Thriller: A Cruel Picture Rankings

If you’ve ever watched Kill Bill and thought, “Wow, that eyepatch look is iconic,” congratulations you’ve already felt the long shadow of
Thriller: A Cruel Picture. This 1973 Swedish exploitation film is one of those titles that lives half in legend, half in late-night
boutique Blu-ray marathons, and 100% in the “absolutely not for the faint of heart” category.

In this article, we’ll dig into rankings, opinions, and where
Thriller: A Cruel Picture (aka They Call Her One Eye) really sits in the pantheon of cult revenge movies.
We’ll look at critic scores, audience reactions, the film’s extreme content and censorship history, and whether it’s worth tracking
down in 4K or keeping at a very respectful distance.

Why This Little Swedish Exploitation Film Still Shocks

On paper, Thriller: A Cruel Picture is “just” another 1970s exploitation flick: low budget, sleazy marketing, lots of style,
questionable ethics. But it stands out because it pushes into extremes even hardened horror fans sometimes find a bit much.
Its combination of grim realism, graphic violence, and explicit sexual content helped it become:

A longstanding cult favorite among exploitation aficionados.
A frequent entry on lists of the most controversial or banned films.
A key influence on later revenge films and on Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill iconography.

The result? A movie that rarely gets glowing mainstream reviews, but almost always gets discussed in the same breath as
words like “notorious,” “extreme,” and “essential viewing” depending on who you ask.

Quick Primer: What Is Thriller: A Cruel Picture?

Thriller: A Cruel Picture is a 1973 Swedish rape-revenge exploitation film written and directed by
Bo Arne Vibenius. It stars Christina Lindberg as Madeleine, a mute young woman who endures horrific abuse and
eventually trains herself into a calm, methodical engine of vengeance.

The film is known under several titles, especially in English-speaking markets:

Thriller – A Cruel Picture
They Call Her One Eye
Hooker’s Revenge

Vibenius reportedly wanted to make “the most commercial film ever made,” and leaned hard into whatever would sell in early-70s
European cinemas: sex, violence, and shock. Over time, that cynical strategy ironically gave the movie an arthouse-adjacent cult aura,
as academics and film nerds began dissecting it as a key piece of exploitation history.

Plot Setup (Spoiler-Light)

Without walking through every grim detail, the basic setup is this:

Madeleine suffers severe trauma in childhood and becomes mute.
As a young woman, she falls into the hands of a sadistic pimp who addicts her to drugs and forces her into prostitution.
After relentless abuse, she quietly starts planning her revenge saving money, training in driving, weapons, and martial arts.
Eventually, she turns those skills on the people who destroyed her life.

The tone is not jokey or campy: it’s cold, angry, and often very slow, with long stretches of silence and
slow-motion violence that give the movie an almost hypnotic, nightmarish feel.

Alternative Cuts And Versions

One reason rankings and opinions on Thriller are all over the map: there isn’t just one version of the movie.
Over the decades, censors and distributors chopped it into multiple cuts:

Uncut festival / extended versions with explicit sexual material and more graphic violence.
Shorter U.S. and international cuts that heavily reduce the explicit content.
Home-video releases (DVD, Blu-ray, 4K) that restore much of the original material for collectors.

For viewers, that means your experience of Thriller: A Cruel Picture can vary dramatically depending on which cut you see
from “nasty but manageable revenge thriller” to “one of the harshest exploitation films ever made.”

How Do People Actually Rank This Movie?

Critical Scores: Divisive And Polarized

On mainstream aggregate sites, Thriller: A Cruel Picture tends to land squarely in “cult curiosity” territory, not runaway masterpiece.
A few key snapshots:

IMDb: The film hovers around a 6.4/10 rating, with several thousand user votes high enough to show a solid fan base,
but low enough to signal that many viewers are not impressed.
Rotten Tomatoes: One listing for the film shows a mid-50s Tomatometer from a small critic pool and around a
low-to-mid 60s audience score for one of the main cuts again, firmly “divisive cult movie,” not universally adored.
On lists of “most controversial films ever made”, the film frequently appears alongside titles like
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Salo, emphasizing notoriety as much as artistry.

