I did finally finish watching this movie. It took way longer than I expected. Seventeen-year-old Mari (Sandra Cassell) and her best friend Phyllis (Lucy Grantham) are off to the city for a concert when they run into a gang of killers led by Krug (David Hess). The two girls are kidnapped, taken to the woods, tortured, raped, and eventually killed. But when the killers' car breaks down, they unknowingly take refuge in the house of Mari's parents (Richard Towers and Cynthia Carr).
This is a grindhouse take on The Virgin Spring and it absolutely still lives up to its classic status. It has been remade, referenced, and resurrected for the last forty years and I don't see that changing anytime soon. This helped kick off an entire sub-genre of revenge horror and the exploitative gore paved the way for the slashers of the late-70s and early-80s.
That being said, it is very much a product of its time. The soundtrack in particular is pure 70s and by any stretch of the definition, this fails a political correctness test. Hell, by the standards of the 70s, it fails a political correctness test. It was designed to be shockingly violent, crude, and hard to watch. Keep that in mind and you should be okay.
It's currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.
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