Literary - Swedish Sensationsfilms

As a cinema grad who is too lazy to read, I tend to look at books as screenplays-in-waiting, or guides to clue us in on which movies are good and which are just “culturally relevant.” Daniel Ekeroth knows what I’m talking about, except he seems to think that “good” and “cultural” can be one and the same sometimes. Oh those crazy Swedes.

In a follow-up to his last niche-interest tome, Swedish Black Metal, Ekeroth shifts his focus from grindcore to grindhouse with Swedish Sensationsfilms: A Clandestine History of Sex, Thrillers, and Kicker Cinema. Doing away with things like chapters and narratives, Swedish Sensations gets right to the dirt with over 200 reviews, summaries, and factual tidbits of the best of the worst in Swedish cinema. This is a perfect primer for sensationsfilm virgins, but it’s also a staggeringly thorough companion piece for all you perverts out there already in the know.

When it comes to lowbrow extremism, Daniel Ekeroth knows his shit. For his master’s thesis he wrote on iconic exploitation films á la Cannibal Holocaust and the morbidly sexy Nekromantik, as well as authoring Violent Italy under the pseudonym Daniel Dellamorte with his friend, Tobias Petterson. He even lived in Italy for a while to immerse himself in everything giallo and demented, but he always kept a place in his heart for his homeland’s unique brand of kitsch.

At its core, Swedish Sensationsfilms is an apologia for the 40 years of filth and eurotrash cinema that put Swedish boobage on the map, but it’s also a compendium of all the grimy masterpieces that got it there. Of course there’s more to sensationsfilms than Christina Lindberg’s tatas—like rape or torture or drugs and brainwashed youth—but it’s pretty clear from Swedish Sensationsfilms that sex is Sweden’s bread and butter. Boobs are where it all began, and they define the genre at large. At one point, Ekeroth even suggests that the nudity represented a minor breakthrough in women’s sexual liberation. I’m not sure how most feminists feel about that, but then again the whole point of these movies was to piss off conservatives and liberals alike. Swedish breasts are best when they’re nonpartisan, it seems.

Whatever your preferred sleaze, Ekeroth’s got you covered. All the classics are there:

Thriller – A Cruel Picture, The Farmhouse Girl, even a Bergman film or two. That’s right, even Ingmar dabbled with rape-revenge and pioneered on-camera puking to fill seats. In addition to those, there are over 100 other equally notorious or otherwise unknown movies to sink your teeth into, as well as a brief memoir by Christina Lindberg on her experiences with sensationsfilms for the more literary inclined. For the rest of you, there’s a whackload of frame stills, production photos, and original posters to gawk at. In the meantime, here are some moving pictures so you can see for yourself what Swedish Sensationsfilms is all about. Enjoy them before Youtube axes my account again for “inappropriate subject matter” and “distributing pornography,” or whatever the kids are calling it these days. The Virgin Spring (1961)
Sure, his agnostic existentialist schtick makes him the cinematic equivalent of Tolstoy and about as fun to watch, but it’s easy to forget that once upon a time, before Bergman, nipples were not a common sight on the silver screen. Or, you know, vomity rape. The Language of Love (1969)
You may recognize The Language of Love as Travis Bickle’s date movie of choice in Taxi Driver. This pseudo-documentary stars two notable psychologists and a sex adviser as they reveal the ins and outs of doin’ it. P.S. Last Summer (1988)
Man, teenagers throw the best parties. Breaking Point (1975)/Thriller – A Cruel Picture (1974)
Little needs be said about Thriller, like how Tarantino took the whole premise for Kill Bill, or how it’s the most notorious of the sensationsfilms, or how awesome it is that Christina Lindberg gets hers in the end with the help of a horse (it’s not what you think). But it’s actually director Bo A. Vibenius’ profoundly confusing follow-up, Breaking Point, that defines the genre at the limits of comprehensibility. Watch out for the creative pseudonyms in the end credits—Adolf Deutch is my personal favorite.

Man Can’t Be Raped aka Manrape (1978)
While there are thousands of other must-see classics that you can find in Swedish Sensationsfilms, I can’t help but point out this little gem. Almost impossible to find, this movie answers the question that’s bothered me since some girl once explained in detail how precisely timed doses of Viagra and Rohypnol can prove this title wrong. You might be reminded of Lisbeth Salander sodomizing her guardian in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but what blows my mind is that this shit actually happens in Sweden.