoulders of Lindberg’s Frigga/One Eye, who conveys so much pain without uttering a word. As a girl she is violated, her innocence being robbed and when she grows up, she appears to be living a fairly conservative lifestyle. She is a sweet, small-town girl who is still haunted by the traumatic event in her past. When she meets Tony and is forced into prostitution, her growing pain and frustration is conveyed in the shrill buzz of the film’s score. The buzz is sharp and sudden, usually played during the graphic sex scenes. Her face is slashed with anguish and pain, yet her eyes are cold, plotting, and mapping out her plot to take revenge. One Eye’s silence is all the more chilling when she is dishing out revenge, making her seem disconnected from the violence she is unleashing. But One Eye isn’t satisfied with only taking revenge on those who wronged her. She takes aim at police officers that attempt to halt her rampage and anyone else who makes the mistake of stepping in her path. She becomes the vexing embodiment of desensitization.

Thriller: A Cruel Picture is not for the faint of heart or the uptight. The first half of the film shows some truly disturbing images of drug addiction, Lindberg really shooting up with a mixture of salt and water. Your heart will break every time she holds her hand out to Tony for her daily doses of heroine. You will flinch every time she inserts that dreaded needle into her arm. The uncut version of the film also features authentic sexual intercourse between Frigga and her customers. The camera slithers around the actors, making sure we know that this isn’t faked or staged. If you fear the film is pornographic, take comfort in the fact that these scenes are not particularly erotic. They are actually quite disturbing, especially complimented by the shrill buzzing score that conveys Frigga’s anguish. Early on, there is a scene that shows the viewer how Frigga looses her eye. After she attacks one of her customers, Tony bursts into her room and pins her on her bed. He then slowly lowers a scalpel towards the camera, the camera acting as Frigga’s perspective. The film then cuts to Frigga, the scalpel piercing her eyeball. This scene was filmed using an actual cadaver. Yes, you are really seeing an eyeball being violently dug out of a skull. It’s gruesome stuff. The violence here is not restrained in the least, the last act composed of quiet and lingering slow motion shots of One Eye’s victims meeting the blast from her shotgun.

To say that Thriller: A Cruel Picture is an acquired taste is an understatement. You really have to be someone who likes cult cinema to fully appreciate the film. I think it is unwarranted to write off this film as depraved and tasteless, as I found Thriller: A Cruel Picture to actually be one of the artier offerings of cult cinema. On the DVD box, Quentin Tarantino is quoted as saying Thriller: A Cruel Picture is “the roughest revenge movie ever made” and ended up being one of his influences for Kill Bill, channeling One Eye in Daryl Hannah’s Elle Driver. Worth a look for its artistic approach (chilling POV shots) and handling of its subject matter, many will find themselves lured back to Thriller: A Cruel Picture, eager to experience it all again. It does boast some truly outstanding sequences (the hand-to-hand combat scene in slow motion would drive Matrix fans nuts), addicting the viewer with its raw, undaunted execution (live rounds were supposedly used in the weapons). A classic among sleaze cinema that happily lives up to your expectations, exceeds them, and then aims a shotgun right in your face.

Grade: B+

Thriller: A Cruel Picture is available on DVD in both the regular theatrical edition and the uncut version.

The Green Hornet (2011)

by Steve Habrat

I’ll admit that I was itching to see The Green Hornet the second I heard the buzz (pun intended) about it. I have vague memories of catching the short lived 1966 television series with martial arts legend Bruce Lee as the ass kicking sidekick Kato and Van Williams as the Green Hornet himself Britt Reid. I remember that old theme that still every once and a great while makes its way into pop-culture, whether it is sampled in rap songs or Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill. I remember those masked avengers riding around in their tricked out Black Beauty. In fact, I think I was drawn to it because of the similarities to Batman. They both feature a masked millionaire and his sidekick who has come from nothing. They ride around in cool cars. They fight crime in really cool outfits (Although, if GQ ever did a best-dressed superhero list, I think the Green Hornet and Kato may take it from the Dark Knight and the Boy Wonder.). But mostly, they were vigilantes that operated outside of the law. And it was precisely the anti-hero set up that lured me in. Hell, Val Williams and Bruce Lee even had cameos in the popular Adam West Batman television show. While I’m too young to be overly familiar with where the Green Hornet got his start, which was a radio show from the 1930s, I can still hold on to the hope that the film has had some form of respect for him and stayed true to his origins.

