Thriller: A Cruel Picture

By Freddy Funbuns

www.facebook.com/yallaredead

You don't listen do you asshole

Don't be a punk all your life

Someone's gonna sort you out

They'll try to make a man out of you

~Chrissie Hynde

Bad Boys Get Spanked

Pretenders, album ‘II’ 1981 

Revenge is one of the oldest themes in existence.  It’s painted on the walls of the Pyramids, depicted in the Bible, Qur’an, Mission Impossible, and the basis for the hit album Significant Other by seven-string guitar indie rock pioneers Limp Bizkit.  It’s also the only redeeming theme to horror movies that alleviates fat white people walking out of theaters blubbing, ‘Well the cinematography looked great but I just wish such-and-such got what they were due by so-and-so!”  The Terminal and Spanglish come to mind for contemporary masterpieces that represent this sub-genre. But before you blow your load on Tom Hanks and Adam Sandler’s rape/revenge flicks one of the best and early entries on the Totem Pole of Rape/Revenge flicks is the 1973 Swedish Exploitation-fest Thriller: A Cruel Picture.  

Thriller: A Cruel Picture, like I said before right?!?!,  starts out slow.  I was lit when I watched it last night for the second time since 2007 and, FUCK, IT, DRAGS!  I almost threw my drink at my TV before I realized it’s about a mute girl named Frigga- that’s why there isn’t any dialogue for twenty minutes.  I was all like, ‘what’s with this chick bro?!?!?’  Well it turns out Frigga was raped at a young age and the emotional fallout resulted in her being mute.  I quickly recanted my drunken abuse towards my TV and settled in.  Unfortunately Frigga’s bad luck didn’t end with a John Phillips’ type family dynamic, and on a quiet stroll in the country side Frigga got picked up by the total hunk, aka heroin peddling super pimp, named Tony.  

Tony makes like an octopus and locks his suckers all over his well endowed captive and  gets her hooked on Heroin-I mean naturally why wouldn’t he IDIOT?!?  It wouldn’t seem so bad if he was a music producer looking to market a big boobed European chick wanting to record an album between 1989 and 1994 but unfortunately Tony had ‘drug slave prostitute’ in mind for Frigga instead of Grunge heroin protege.  Frigga gets rung through the unwaxed asshole of European prostitution for a while, not the best and she even gets to dabble with a gal who has boobs as awful looking as the neck of a retired pelican who smoked all of it’s life.  Lucky her!  But, like all red blooded ladies, Frigga eventually gets fed up with this B-Team prostitution shit and starts taking race car lessons, gun clinics, and Martial Arts.  Sure a girl might get peeved after her eye gets cut out with a scalpel, but I think Frigga’s turning point was from repeated butt sex and pelican neck boob sucking. Mental note-wax your assholes people because fuck they look awful! 

So revenge. Right?!?!?!  Word around the pimp circles was the one eyed bitch started killing the shit out of clients.  Spoiler alerts? Nah, this is where I pull out and unload on your stomach.  Thriller: A Cruel Picture  is a great flick.  It does start slow but the mix of brutal violence, rape, and Nordic gusto entertains until the end.  The super duper slow motion scenes, thought out by director Bo Arne Vibenius, when Frigga starts piling bodies up are visual icing on the bloody rape cake and are a great idiosyncrasy setting aside Thriller: A Cruel Picture from other Rape/Revenge flicks like Goonies or 12 Years a Slave. 

There is all sorts of interweb shit all over the place about the production of this movie, it’s impact, and influence in contemporary cinema, so I don’t need to repeat it.  I will say it’s a very entertaining watch. There is enough awful for anyone interested in awful so if y’all get a bug up your ass, or a finger, or a boob, give Thriller: A Cruel Picture a watch. Word of the wise though, DON’T get the They Call Her One Eye version.  It has all of the penetration cut out of it. Wah Wah!