Thriller: A Cruel Picture (En Grym Film) is one of the most notorious exploitation films ever made. It was directed by Bo Arne Vibenius in Sweden in 1973, and banned by the Swedish censors. (The film contains hardcore scenes, filmed with body doubles, and some graphic violence.) It was dubbed and heavily censored for its American release, retitled They Call Her One Eye.
The hard-core shots were restored by Synapse for a DVD release in 2004, which was also issued on blu-ray in 2022. The Synapse print was almost uncut, though it was missing a one-minute softcore sex scene featuring the film’s star, Christina Lindberg. That sequence was finally included in a fully uncut restoration by Vinegar Syndrome, released on 4k and blu-ray later in 2022.
One of the main reasons for the film’s notoriety is a brief close-up shot of a scalpel blade being inserted into the lead character’s left eyeball. (For the remainder of the film, she wears an eye patch, as does Daryl Hannah’s character in Quentin Tarantino’s later Kill Bill. In fact, Thriller is a highly influential film, setting the template for the so-called ‘rape-revenge’ subgenre: films — like I Spit on Your Grave — in which women are assaulted and kill their attackers.)
A long-standing rumour has it that no prosthetics or other special effects were required for the eyeball sequence. In Thriller: A Cruel Documentary (a bonus feature from Vinegar Syndrome), Lindberg says that the dead body of a woman who committed suicide was utilised for the shot, with the scalpel wielded by a doctor at a hospital morgue.
Is the rumour true? It’s hard to be sure. Vibenius has never discussed it, and Lindberg bases her claim on second-hand information from someone (unnamed) who was apparently present during the filming. The Synapse and Vinegar Synrome releases include an outtake of the scene as a bonus feature, showing the scalpel being withdrawn from the eyeball, though the framing remains a tight close-up, so it’s impossible to see anything else in the shot.
It looks realistic to me, but of course I have no medical training. For his book Nordsploitation, Tommy Gustafsson consulted a doctor to verify the rumour. The GP couldn’t give a definitive answer, either, though he “leaned towards it being fake”. Luis Buñuel achieved a similar — and even more shocking — effect in his surrealist classic Un chien andalou (‘an Andalusian dog’) in 1929, by cutting a dead cow’s eye with a razor blade.
The hard-core shots were restored by Synapse for a DVD release in 2004, which was also issued on blu-ray in 2022. The Synapse print was almost uncut, though it was missing a one-minute softcore sex scene featuring the film’s star, Christina Lindberg. That sequence was finally included in a fully uncut restoration by Vinegar Syndrome, released on 4k and blu-ray later in 2022.
One of the main reasons for the film’s notoriety is a brief close-up shot of a scalpel blade being inserted into the lead character’s left eyeball. (For the remainder of the film, she wears an eye patch, as does Daryl Hannah’s character in Quentin Tarantino’s later Kill Bill. In fact, Thriller is a highly influential film, setting the template for the so-called ‘rape-revenge’ subgenre: films — like I Spit on Your Grave — in which women are assaulted and kill their attackers.)
A long-standing rumour has it that no prosthetics or other special effects were required for the eyeball sequence. In Thriller: A Cruel Documentary (a bonus feature from Vinegar Syndrome), Lindberg says that the dead body of a woman who committed suicide was utilised for the shot, with the scalpel wielded by a doctor at a hospital morgue.
Is the rumour true? It’s hard to be sure. Vibenius has never discussed it, and Lindberg bases her claim on second-hand information from someone (unnamed) who was apparently present during the filming. The Synapse and Vinegar Synrome releases include an outtake of the scene as a bonus feature, showing the scalpel being withdrawn from the eyeball, though the framing remains a tight close-up, so it’s impossible to see anything else in the shot.
It looks realistic to me, but of course I have no medical training. For his book Nordsploitation, Tommy Gustafsson consulted a doctor to verify the rumour. The GP couldn’t give a definitive answer, either, though he “leaned towards it being fake”. Luis Buñuel achieved a similar — and even more shocking — effect in his surrealist classic Un chien andalou (‘an Andalusian dog’) in 1929, by cutting a dead cow’s eye with a razor blade.
