Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

These movies really need to start warning me about this stuff. So I'm sitting around minding my own damn business watching this old school rape revenge flick 'They Call her One Eye' partly because the powers that be tell us that Quention Tarantino was 'inspired' by this thing and we all know if QT were to claim to be inspired by a pile of dog shit folks would go outside and sit around and watch dog shit. Anyway, I'm watching this thing when out of the blue I'm looking at hard core dick in pussy, dick in ass and ejaculation. Out of nowhere. Not that I generally have a problem with that stuff, but considering that family members tend to wander in while watching whatever, I need to have my finger on the remote ready to save me from trying to explain that I'm not sitting around watching pornography.

Regardless, Madeline (Christina Lindberg) has had a pretty tough go at it in her young life. A rape at the age of five robbed her of her ability to speak, though she seems to have a fairy peaceful if somewhat solitary life on her parents farm. At the urging of her father, Christina decides to head out to the city but misses the bus which is a little twist of fate that have some fairly serious repercussions and consequences for the girl.

The super slick Tony (Heinz Hopf) gives the impressionable girl a ride in his new GTO, takes her out dinner, escorts her back to the crib for a nightcap, drugs her and gets her hooked on heroin while she's unconscious for the next month or so. You see our man Tony is a pimp, and a very evil one at that since he feels the need to control his girls by having them strung out on smack. Tony then types a letter to Christina's parents informing them how much she hated them and the farm and how good her life is now, and also supplies her with steady list of clients, whom she better treat swell or he will withhold the heroin. Though the plucky girl was a tough bronco to break, eventually she gives in to her new life, until she receives some tragic news about her

parents prompting her to take her extra whore loot and apply it to learning a few skills such as karate, marksmanship, race car driving and hand to hand combat. Tony gives his girls freedom to roam because he knows they will always come back to him because he has the sugar they need, but he didn't know that Christina was socking away a bit extra from her tricks to pay for these training excursions. He should have asked somebody for real because Christina is one pissed off mute bitch. Tony has turned her into a whore, hooked her on heroin, caused her parents to commit suicide and oh yeah, stabbed her in the eye with a scalpel. Though we do admit we love Christina's rather stylish color coordinated selection of eye patches. Now it's time for pimps and johns to die, and there's a cutie pie with a black patch on her eye, sporting floor length leather on her back, and a sawed off shotgun in her hands about to make that happen.

I'm kind of mixed about this film directed by one Bo Arne Vibenus. The setup for the film is crisp, clear and concise. Vibenus strips away the exploitation factor and lays the foundation for a story that is plain and stark. Christina Lindberg is able to emote with her character using only her large round sad eye better than a lot of actresses can do with their entire bodies and the power of Roget backing them up. Heinz Hopf makes for a very interesting villain in that he doesn't portray Tony as particularly cruel man, but more of a delusional one in that he really believes injecting the odd woman with heroin and making them prostitutes isn't such a bad thing and is actually just a business venture. Though it may be difficult to believe that the average heroin addicted prostitute would have the strength to take kung fu lessons, race car lessons, combat lessons and shooting lessons in addition to their whoring duties and having to shoot up twice day, we will go ahead and assume that Christina's earlier trauma gave her a strength that few possess, and it was enjoyable watching her prepare for her revenge.

The problem was that the payoff was ultimately disappointing because Vibenus doesn't shoot a great action scene. He uses slow motion quite liberally, and perhaps too liberally as the motion is so slow that it feels almost as if the action scenes are going in reverse. I don't know if this technique was supposed to make you feel the revenge even more, but all it did as as far as I could tell was add twenty minutes worth of slowness to the running time. Then there were the car chase scenes in which a crazed Madeline was running cars off the road that would tap a tree and then explode in a fiery blaze. Who knew Sweden was filled with Ford Pinto's? She also killed a bunch of people who probably didn't deserve to die during this tirade too. I totally didn't get the hardcore scenes either since I'm fairly certain that it wasn't Lindberg performing them and they just felt tacked on because somebody told Vibenus that they should be tacked on. I'm completely opposed to editing original content out of movies for just about any reason, but there are versions of this movie without the hardcore content and believe me when I tell you that leaving those scenes on the cutting room floor takes nothing away from the film.

'They call her One Eye' certainly had its solid moments, and after watching the terminable 'I Spit on Your Grave' it is a definite step up, though it does fall well short of the classic 'Lady Snowblood'. But if you're one for revenge exploitation flicks from the 70's like I am, it's still something you probably need to add to your collection.

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