Horror master Wes Craven got his feature start with this controversial twist on Ingmar Bergman's THE VIRGIN SPRING. Up until this film, violence on screen hadn't been so cruel and twisted. Or so real.
Mari Collingwood (Sandra Cassel, TEENAGE HITCH-HIKERS) and her older friend Phyllis Stone (Lucy Grantham) set out to celebrate Mari's 16th birthday at a metal concert in the city. Meanwhile, her loving parents Dr. John and Estelle Collingwood (Gaylord St. James & Cynthia Carr) set up a small surprise party for their daughter. As the Collingwoods go about their day, we also meet up with escaped murders and rapists Krug Stillo (David Hess, SWAMP THING) and Fred "Weasel" Podowski (Fred J. Lincoln) along with Krug's meek son Junior (Marc Sheffler) and the wild woman Sadie (Jeramie Rain, THE ABDUCTORS).
Mari and Phyllis meet Junior while looking for drugs, which leads to the girls being abducted. Dr. and Mrs. Collingwood call the cops when Mari doesn't come home. The next day, the killers throw the girls in the trunk and hit the road, but they just happen to break down right in front of Mari's house. As the girls try to escape from the sadistic killers, the bumbling sheriff (Marshall Anker, SHAMUS) and deputy (Martin Kove, THE KARATE KID) begin to put two and two together.
What Craven really does well is taking the time to set up the characters before the horrible drama starts. Mari is very innocent and easily corruptible. We fear her leaving the idyllic woods of her home for the harsh city, because we just know something is going to go wrong. The next thing that Craven does brutally well is to not sugar coat his vile villains. They are the worst kind of predators, but yet he never makes them cartoonish, thus making them even scarier.
The raw film stock and handheld camera style also add to the realism of the narrative. The scenes in the forest are not as graphic as one might remember, but it’s the cruelty of the killers and the tension that something really bad is going to happen that makes those scenes so hard to bare.
Where Craven goes really wrong is with the humor elements. The tension that the film builds is great and comic relief is nice, but the buffoonish cops are never funny and seem like they have been imported from a bad CANNONBALL RUN rip-off. I was so reminded of John Ford's problems with injecting humor into THE SEARCHERS, but to a more extreme degree. Ford never goes as harsh as this film does, but he also never went as silly.
For those who know the ending, which was "borrowed" from THE VIRGIN SPRING, one knows the film turns into a revenge tale. However, Bergman had a grander message when dealing with revenge — Craven just dwells on the bloodlust. The audience can relate to the revenge elements, but the extreme "shocking" level to which Craven takes it undermines his characters. The good guys do things that I just couldn't buy them doing. At least not these good guys.
Some of the elements work so well they are unforgettable, however too many times the film undermines the good parts with really bad parts. Yet in the end, this film still works, because the ending is satisfying. It works more as fantasy then reality, but in making the audience support bloody justice, Craven has worked his most devilish trick on the audience.
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks
