First, a personal Detour:

When i was in my very early teens in the 1970's me and my friends used to skip school now and then. Living in a suburb to Stockholm
we used to go to the City and look for cool records and .... for watching something called "The Film Reel of the Week". Some of the
cinemas in the City (often in the cinema "Spegeln" on Birger Jarlsgatan, Stockholm) showed trailers at lunchtime for 2 hours for coming
films. This was free of charge and only a couple of people did attend, some bums, senior citizens and kids skipping school.
One day, ONE DAY, the trailer for the film Thriller was shown, and every youngster in Sweden did know who Christina Lindberg was
as she regularly appeared in mens magazines as Fib Aktuellt or Lektyr in the nude. Well, everyone recognized her even though we may
not have known her name by then (teenage boys knew her from many a one-armed reading).

WOW! That trailer looked rough and me and my friends talked a lot about it .... "Thriller, must see that one", "That nude from the magazines
girl with an eye-patch and a shotgun shooting up a police car, wow", and i'm serious here, in Sweden back then there were NO Grindhouse
type of films and no violent pictures at all were allowed to be shown due to our strict film censor board.
But, the film premiere never came, a year went by and there were NO Thriller. Later i found out that the film, made by a Alex Fridolinski, an
alias for Bo A. Vibenius had been banned from showing by the censors. The film was forgotten, and when it finally was shown it was much
later, too late, and just for a week or so, and in a very truncated version. yes, the film was completely forgotten in Sweden, but it was to
start it's second life in the US as a Grindhouse exploitation Cult movie, titled "They Call Her One-Eye", and .... here's the Synapse DVD.

This heavy-handedly directed exploitation crime thriller has become a Legendary Female Revenge Action with the famous Swedish nude
model Christina Lindberg as the avenger.

The Story:

Her name is Madeleine and she's raped as a young girl by some sleazebag and she's mute after the trauma. She is raised on her parents
idyllic farm and everything is well .... until a man gives her a lift into town. This man (played by Arne Mattsson regular and Dramaten,
National Theatre actor Heinz Hopf, always was great and he seemed to play dirtbag roles with gusto) seduces her, takes her out to dinner,
drugs her, gets her addicted to heroin and then forces her to be a prostitute. When she refuses he cuts out her eye with a scalpel, in a
short but very disturbing scene (so believable that it may not be a special effect but the real thing using a real corpse, yuck!).

But one day enough is enough, and she starts training Karate, military close combat techniques, to shoot and to drive a car rally style.
She visits a weapons and ammunitions depot and then it's time for the Revenge.
Vibenius also inserted hardcore scenes to the softcore sex scenes when Madeleine works at the bordello, and these are very unsexy
looking, grainy and maybe made out of some other film stock, and it's obvious that Lindberg didn't take any part in these. Besides the fact
that Christina Lindberg never made any porno. Inserting hardcore scenes to spice up a bad film, released in certain markets, was something
some exploitation filmmakers did, as Jesús Franco, Aristide Massaccesi, Jean Rollin, Andrea Bianchi etc.

"Thriller - A Cruel Picture" is a not very good, slow and heavy-handedly directed film, i'm honest now, but the film has gained world-wide
notoriety and is today considered to be 1970's sleaze exploitation Cult Classic, and being appreciated by Quentin Tarantino.
What's great about it ? 1. The pitch-black depressing and Feel Bad story, and 2. The Beauty of Christina Lindberg, and as she wasn't any
actress (even though performing in a bunch of Swedish and international exploitation movies) it suits her that she's mute in this film, it
makes her role figure all the more powerful and relentless. For sure, the Ultimate Swedish Cult Movie.

Synapse presents the film in a 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen ratio, swedish mono audio (or an english dub), photo galleries with Lindberg,
Behind the Scenes, Press materials, an alternate scene etc.