Over the last decade, critics and theorists have made a number of advances in reclaiming those genres and cycles of European cult film previously dismissed as examples of ‘trash’ or bad cinema. A central emphasis of these attempts to drag Europe’s darkest pleasures into the academy has been the critical reconsiderations of leading performers/icons within the previously marginal cult film text. This has resulted in a variety of innovative approaches being adopted to explore a range of issues such as the sexually menacing persona of Eurotrash female stars,1 as well as disquieting representations of race and ethnicity that their representations often evoke.2 While female sexual identity/racial affiliation have often been central to these various approaches, recent accounts have also dissected male constructions of suffering and masochism using a range of approaches derived from differing philosophical currents.3
Although Italy has proven to be the dominant paradigm for recent considerations of the Euro-cult performer, other continental regions such as Sweden also display long traditions of promoting stars who embody both the titillating and traumatic potential which encapsulates the cine-erotic. Arguably, the most influential and infamous performer to emerge from Sweden’s golden era of eroticism remains Christina Lindberg. The actress was born in 1950 in Gothenburg and raised in a female-headed, working-class family. Having read Latin at school, Lindberg developed interests in aesthetics, leading to plans to train as an architect. However, these ideals were sidelined by her incorporation into Sweden’s ‘sexual revolution’ of the late 1960s, which saw her elevated from a photographic ‘glamour’ model to one of the leading erotic soft-core performers of the decade. Between 1970 and 1974, Lindberg made 18 films which confirmed her as a smouldering sexploitation icon, in a range of productions which often fused sex with social commentary on the changing Swedish society of the period.
FIGURE 17.1 A sexploitation signifier: Lindberg’s films as reference to wider social change in 1970s Sweden
Building on her international status as leading erotic pin-up, it is noticeable that many of these films were German productions, often completed by Walter Boos. For instance, Lindberg’s contributions to Teil-Was Eltern oft verzweifeln lässt and Mädchen, die nach München kommen (both 1972), remain among some of the more memorable Schulmädchen-Report films, which used erotic tropes and spicy vignettes to expose restrictive national ideologies of gender and the body.4 Not only did Lindberg feature significantly in a range of such Eurotrash productions during this era, but she also travelled to Japan to work with significant ‘Pink’ directors such as Norifumi Suzuki and Sadao Nakajima. Here, she completed two significant feature films: Furyô anego den: Inoshika Ochô (Sex and Fury) and Poruno no joô: Nippon sex ryokô (Pornstar Travels Around Japan (both 1973)), whose extreme images of sexy, sword-wielding female avengers are often cited as influences on contemporary directors such as Quentin Tarantino.
Although often dubbed as the leading sex icon of the Swedish porn industry of the 1970s, Lindberg’s films often reveal more complex and contradictory representations of sex and social mores than their salacious titles would suggest. For instance, Exponerad (Exposed, 1971), lifts the lid on the male-dominated discourses of the 1960s counterculture, by ranging the heroine between an number of male suitors who attempt to control her desires through either direct threat or manipulative mind control. The later film Anita – ur en tonårsflickas dagbok (Anita: Swedish Nymphet, 1973), functions more like a Swedish social problem film than a sexploitation potboiler, depicting how a young woman’s uncontrollable sex drive leads to her gradual isolation from the more conformist domestic surroundings that the narrative depicts. Anita revealed that Lindberg was more than able to handle more demanding acting roles, in a narrative that saw her ranged against more established, art-focused performers (including a young Stellan Skarsgård).
Arguably, it was Lindberg’s willingness to push the parameters of what was expected from the porno performance that led to her accepting the most controversial cult role of the period: as the lethal female vigilante Madeleine in Bo Arne Vibenius’s shocker Thriller (aka They Call Her One Eye, 1974).
The film (which was instantly banned in Sweden due to its excessive depictions of sexual violence), casts Lindberg as a mute girl who is ensnared into a brutal world of enforced prostitution, drug addiction and violence at the hands of the suave but psychotic pimp Tony (played to chilling effect by Heinz Hopf). When Madeline attacks one of her clients in an early act of defiance, Tony brutally blinds the heroine by stabbing a scalpel into her eye. This scene (which reportedly featured a close-up of a human eye secured from a local morgue), gave Thriller its instant notoriety. Equally, subsequent images of Lindberg toting a shotgun whilst wearing a single black eye-patch also gave Thriller an enduring cult iconography, that in part explain the genesis of the similarly disabled but potent female character of Ellie Driver in Tarantino’s Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003).