Many professional reviews acknowledge the film’s influence and its stark style, but slam it for being exploitative,
repetitive, or emotionally numbing. Others see it as a raw, furious response to sexual violence that uses exploitation to
shove misogyny, trauma, and revenge straight into the viewer’s face.

Audience Scores: Cult Fans vs. Casual Viewers

Where Thriller really splits opinions is at the viewer level:

Cult and exploitation fans often rank it very highly sometimes calling it an essential revenge movie, praising
Christina Lindberg’s icy presence, the bold style, and the willingness to go to extremes.
General horror/thriller audiences may find it slow, punishing, or outright unpleasant, especially if they aren’t prepared for
the explicit sexual content and relentless cruelty.
Modern viewers with strong sensitivity to depictions of sexual violence often either avoid it entirely or rank it very low,
viewing it as exploitative rather than cathartic.

In other words, this is not a “3.5 stars, pretty good Friday night movie” situation. It’s a film you either respect as a brutal
cult classic or wish you’d never put in the disc tray.

Why Thriller Became A Cult Classic

Christina Lindberg’s One-Eyed Vengeance Icon

Even people who haven’t seen the movie recognize its most iconic image:
Christina Lindberg in a trench coat and eyepatch, shotgun in hand. Lindberg plays Madeleine almost entirely in silence,
communicating with body language and a blank, wounded stare that slowly hardens into something very dangerous.

Her character design has become a staple in cult-film poster art, fan tattoos, and references. That single eyepatch look later inspired
Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah) in Kill Bill, making Lindberg’s performance part of wider pop-culture history.

Influence On Kill Bill And Other Revenge Movies

Director Quentin Tarantino has openly cited Thriller: A Cruel Picture as one of the films that influenced his
Kill Bill revenge saga. The visual nods are obvious: the eyepatch, the stoic female avenger, the cold, almost comic-book style violence.

Beyond Tarantino, the film’s DNA shows up across the rape-revenge subgenre. Later movies like Ms. 45 and other grim revenge thrillers
borrow the basic shape of the story: a traumatized woman, a society that fails her, and a methodical, escalating campaign of payback.

Whether you love or hate Thriller, it’s hard to deny its influence on how
female-driven revenge stories have been visualized and marketed over the past 50 years.

Violence, Censorship, And The Ethical Question

Bans, Cuts, and Classification Drama

One reason the film built such a legend is that it ran headfirst into censorship boards around the world.
Several countries demanded cuts or banned it outright for:

Extremely explicit sexual content, including unsimulated sex shots edited into assault scenes.
Graphic depictions of violence, including one infamous eye-injury effect.
A generally relentless, nihilistic tone with little relief or conventional moral framing.

Over time, different versions were approved with various trims, and boutique labels later restored as much of the
original content as legally possible in certain territories. For collectors, tracking down the “right” cut has become part of
the cult experience.

Exploitative Or Empowering? (The Eternal Debate)

Ask three viewers whether Thriller: A Cruel Picture is feminist, misogynist, or “just exploitation,” and you’ll likely get three different answers.

Arguments that it’s exploitative point to:

The way sexual violence is lingered on and intertwined with explicit pornography.
The marketing that clearly used shock value to sell tickets rather than to make a nuanced statement.
The possibility that the camera’s gaze is more interested in suffering than in solidarity.

Arguments that it has an empowering or cathartic edge tend to focus on:

Madeleine’s agency as she painstakingly trains, plans, and fights back.
The way the film refuses to downplay the brutality of exploitation and trafficking.
The grim satisfaction of seeing abusers face consequences at the hands of their victim.

Ultimately, how you rank the film ethically is intensely personal. Some viewers see an important (if deeply uncomfortable) portrait of trauma
and revenge; others see a line crossed so many times there’s no message left to salvage.

Where Thriller Ranks In The Rape-Revenge Subgenre

Within the specific niche of rape-revenge cinema, Thriller: A Cruel Picture usually sits near the top in terms of notoriety and influence,
even if its star ratings are middling.

Compared with other infamous titles:

I Spit on Your Grave is often considered more widely known, but Thriller is arguably more stylized and deliberate in its pacing.
Ms. 45 takes a similar premise a traumatized, largely silent woman going on a revenge spree but plays it in a more urban,
psychological key, with a tighter runtime and a slightly more “art film” feel.
Other exploitation titles borrow the idea of a wronged woman striking back but don’t always reach the same level of raw,
uncomfortable intensity.

