SWEDISH SENSATIONSFILMS by Daniel

• 

I am going to start this review with a warning. Did the documentaries Not Quite Hollywood, Machete Maidens Unleashed and Video Nasties turn your want list into something that would cause your own personal version of the national debt? Did your wife/ girlfriend/ significant other freak out when they saw your Bluray shopping list after you read Stephen Thrower’s Nightmare USA, or Jay Slater’s Eaten Alive? Then STEP AWAY from this book review NOW. It will cause you heart and wallet ache that will only be suppressed by the spending of thousands of bucks trying to collect the films that author Swedish author Daniel Ekeroth, who also wrote Swedish Death Metal and has performed with several bands such as Iron Lamb, Tyrant and Onkel Kankel, has presented in this brilliant book, Swedish Sensationsfilms.

I guess a description of WHAT Swedish Sensationsfilms are is the immediate question in everyone’s minds. Obviously, as the name suggests, they are films from Sweden (obviously) that sit comfortably next to exploitation films of the US; they are full of nudity, violence, drugs and other lowbrow exercises that make your more refined film fan cringe, but make you and I stand on our lounge chairs with ours fists in the air, beer in our bellies and pants around our ankles.

This tome introduces us to the Sensationsfilm first with an essay telling of their origins by Ekeroth, and then with a piece titled ‘Christina Lindberg, Exposed’ where the lovely Lindberg tells the tale of her introduction to the world of movies before jumping into reviews and information about films that for the most part, quite frankly, I had never heard of before, but am now dying to see.

Obviously films like Jungfrukallan, aka The Virgin Spring which influenced The Last House on the Left, Anita – Ur En Tonarsflickas Dagbok, aka Anita and Thriller: En Grym Film, aka Thriller: A Cruel Picture or They Call Her One Eye, are present here but others as well which will ring true in the minds of exploitation fans worldwide. My personal immediate NEEDS, not wants, list from this film now contain Blood Tracks, about a rock band being picked off by a murderous family, Exponerad, a Lindberg film about a 17 year old girl who is forced into sexual servitude while her parents are away for a few weeks, and Kyrkoherden aka The Vicar, where a young vicar is cursed by a witch to have an unstoppable erection, which even the local sluts who quite happily pork him often can’t make go away.

The inclusion of Jungfrukallen proves that not all sensationsfilms are to be discounted as trash but honestly, most of them sound like loose scripts used for the sole purpose of getting as many boobs on screen as possible.

Nothing wrong with that!

With this book, Ekeroth has provided a great introduction to this dark side of the Swedish film industry. In addition to his series of reviews and the aforementioned essays, Ekeroth also gives a glossary of Swedish culture, a rogues gallery of Swedish film ‘heroes’, a look at  sensationsfilms via the National Board of Film Classification and gives the 20 sensationsfilms one must see before leaves this mortal coil.

Even though it has given me reason to spend even MORE money on DVDs and blurays, this book is spectacular. It is well written and easy to read, with a great selection of pictures courtesy of Klubb Super 8 (who look like a decent source of these films… if you read Swedish!!) and a fantastic cover by artist Wes Benscoter. Ekeroth clearly loves these films and any film collector looking for something different would be remiss not to have this book.

Book: *****