FIGURE 17.2 Iconic avenger: Lindberg’s infamous role as the one-eyed female Killer in Thriller
Even more than 35 years after its controversial release, Thriller remains unconventional and uncomfortable viewing, not least because of Vibenius’s insistence of splicing hard-core footage (derived from a Swedish sex club) into the frequent scenes of Madeleine’s abuse. As startling as these jarring shock inserts is Lindberg’s towering performance in the film. Denied access to any dialogue, she evokes the heroine’s predicament and eventual empowerment through a wide range of carefully orchestrated body gestures that give genuine conviction to an otherwise difficult role. This performance is in part assisted by the unconventional film style with which Vibenius shoots his heroine in Thriller. Whilst the final scenes of Madeline taking revenge on her (male and female) oppressors are shot in extended slow-motion scenes which betray a clear debt to Sam Peckinpah and genre cinema, the colour codings, camera movement and use of naturalistic sound reveal a more distinct, more legitimate basis derived from European art cinema (doubtlessly inspired by the director’s training with Ingmar Bergman). The end result is a movie that is both shocking and thought-provoking, ultimately revealing an image of potent female vengeance rarely equalled in mainstream film. As Michael Mackenzie noted in his DVD Times review of the film, Thriller remains ‘an engaging and at times touching piece of work: a rare exploitation movie that actually comes close to being an art film’.5
Whilst the release of Thriller remains Lindberg’s most prominent feature to date, it also marked her gradual withdrawal from a 1970s European erotic industry increasingly dominated by hard-core, conventional narrative features. In more recent years Christina Lindberg retrained as a journalist before becoming one of Sweden’s most high-profile environmental and animal rights activists. In the following interview, the actress reflects on the continued influence and infamy of some of her 1970s erotic roles, whilst also commenting on how her new passion as an animal rights spokesperson allows her to combine flesh, fur and fury.
Xavier Mendik: Sweden became synonymous with sexploitation during the 1970s: was this purely to do with titillation or a more serious portrayal of the country and culture during this period?
Christina Lindberg: Well, I think it was a mixture of the two. Many of the films were an excuse for nakedness, but some of the directors working in this area wanted to display a kind of social pathos in the situation. In particular Torgny Wickman, whose films had a dark side to them. I worked with him on Anita – ur en tonårsflickas dagbok. If that film is showing the Sweden of the 1970s, it was not in a very nice way as it was kind of a little bit dark movie.
Yes, absolutely. Was there as much soul searching as sexploitation in these movies then?
(Laughs.) In a way, yes. But these were not necessarily films for the home market. Often when producers wanted to sell the movie they picked me because then they knew that they could sell it to a lot of other countries apart from Sweden, because I had a pin-up profile. So Sweden wasn’t the main market for doing those movies.
But the thing that was interesting with those movies is that I was cast against big actors from Sweden at the time. It was always those actors from so-called serious films and, you know, they were very poorly paid at the time. So they had to have some money, which is why they ended up doing sexy movies. And when I took off my clothes I felt they were good to me, those guys. You know, it would always be the same people running the technical aspects, cameras, directing, writing the songs and writing the scripts. These were all well known and respected Swedish artists, actors and filmmakers.
This sweeps away one myth about 1970s Swedish sexploitation cinema: that it was a backstreet industry with no links to the cinematic mainstream.
Yes. These films were anything but dark, dirty, small works.
One film about which there is a whole cult mythology is Thriller. What attracted you to the movie?
The chance not to play myself!
What an intriguing comment! What do you mean by this?
I was no actress, so I had to place all my own feelings and expressions into these films: I was Christina Lindberg in those movies. And when Vibenius came and asked me to do Thriller, I thought, well this is something! Now I can show people that I can actually act. And then he also told me that I was going to be mute and I also thought that was a good thing because then I could concentrate on my body acting; which is a language also.
The most difficult form of acting is body acting, and you did an incredible job in Thriller. I mean, do you feel you really managed to portray everything you wanted totally through gesture?
Mmm, yes. But this was achieved by very small gestures, because that’s the problem with theatre actors: they are big behavers! But I wasn’t used to acting, so I was very faint in my acting and that suits the tone of the movie and the role very well.
FIGURE 17.3 Grindhouse gestures: Lindberg’s use of body, movement and expression in Thriller
A lot of people have said Vibenius is a difficult guy to work with. How did you find your relationship with him?
Well, I didn’t have so much of a relationship with him, to be honest. This is because while he is a very special guy, he can also be a little bit cold in some ways. He didn’t care about me too much, you know. So I don’t know him very well, to be honest.
But in a way it’s quite liberating as an actor because it seems as though that gave you more freedom. You had an unrestricted space through which to develop the character of Madeleine.
Yes, that’s true. He wasn’t on my back all the time, he only told me what to do when strictly necessary. What also made it a pleasure for me was that I played against a very good actor, Heinz Hopf. I also acted with him in Exposed, and we were very good friends.
You didn’t find it a challenge in any way, moving from Exposed into a much more character-driven movie?