If you made a ranked list purely of impact within the subgenre, Thriller would likely land very high. If you ranked for
accessible entertainment value or emotional nuance, it might fall much lower.

Should You Watch Thriller: A Cruel Picture Today?

Who Will Appreciate It

You might genuinely appreciate Thriller: A Cruel Picture if you:

Are already comfortable with extreme and controversial films.
Have a strong interest in exploitation history or are researching the rape-revenge cycle of the 1970s.
Love seeing how older cult films influenced modern directors like Tarantino.
Can separate your moral discomfort from your curiosity about film form, censorship, and genre evolution.

Who Should Probably Skip It

On the other hand, you should definitely skip this one if you:

Prefer your thrillers tense but relatively bloodless.
Are sensitive to depictions of sexual violence (which is completely valid).
Hate slow pacing and long stretches of silence or slow motion.
Just want a fun revenge flick to put on with snacks this is more “emotional sandpaper” than casual popcorn entertainment.

Think of it less as a movie you recommend and more as a movie you warn people about.
For some, that warning is a green light. For many others, it’s a very firm red.

Experiences And Takeaways: Living With A Cult Classic

Talking about Thriller: A Cruel Picture isn’t just about scores and rankings it’s also about what it feels like to sit
through the movie and live with it afterward. This isn’t the kind of film you instantly forget; it tends to linger in your mind like
a strange nightmare you’re not sure you wanted, but can’t stop replaying.

The First-Time Viewing Experience

For many viewers, the first watch follows a familiar emotional arc:

Curiosity You’ve heard it’s extreme, banned, and influential. You’re intrigued.
Discomfort The early scenes of abuse and exploitation are rough, and the explicit content feels intentionally confrontational.
Detachment The long stretches of slow motion and silence can make you feel oddly distant, like you’re studying something
rather than simply “enjoying” a movie.
Catharsis (for some) When Madeleine finally starts striking back, there’s an undeniable release of tension even if the
violence remains deeply unsettling.
Aftershock When the credits roll, you might not know whether to give it three stars, one star, or just sit quietly
and re-evaluate your life choices.

That emotional whiplash is part of why hardcore fans rank it so highly: it’s not pleasant, but it is powerful.

Watching With Friends (Proceed With Caution)

Curious to make Thriller a group experience? A few survival tips:

Warn everyone in advance. This is not a surprise-movie-night pick. Let people know there’s sexual violence,
explicit content, and graphic imagery.
Set the tone. This isn’t a “drinks and jokes” screening. Most people will naturally fall into a quieter,
more serious vibe once the movie gets going.
Leave time to decompress afterward. The best part of a Thriller viewing is often the post-movie discussion:
Is it art? Trash? Both? Neither?

Some viewers end up using the movie as a launching point for bigger conversations about how cinema portrays violence,
consent, and justice. Others decide it’s simply too much and never revisit it. Both reactions are valid.

Rewatch Value (Believe It Or Not)

As brutal as it is, Thriller: A Cruel Picture does have rewatch appeal for certain audiences. On repeat viewings, people often pay
more attention to:

The eerie, sometimes beautiful cinematography and rural landscapes.
The odd contrast between almost documentary-style grit and stylized slow-motion violence.
Christina Lindberg’s performance especially how much she communicates without a single spoken line.

For fans of exploitation history, the movie transforms from “that shocking Swedish revenge film” into a
reference point something you compare other extreme titles to, for better or worse.

Balancing Appreciation And Critique

Perhaps the most honest way to “experience” Thriller: A Cruel Picture is to hold two truths at once:

It is deeply disturbing and, in places, arguably exploitative.
It is also a significant, influential work in the evolution of cult cinema and revenge narratives.

You can appreciate its craft, style, and influence without endorsing every choice it makes. You can also decide that,
regardless of historical importance, you simply don’t want those images in your head and that’s perfectly reasonable.

In the end, where you personally rank Thriller: A Cruel Picture will say as much about your own boundaries and tastes as it
does about the film itself. For some, it’s a five-star cult classic. For others, it’s a one-star endurance test. But either way,
it’s rarely forgotten and in the world of cinema, that’s its own kind of immortality.