Swedish Erotica

For the sick and depraved i suppose and those who fly the goon flag quite high this is a must have. From Bazillion Points home of the ghouls, and art by Wes Benscoter. Daniel Ekeroth who also masterminded the classic Swedish Death Metal book here orchestrates why we are lured into a new kind of death.

In the annals of grindhouse exploitation cinema, Italy owns the giallo, Australia offers Ozploitation, and Sweden has spawned—the SENSATIONSFILM!

“I look back with genuine joy. I am so very happy I could be a part of the seventies, it was so incredibly interesting. I carry it with me; it is a part of me. I would never deny being in those movies. I know that a lot of people do so, but I just had a blast.”— Christina Lindberg

“Into this rising whirlwind of madness, I was born in 1972. As the ‘70s came along, all limits were forgotten. Sweden was flooded with sexually explicit films of every kind, violent gangster movies…and all morals were gone.”—Daniel Ekeroth

In many respects, Sweden’s place in film history is secure and prominent. Swedish films are associated internationally with the success and high quality of Ingmar Bergman’s reputable works. However, another breed of Swedish film is notorious for its laissez-faire attitude towards nudity and relaxed sexuality. Produced in the backyard of the Swedish film industry, these sexually daring films join countless speculative or sensational movies that deal with shocking or taboo subjects—street punks, space aliens, hard drugs, and drunken vikings. Other efforts are simply too strange and Swedish to ignore. Once again, Swedish Death Metal author Daniel Ekeroth delves into the arcane culture of his homeland, returning with the first comprehensive overview of “Sensationsfilms”—Swedish Exploitation Cinema.

Includes reviews and release information on nearly 200 clandestine Swedish films produced between 1951 and 1993, plus a new introduction by Daniel Ekeroth; and an unpublished in-deep interview with actress Christina Lindberg (Thriller: En Grym Film/They Call Her One Eye, Maid in Sweden, Anita: Swedish Nymphet) Films include uncovered—and undressed!—early movie roles by stars like Stellan Skarsgård (Pirates of the Carribean, Mamma Mia!, Dancer in the Dark), Pernilla August (Fanny and Alexander, Star Wars Ep. I & II), Max von Sydow (Shutter Island, Minority Report), and Lee Hazlewood.

Paranoid?

The Conversation (1974) is the slowly-gripping, bleak study of electronic surveillance and threat of new technologies that is examined through the private, internalized life of a lonely and detached expert 'bugger.' The conspiracy thriller is an effective character study that exposes the emerging conscience of an estranged eavesdropper whose work once resulted in the death of three people:

Harry Caul...an invader of privacy. The best in the business. He can record any conversation between two people anywhere. So far, three people are dead because of him.

The timely, low-budget cinematic masterpiece of the 1970s was written, produced and released by director Francis Ford Coppola before and during the Wategate era (and between his two Godfather films) - a time of heightened concern over the violation of civil liberties. Its claustrophobic themes of the destruction of privacy, alienation, guilt, voyeurism, justified paranoia, unprincipled corporate power and personal responsibility effectively responded to growing, ominous 20th century threats of eavesdropping to personal liberties.

The haunted surveillance expert, who pursues a case (seemingly of marital infidelity) that demonstrates his rarified human emotion, discovers that he has become the victim of his own technological profession and intrigue by film's end. [His last name, 'caul', literally means the protective, embryonic membrane that sometimes covers the head of a child at birth.]

After his phenomenal success with The Godfather (1972), Coppola's technically-brilliant, absorbing film was a critically-acclaimed work, but it failed at the box-office. In the 1974 Oscar competition, The Conversation competed for Best Picture with Coppola's own sequel The Godfather, Part II (1974). It had a total of three award nominations (without any wins): Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Sound (Walter Murch and Arthur Rochester). Notably, there were two against-type roles of young stars from Lucas' American Graffiti (1973): the philandering/murderous role of a socialite by Cindy Williams, and the duplicitous role of a corporate executive assistant by Harrison Ford.

The marvelous sound work on the film was deserving of an Oscar for Best Sound for its effective sound-mixing of interdependent elements: taped conversations, muffled voices, background and other mechanically-generated noises, musical/piano accompaniment (Harry Caul's signature theme) and other ambient sounds. The film has some similarities to director Michelangelo Antonioni's provocative Blow-Up (1966), Brian DePalma's thriller Blow Out (1981), Tony Scott's Enemy of the State (1998), and Gore Verbinski's The Ring (2002). And the bloody scene in the bathroom paid homage to Hitchcock's Psycho (1960).