I found it a challenge, yes. But then Thriller was a film full of challenges! I had to go to training school for karate, for example, and I also had to get trained for hand-to-hand combat, weapons with live ammunition and so on. So it was tough! And because I was aware that I didn’t have a background in acting, I wanted to make the action in my scenes as believable as possible. Like when the girl hits me and so on, and I would say ‘We will film the scene only once, so hit me, so I can feel that you are doing it!’ I didn’t want the actress to hit me too hard you know, but I wanted her to make contact. That was my way of performing in that movie. The purely physical became my mechanism for reacting without having acting experience.
Talking of the purely physical, Thriller became notorious for Vibenius’s insertion of hard-core inserts into the already distressing rape scenes. What were your thoughts on those porno inserts?
Not good, only because I didn’t know about them. They were put into the movie and no one thinks they were necessary. And these scenes were made by a couple that were very well-known during the 1970s. They’re called Romeo and Julia [Swedish for Juliet]. Romeo and Julia were stars at the porno clubs in Sweden, because at that time in Sweden you used to have porno clubs where people were on stage, you know, having intercourse in front of people.
I’m not a defending those scenes, but I have a comment linked to them, which is that some people have argued that rather than glamourise rape, those scenes make porn look ugly.
To be honest, I haven’t seen them, but I have heard that they are not attractive at all.
I mean they’re so unappealing that they push the film into the realms of the anti-pornographic. Do you think this was what Vibenius intended?
At a wider level, I think so. Yes, that’s correct. It’s in his personality. This is a film that confronts and questions desire, so I think you’re right.
From the anti-pornographic to the apparently un-feminist, Thriller was released at the height of the whole 1970s feminists against porn movement. Do you think the film actually got caught up in those wider political debates at all?
Oh yes, but only because it appeared to be a separate world to what we were doing with the film and what I was intending to do as a performer. I am not sure what it was like in the rest of Europe, but in Sweden, political feminism of the 1970s was dominated by women from the upper class. You were never quite sure if they intended to rescue or police working-class women. My parents were very hardworking, ordinary people. I grew up with only my mother because my parents divorced when I was very small. But no one from my class was connected with those political movements. And when I started school, I went to read Latin and languages and there were not too many lower-class children who did that, but I was one of them! We were never too enthusiastic about this political talk, it was always people with the money and power that seemed to engage in these conversations on our behalf … whether we wanted them too or not!
I can imagine your movies were pretty popular with them … not!
(Laughs.) Yes. A colleague once did tell me that the Swedish feminists of the 1970s did have a picture of me, which they would throw darts at! I guess to them they I symbolised all that was bad with Swedish sexploitation cinema of the period, which is quite funny.
The irony being that a movie like Thriller is all about confronting, rather than gratifying, male desire, particularly through the theme of the vengeful woman.
Exactly. But you know, at that time they thought I was a victim. It’s so funny because today it’s so different with Kill Bill and so on; there is now a new generation of strong woman who are clearly modelled on 1970s sexploitation films such as mine. And the funny thing is that I have always felt very strong when I was performing in these films. People would often ask me, ‘Don’t you feel like a victim?’ No, I took care of myself; I’ve always taken care of myself and I felt respected. And in a way a film like Thriller is all about what happens when a woman is not respected in that way.
Do you feel you really set the trend with Thriller?
Yes, both in later American films, but also here in Sweden. Recently, on television, we had a series which featured a black singer who loses an eye and then goes out for revenge. As with Thriller she has an eye patch, and as with Thriller she is also very strong. But this is very amusing because although the film was so influential, in Sweden they never, ever mention Thriller. They destroyed it and never mentioned the name. The film has been totally ignored as a key part of Swedish movie culture. I talked with a journalist yesterday and now they are beginning to write about this. And you know, she is about 23 or 24. When I meet young people and particularly girls, they always say ‘Oh, how interesting, I didn’t know anything about this. Could you send me a movie? I would like to see this.’
Perhaps the film’s exclusion is also down to the difficultly in pinning it down: some people see Thriller as a thriller; other people have seen it as an art movie.
Yes, I know. In Sweden particularly, they want to classify it as one thing or the other. They are very anxious: they want to see the film as either this or that, when it in fact it is a perfect combination. They got very confused, you know. But when you asked about the art angle: it’s true, because Vibenius worked together with Ingmar Bergman, and he was acclaimed for his technical skills. And I definitely think that his work with Bergman certainly influenced the look and style of Thriller; it’s dark and rhapsodic. As with Bergman’s movies, Thriller tells the story in a very articulate and artistic way.
Moving from visual styles to violence. Thriller remains an extreme movie. How did you cope with those images?
