Wow! I've owned the DVD for a couple of days now and I've seen it twice. First with the superior Swedish track and then with the English track.
It's important to know that the only track worth mention is the Swedish track. There you have the great and smart dialogue and character-development that goes totally wrong in the English dub. So watch it with English subtitles. Don't be lazy, learn to read! :)
What strikes me the first when seeing the movie for the first time in a couple of years is how beautiful it is. After watching a crappy bootleg for years, this is a true revelation! Bo-Arne has clearly choose the Swedish autumn for it's staggering beauty and clear and strong colors. This is what I see every years outside my door, but this is the first time I've seen it so well presented in a movie. This is here the movie also shows it's true art-house-face. The scene with the child molester isn't sleazy (thank god for that!) or exploitive at all. It's poetic and horrible. Disgusting. When the tobacco (or just maybe 'snus') pours out if his mouth in excitement it's not just awful and grotesque, it's Swedish film-making at its best.
It's a dreamlike movie, but also very naturalistic (aka very Swedish) with stylish and impressive cinematography by Andreas Bellis. He and Bo-Arne both handles action, sex and drama with the same high quality. I think it's important not to forget the strange and surrealistic score by electro-maestro Ralph Lundsten. Like a constant wall of sound he wraps the story with unique electronic landscapes, some of them very childish and like nursery rhymes and others just...echoes and sonic vibrations/distortions.
Regaring the action...it's great. And it looks more expensive than it is. Okey, you can't compare the car chase to the one in Bullit or Blazing Magnums, but's quite alright to be in a Swedish exploitation movie from 1973. They shot it, of course, completely without permits and a bunch of explosives and sometimes unaware extras out in the streets. The fightscene in the warehouse is unique and not very Swedish. It's more of a combination between Peckinpah and Bruce Lee, but directed by Jodorowsky!
The final is both very western AND very Jodorowsky (see, once again I can't let go of the surrealistic vision this movie has). I know, because we've asked him, that Bo-Arne had no intention to let the ending (from the shoot out in the little fishing village to the horse...) to be very Sergio Leone, but it feels a lot like a scandinavian spaghetti western (actually there's been made at least three westerns in Sweden, but we call them 'lingon-western' Lingonberry-western).
But what makes Thriller what it is, is the actors. Christina Lindberg is PERFECT as Madeleine (in the English version, Frigga? Where came that name from?). She's cute, sexy, warm and finally very, very cold. Its a very impressive performance and her love for the character shines thru. Heinz Hopf as the sleazebag Tony is both sadistic...and very frail and weak at the same time. A coward protecting himself with bodyguards and giving people drugs. Heinz was one of swedens best character actors and I'm happy to see him in this movie. Another strong performance is by Per-Axel Arosenius as Madeleines father. A sensitive and intelligent portrait of a loving father. Per-Axel got a brutal ending to his life when he took suicide by burning himself to death in 1981.
This is my favorite Swedish movie ever, together with Man on the roof, and it deserves a good DVD-release like this. Hopefully there will be more releases, maybe with the participation of Bo-Arne and Christina.
/Fred
It's important to know that the only track worth mention is the Swedish track. There you have the great and smart dialogue and character-development that goes totally wrong in the English dub. So watch it with English subtitles. Don't be lazy, learn to read! :)
What strikes me the first when seeing the movie for the first time in a couple of years is how beautiful it is. After watching a crappy bootleg for years, this is a true revelation! Bo-Arne has clearly choose the Swedish autumn for it's staggering beauty and clear and strong colors. This is what I see every years outside my door, but this is the first time I've seen it so well presented in a movie. This is here the movie also shows it's true art-house-face. The scene with the child molester isn't sleazy (thank god for that!) or exploitive at all. It's poetic and horrible. Disgusting. When the tobacco (or just maybe 'snus') pours out if his mouth in excitement it's not just awful and grotesque, it's Swedish film-making at its best.
It's a dreamlike movie, but also very naturalistic (aka very Swedish) with stylish and impressive cinematography by Andreas Bellis. He and Bo-Arne both handles action, sex and drama with the same high quality. I think it's important not to forget the strange and surrealistic score by electro-maestro Ralph Lundsten. Like a constant wall of sound he wraps the story with unique electronic landscapes, some of them very childish and like nursery rhymes and others just...echoes and sonic vibrations/distortions.
Regaring the action...it's great. And it looks more expensive than it is. Okey, you can't compare the car chase to the one in Bullit or Blazing Magnums, but's quite alright to be in a Swedish exploitation movie from 1973. They shot it, of course, completely without permits and a bunch of explosives and sometimes unaware extras out in the streets. The fightscene in the warehouse is unique and not very Swedish. It's more of a combination between Peckinpah and Bruce Lee, but directed by Jodorowsky!
The final is both very western AND very Jodorowsky (see, once again I can't let go of the surrealistic vision this movie has). I know, because we've asked him, that Bo-Arne had no intention to let the ending (from the shoot out in the little fishing village to the horse...) to be very Sergio Leone, but it feels a lot like a scandinavian spaghetti western (actually there's been made at least three westerns in Sweden, but we call them 'lingon-western' Lingonberry-western).
But what makes Thriller what it is, is the actors. Christina Lindberg is PERFECT as Madeleine (in the English version, Frigga? Where came that name from?). She's cute, sexy, warm and finally very, very cold. Its a very impressive performance and her love for the character shines thru. Heinz Hopf as the sleazebag Tony is both sadistic...and very frail and weak at the same time. A coward protecting himself with bodyguards and giving people drugs. Heinz was one of swedens best character actors and I'm happy to see him in this movie. Another strong performance is by Per-Axel Arosenius as Madeleines father. A sensitive and intelligent portrait of a loving father. Per-Axel got a brutal ending to his life when he took suicide by burning himself to death in 1981.
This is my favorite Swedish movie ever, together with Man on the roof, and it deserves a good DVD-release like this. Hopefully there will be more releases, maybe with the participation of Bo-Arne and Christina.
/Fred