Above is a promo poster for the Swedish sexploitation flick Thriller – en grym film. When it was released in the U.S. it was retitled Thriller: A Cruel Picture, then edited and given the revised name They Call Her One Eye, and still later dubbed Hooker’s Revenge, which we think gives a bit too much away. But what do we know? It’s not like we have marketing degrees. Anyway, the poster above for the film’s Thrillerincarnation has an unusual shape sometimes referred to as subway size because such promos were usually displayed on mass transit vehicles. There are other sizes and orientations of promos for this film, and we’ll probably show you a few of those later just for the sake of completeness.
Sweden’s best export Christina Lindberg stars here as a Frigga, a young woman gone mute due to a sexual assault in her youth. Terrible luck strikes again when, as an adult, she’s abducted, addicted to heroin, and forced into prostitution. She resists, but after she harms a customer her pimp punishes her by cutting her eye out with a scalpel. After enduring further indignities she eventually musters the courage to try and escape. Heroin addiction is the leash her pimp counts on to keep her in line, but she’s otherwise free to use her down time as she wishes. With the little money she has she secretly buys lessons in martial arts, shooting, and tactical driving, then when the moment is ripe she finally goes on a revenge spree.
There’s nothing here you won’t find in other 1970s revenge sexploitation flicks except lots of slo-mo, but for Lindberg’s fans—among them Quentin Tarantino, who borrowed the eyepatch look for Daryl Hannah when he made Kill Bill—this is probably a must-see. As a side note, you’ll sometimes find Lindberg referenced as a porn actress because of this movie. BAV Film made two versions, one with x-rated inserts and one without. The explicit stuff was done by a stand-in. Or a lay-in. In an interview Lindberg once said the hardest part of her career was resisting the constant pressure to do porn. We suspect this was a film she had in mind. After premiering in France at the Cannes Film Festival in 1973, Thriller: A Cruel Picture first opened eyes in the U.S. today in 1974.