Rather well I guess! But, you know, a lot of strange things happened when we were shooting that film. For example, the scene in Drottningholm, when I got out of the police car and start shooting, the locals had no idea it was a movie scene, so the people in front of me were terrified! They saw this girl with a black eye patch and a rifle pointed at them and then start shooting at the police car. It was absurd, but they saw me with that gun and ran for their lives!
So they actually thought it was for real?
Yes, because Bo Arne never told anyone he was going to do a scene, he just went and did it! The police car we were using was chased by the Swedish police all the time, because it was against the law to paint an ordinary car like a police car. He never told the police that he was going to do it. After some days the police called me and said that local people have reported me for threatening them with a shotgun! So I had to go the police station and try to explain! I was there, 21 years old, sitting there terrified, and Bo Arne didn’t help me at all. I was used to taking care of myself so I was all right, you know. But there were a lot of those things happening all the time during the shoot, so it was rather tough at a number of levels!
I can imagine. Although the movie was banned in Sweden, have you been surprised how internationally it’s gained this massive cult reputation?
Yes, but I must say I’m flattered and it feels rather good, but still in Sweden they don’t want to admit that Thriller has something to tell Swedes.
FIGURE 17.4 A female icon for the Tarantino generation: Lindberg’s influence on Kill Bill
Yes, that is incredible. Obviously you’re aware of the Tarantino endorsement and the influence your character had on Kill Bill. What are your views on this?
I am delighted, of course. I mean, he’s one of the very best. I can tell you that such an endorsement is also a great compliment to the director of Thriller. Bo Arne Vibenius, always had the dream to make a second Thriller film. It was a pity he couldn’t do that, because he spent too long chasing money to try and make it, but he talked with me about making the second Thriller and I think it was a real shame that it was never made. Is there any chance he would resurrect the idea because of the Tarantino endorsement? I mean, if it were to happen, would you do it?
No, no, I’m too old today… I wouldn’t want to drive around in that police car again!
After Thriller, you went on to do a lot of interesting projects such as the two movies you made in Japan, Sex and Fury and Pornstar Travels Around Japan. What are your memories of those two projects?
Well, I only have some good memories of Japan, because, at that time, I was a little bit shy, in fact, I was extremely shy! You may not believe that considering the films I made, but it is true. Therefore, the Japanese people really suit me: they are also very reserved and shy and I have their manners, you know, so we all got along very, very well. After I made those two movies they asked me to stay. They wanted me to sign a long-term contract with one of the companies there, to do multiple movies. But at the time, they worked day and night, twenty-four hours. I made those movies and I did calendar and fold-out work there, as well as television programmes. After three months of that, I was so tired, so I said, ‘I have to go home, I think!’ I then said, ‘In Sweden we have eight-hour working days!’ But they didn’t believe me, I think. So then I went home to make Anita, and I didn’t go back.
Since Thriller and your Japanese period, you’ve diversified into a number of different roles, even campaigning for environmental issues in Sweden. I mean, I’d be really interested just to hear briefly why you’ve moved in that direction.
To be honest, I haven’t moved into it, because I have always been fond of nature and animals. When I was small I was always taking care of cats and dogs and even used to pick worms when they were on the pavement to put them back in the grass. I was very sorry to have had to live in a city when I was small. I have always felt like that I didn’t belong there. For over ten years I have lived in the countryside and it suits me perfectly. I love all animals but specifically, I had written a lot of debate articles in the national daily newspapers about predators: the wolf, lynx and bears. Because we have these hunters in Sweden, you know, and they are very powerful, so there’s a lot of hunting in Sweden.
That really surprises me. I would have thought Sweden would have a really good reputation.
For human rights yes, not for animal rights. When I see television from places like the UK, I see how they save animals and so on. We have nothing like that in Sweden. You are free to donate your money to saving-homes for cats and dogs, but no money comes from the Swedish Government is contributed. And because the Government has not allowed any wolves in the whole of northern Sweden, we only have a small population living in the middle of Sweden, where the hunters are chasing them all the time and because of that, they are going to disappear. We now have only around a thousand wild cats in Sweden and the Government still allows the hunters to shoot them. It’s incredible. We have so much land, so we have a responsibility to keep those animals for the future, to give the children the chance to see them.
FIGURE 17.5 Porn survivor: Lindberg as a symbol of the empowered sexploitation heroine
One final question. Many porn actresses feel a lot of social pressure to renounce their former roles in the sex industry, most famously Linda Lovelace.
Yes.
Are you ashamed of your porno past or do you feel that films like Thriller did make a legitimate contribution to cinema culture?
Not ashamed at all. As you say Thriller did make an impact, and in a very good way. I hope that I have given people something positive to consider in my films. Gertainly, I never sought to portray women as victims or weak in any of my films. Instead they are a warning to men who do not realise the potential power women have.
I want to offer my sincere thanks to Christina Lindberg for agreeing to this interview. My thanks also to Eve Bennett for transcribing the interview material.
