Thriller: A Cruel Picture (1974) - Bo Arne Vibenius

Swedish rape revenge at its best. I'm starting to worry that this blog is becoming a little too focused on the genre. If you are going to watch this flick, watch it in poorly dubbed English and preferably in the harder-to-find porno cut. Also titled They Call Her One-Eye, this is for the most part on the satisfying side of the rape revenge genre.

Thriller gets going in the classiest of ways: child molestation. Kind of. In a touch of artfulness, the girl is picked up by a grody old old man, who then starts spewing black bile from his grody old mouth. Awesome, right? The poor little girl, Frigga, grows up mute, traumatized, but loved by her simple farming parents who send her to the big city for a special doctor's appointment. Of course, she misses the bus and accepts a ride from a pimp-like dude in a sports car, just driving around the countryside all pimp-like. You know where this is going. After a light dinner and tons of booze, Frigga wakes up the prisoner of The Douchiest Man in Sweden. Now addicted to heroin (natch), young simple Frigga is forced into a life of prostitution, where she is awarded a "fix" for good behaviour. Mmm....total trash!

Thriller gets its points by never backing down. The film is extreme for its time, but this shit stands up 35 years later. Watching Frigga try to escape in vain while her pimp slowly drives behind her until she just passes out is some hard shit. The real cadaver used for the eye gouging. The ridiculously unnecessary hardcore fuck scenes (and accompanying money shot). The gross dude in the tiger underpants. Terrifying. Fuck it, let's have her own parents commit suicide. Scenes of Frigga slowly and silently planning her revenge against not only her pimp but her johns as well build slowly to the end we all know is coming. Her interactions with her instructors offer a welcome break from the black hole that is her life. Action sequences are all slow-mo, I suspect to cover the poor choreography as much as for any stylistic purpose. But it works. This little girl is gonna kill both hired thugs AND cops? In a warehouse fight?! Fucking slo-mo that shit and I will believe it.

The film builds to one of the most satisfying final kills I've ever seen. Frigga isn't blinded by rage, but cold and calculated, exact. It's a bit chilling and so perfect. Thriller is far from a perfect film, however. At times, it's laughably bad. I mean, she gets a day off every week to do whatever she wants? How about gun lessons? Driving lessons? Fucking martial arts lessons? OKAY. And she doesn't bail because of the heroin? Like you can't find that shit elsewhere? Fucking eye patches that match different outfits? I love it, though. I love it all. A million fucking points.

Last House on the Left (1972) – Wes Craven (directorial debut!)

the rape revenge genre, at least in its contemporary manifestation, is, in a word, problematic. generic conventions demand that the rape revenge film simultaneously construct and conflate binaries, titillate as it offends, and – if it is to work as anything more than a pornographic version of a snuff film – balance sexual sensitivities with indelicate sensibilities. it straddles more than fences. and unlike other horror genres (where catharsis is deliberately deferred or withheld), or more mundane or unceremonious representations of sexual violence (which are too often merely incidental or spectacular), the success of the rape revenge film is contingent on payoff. the ends must justify the means.

craven’s first crack at the horror whip seems to work, for the most part. however, watching last house on the left outside the context of the 1970s sexploitation thriller is disconcerting on a somewhat metacinematic level; i don’t know if it translates. the scenes of sexual violence are difficult to watch, but not for the reasons they should be. the actual violence of the rape scene is oddly subdued and detached. the viewer, the characters, and even the victim herself are indifferent to what’s happening, which defamiliarizes both the violence and the sex. i’m more disturbed by sadie, the female accomplice who is obviously aroused by her partner’s sexual violation of another woman despite (inexplicably) having command of the vocabulary of a 1970s second wave feminist, than i am by the violence itself. this is no day of the woman; the revenge is familial rather than gendered.

fortunately, the revenge is as well-executed as it is earned, which solidifies last house on the left’s place in this peculiar canon. the father’s nearly psychotic rage at his daughter’s violation satisfies the audience’s thirst for blood, but it is the other parent who exceeds expectation. any mother with the wherewithal to fellate her daughter’s rapist so as to castrate the sick bastard as agonizingly as possible is a mother whose love knows no bounds. kudos, mrs. collingwood. i kinda wish you were my mom.

Teeth (2007) - Mitchell Lichtenstein

across most cultures, vaginas tend to get a bad rap. they're unclean, obscene, vulgar, venomous, lecherous, and seductive. cautionary tales abound detailing the specific and general perils that await the men who are forever trying to get in and out of them; they're eaten, castrated, or otherwise dismembered and/or killed upon every attempt. "here be dragons," all the anatomical maps read. as such, the vagina dentata mythos doesn't really have a hallowed place in feminist history. castration anxiety, devouring mothers, and the woman scorn'd were not of woman born, but rather shaped by man, who - poor deer, frozen in headlights - found himself paralised at the sight of female genitalia. he stared into the abyss, and it stared back at him. then it bit his fucking head off.

so while not exactly a feminist narrative, teeth reclaims the vagina dentata myth just as the rape revenge genre reappropriates sexual violence ... which is to say that neither quite gets it right, but both do interesting things with what they have. teeth tells the story of a girl whose nightmarish sexual awakening becomes a will to power, and she wields it mercilessly. the Y chromosome's uppence definitely comes - painfully so. and good on 'er! especially since, like most rape revenge films, the most upsetting thing about teeth is that there isn't a decent dude in the entire movie.*

the film also does a really good job of taking the piss out of those holier-than-thou promise-ring douches we hated in highschool cuz we were breaking curfew to have awkward car sex while the sun shone out of their asses. at least most of them are single parents now.

* with the technical exception of her father, but i have reservations about that.

Gutterballs (2008) - Ryan Nicholson

Gutterballs....Gutterballs....I don't know what to say. When we popped the disc in the first thing we saw was a notice that all actors were 18 or over at the time of filming.
"Uh, did we rent porno?"
Turns out we didn't, but instead were watching a horror movie with a porn aesthetic. Poor sound, poor dialogue, and piss poor performances are the stand-out elements on display here.

Opening with a particularly difficult to watch gang rape scene wherein a girl at one point is fucked with a bowling pin, the movie really has nowhere to go but up. The rapists themselves are stereotypical popped-collar variety douches whose dialogue sounds improvised at best. The audience (Me, as daisy literally willed herself into unconsciousness to avoid the rest of the film) is really looking forward to some bowling pin related rape-revenge head smashing, but Gutterballs throws the typical horror formula right out the window and lets the masked madman kill everyone BUT the rapists until the very end, forcing the audience to put up with line after line of forced 'fucks' for most of the 90-minute runtime. If there was even one likable character that I could get behind I could overlook a lot of garbage, but alas, no dice.

As for the positives, I'm sure if the movie didn't have a 15 minute rape scene as its opening I probably would have enjoyed the admittedly inventive kills a lot more. The 69 kill (seriously, and it's fucking awesome), death by bowling pin fellatio, death by ball waxer...the bowling alley is used to its full kill potential and the gore is fantastic. I've never seen a dick cut in half before and I hope I don't have to again for some time.

Gutterballs doesn't shoot any higher than the title suggests, so if you're looking for a mouthful of sleeze n' cheeze, this one's for you.