Enter the writing team of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, who also penned the hilarious coming of age story Superbad and whimsical director Michel Gondry, of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Science of Sleep fame. Intrigued yet? You should be. Even if you are unfamiliar with the Green Hornet and Kato, there is still the promise of some truly unique visuals and some stinging humor right? You bet there is, and there is also some bone crunching action, lively car chases, eccentric villains, smoking hot secretaries, really cool cars, and a painfully hilarious cameo from James Franco. Somewhere in there, there’s the plot of playboy Britt Reid (Played by Rogen), the–What else?–slacker son of a newspaper publisher who takes over The Daily Sentinel in the wake of his father’s mysterious death. On the seedier side of town, a murderous villain Chudnofsky (Played by the brilliant Oscar winner Christoph Waltz), who looks like a super villain from the seventies, is slowly trying to control all the crime in gangland Los Angeles. The day after his father’s funeral, Britt wakes up to his morning coffee and to his horror, his coffee is dreadful. Plus, it lacks the elegant and decorative leaf that usually adorns the top. Britt storms through the estate looking for the person who usually makes his morning coffee. That person, he discovers, is Kato (Played by a seriously good Jay Chou), who is also his father’s mechanic. After a night of drunken shenanigans, Britt and Kato decide they are going to become masked vigilantes and take on crime throughout the city. Then the Looney Tunes meets 300 style action kicks into high gear.

By this point, be it from reading what I have described to you or seeing the energetic trailers, you know if this is the type of film for you. If you’re a fan of Rogen’s haw-haw stoner humor or a superhero aficionado, you were probably already in line and have already seen The Green Hornet. If you’re not a fan of either, I can’t really do much to convince you to see it. I suffer from my own fanboy demons, so naturally I jumped at the opportunity to see it opening weekend. Now, I’ll also admit I walked out of the theater with a big grin slapped across my face. The film is cartoonish mayhem at it’s absolute finest. And Gondry can’t resist spicing the film up with his trademark surreal flare. The action scenes are inspired, resembling something out of a video game (Kato hones in on all of the baddies weapons that they are wielding). Rogen never snaps out of his along-for-the-ride shtick and some will find that a hard hurdle to jump over. But it’s Chou’s Kato who’s the real star of the film and even through broken English; you can’t help but love him. Whether he is kicking and punching through countless hoards of Chudnofsky’s henchmen or whipping up countless Black Beauties, Chou is always entrancing. And what about Oscar winner Waltz? Well he seems to be lapping up his new career in Hollywood with demented merriment. I’ll tell you this much about his character, just wait until the climatic showdown. He’ll have you laughing and gripping the edge of your seat. And we can’t forget to mention Cameron Diaz, who seemed to be a last minute addition to make the fanboys drool. She isn’t given much to do but fill Reid and Kato in on some of the criminal activity that is taking place in LA. And how does Rogen fare as a superhero? He pulls it off just fine, even if Chou is the real action star here. Rogen mostly falls back on spewing out silly one-liners and hiding behind Kato. Don’t let that fool you, as Rogen does get his chance to play the hero in a show stopping fight scene at the climax. I’ll confess that it is welcome in a genre that has become dominated by brooding heroes who take themselves a little too seriously. But then again, it’s what we have pushed for isn’t it? Heroes that are more emotionally complex, solemn, and that operate within the world we are familiar with. But The Green Hornet’s main objective is to throw all of that out the window and invite us to just have a campy good time.

Every party has its moments where the fun lags and The Green Hornet does suffer from a few lagging moments. The plot of the film is uneven at points and the more twists that they try to throw into the mix, the more cluttered the plot actually becomes. The film works better when it stays on the straight and narrow path. The entire movie is played up like a psychedelic madcap comedy and trying to give it more depth than it deserves slightly spoils the fun. The opening of the film doesn’t provide much of a back-story to the relationship between Reid and his father. They simply don’t get along and Reid’s father doesn’t understand him. That’s about all we get we are supposed to just accept it. The film is just under the two-hour mark and it leaves us asking why they didn’t go another ten minutes and make their troubled relationship a little bit meatier. And the 3D? It reeks of an afterthought and I will say that it’s the first 3D movie that actually began to bother my eyes.

Through it all, The Green Hornet works because it seems like everyone in it is having a blast. I had as much fun watching it, as I’m sure they did making it.  The fact of the matter is that the Green Hornet is a third string superhero. He always has been and will continue to be. His film does not rank among the best of the superhero genre and I don’t think anyone under the sun expected it to run with Spider-Man 2, The Dark Knight, Kick-Ass, Iron Man, or Watchmen. It also certainly does not rank with the worst of them (I’m referring to you Fantastic Four, Ghost Rider, Punisher and Wolverine!). I went in with high hopes but, due to some of the seething reviews, I had my doubts. I emerged smiling and completely satisfied. Plus, in these early months of the year where Hollywood dumps all of its crap, don’t expect much in the way of solid entertainment anytime soon. The Green Hornet is the best we will get for a while and after sitting through all the serious award contenders, it was utterly refreshing. The Green Hornet is pure fanboy euphoria. Grade: B

The Green Hornet is now available on Blu-ray, 3D Blu-ray, and DVD.