Madeline, played by Christina Lindberg is a young girl who as a child was assaulted by a transient man. The trauma from this has left her mute. Her parents one day send her to Stockholm to see a specialist in hopes that one day she will be able to speak and live a more normal life.
Instead of getting on the bus she is charmed by a man called Tony who offers her a ride to where she is going. They spend an evening together and end up back at Tony's where he eventually drugs her with heroin and lets her know she will now be working for him as a prostitute to pay for her new addiction.
To not arouse any suspicion from Madeline's parents, Tony writes to them pretending to be her and that she is no longer coming home and that she hates them to which both her parents get so distraught over what they believe are their daughters hateful words that they commit suicide.
Madeline forced to work attacks her first client and leaves marks on his face to which Tony then punishes her by removing her eye to teach her a lesson. She makes a friend in another woman forced to sell herself as she is also addicted to heroin and that she plans to save what money they are allowed to keep, to go to a clinic in Switzerland to get clean. This is short lived as she is eventually killed by Tony, and this sets Madeline up to plan her escape.
She slowly starts to save her money while continuing to see clients.
With the money she saves she starts taking driving lessons, self-defence and shooting lessons, while also getting a contact in the city centre to supply her with heroin so she has a bigger supply to help herself rather than rely on Tony's supply.
Once she is ready, she goes after all her client's one by one getting her revenge until the big showdown with Tony.
Thriller is probably one of the big underground exploitation films from the 1970’s and is a fairly decent movie despite the rough and raw storyline. The Swedish name is Thriller – en grym film and has the titles A Cruel Picture and They Call Her One Eye.
It is quite notorious for the scene where Madeline has her eye taken from her, rumours claim that a real eyeball from a cadaver was used. There is a story that the producers of the film also took out a big insurance policy of star Christina Lindberg as instead of using blank ammunition, live ammunition was used for the action scenes! She was also really injecting herself but with a saline solution in the drug taking scenes.
There are two versions of the film out, one at 104 mins and the other at 107 mins which has the hardcore inserts, it was released in the states in a cut form of 82 mins. The inserts don't really add to the film in my opinion, film is already grim enough without them, though these were added after the film was completed as director, Bo Arne Vibenius took advantage of Scandinavian law at the time that made all pornography legal so hired a couple to film a couple of scenes.
I did hear of a story that years after this film was out, Christina went to France to do another movie and that the director wanted her to do a real sex scene as they believed she had done this in Thriller, and she had to tell them that it was not her in them scenes.
I think Bo Arne Vibenius may have done something similar with hardcore inserts with his other film, Breaking Point. Though I've not seen that so can't confirm.
He did try to stop Synapse's DVD release of this film years back claiming they didn't have the rights for the film. However, this failed as Synapse provided him with all the paperwork to prove they did and released two versions of it; Limited Edition (Red cover - title A Cruel Picture) which is the full uncut version and a Vengeance Edition, version without the hardcore inserts (Yellow cover - title They Call Her One Eye). I think there had been rumours that Bo was working on a blu ray release, but I doubt anything will come of it.
I really like this film, some bits I could have done without but it's definitely not a film for everyone. Mean it lives up to it's Swedish title of "en grym film".
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