Thriller - A Cruel Documentary

This is the saga of a film lover.

Once upon a time, there was a little boy who loved films

most of all in his life,

but the love was not returned.

He saw his first movie in 1947, when he was just 4 years old.

It was about elephants in India and a tiger.

Extremely exciting.

Growing up, he spent every Sunday at the movies.

One, two, three movies a Sunday.

In high school, he wrote exam work about motion picture history

and political film influence, like Triumph of the Will,

Leni Riefenstahl's propaganda masterpiece for the despicable Hitler regime.

Never make the mistake to underestimate the power of a good film.

After joining the army working as a sergeant

with a tank squadron,

he still had his mind set on film.

The Film Lover applied to the Swedish film school,

was tested for two weeks,

and then, "Hurrah!"

The Film Lover was accepted as the youngest ever to join

the film school.

Only 21 years old.

Now, things started moving fast.

Film school and then assistant to mega star

film director Ingmar Bergman as unit manager

on Persona and Hour of the Wolf.

He worked as production manager for other feature films,

but then the Film Lover sat down and wrote his first feature film himself.

A heartfelt, poetic children's film with a Beethoven soundtrack.

How Marie Met Fredrik got positive reviews,

represented Sweden at the San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain,

but flopped totally financially, and our Film Lover was broke.

He had to repair his finances.

Now having responsibility for a family, he had to figure out what to do.

Our Film Lover genius decided to write the most commercial film ever written

with no limits.

The film was written in three days and nights on an old typewriter.

Those were the days before computers.

Our young Film Lover's fingers were actually bleeding

after those three days, from not only mental

but also physical strain.

Film lover was now working as head of the film department

at a big advertising agency,

producing commercials for Saab Automobile.

He secured a loan and used three months of paid overtime to produce Thriller:

A Cruel Picture.

On the 6th of October, 1972, composer Ralph Lundsten...

Who composed the score for Thriller... Had his birthday party.

The day after, the shooting started.

When I read this script, I spontaneously thought

that this was something very different

from what I did earlier.

Because I had thrown away my clothes

and that I got my roles, more or less, for my body, of course,

and I was no driven actor. After a couple of movies,

this was still what I wanted.

I was also a cover girl doing shoots for Penthouse

and Lui and so on.

But I felt that it was movies I thought I wanted to keep on doing.

This was kind of a revenge I could do on the other movies

I had done.

Because this one was so very different.

And I did not really reflect over the fact that it was violent,

black and dark.

I just thought that this role suits me great.

Because it reminded me a bit of myself and my own life experiences.

I felt at home in the role and what Vibenius also had noted

is that I am pretty lousy at lines.

Therefore, he made this girl mute in the movie.

That was good for me, because then you took away that obstacle,

so I could set focus on the physical acting.

That I by now was very good at.

I do not think he wrote this role for me.

Why he chose me, I think, depends on

that I by this time was very famous.

After all, I was the most famous cover girl in Sweden.

I had also done Rötmanad,

a movie with one of that time's most famous directors,

Janne Haldoff.

He created my role in a very ingenious way, I think.

He let me practice karate.

I learned about weapon handling and driving,

because I did not have a driving license at this time.

In some way, I floated into the role in a very natural way

and good way.

I became Madeleine or Frigga, that was her name at a later time.

Christina Lindberg had been trained for her fights by stunt coordinator

Lars Lundgren for two months before shooting.

The thing that I was going to be one-eyed for most of the movie

made me walk with this patch.

Not out around people, but at home, I always had the patch

on to get used to the distance control

that gets when you got a patch on your eye.

Hi, my name is Bo Sunnefeldt, and I'm a fairly new 75 year-old.

In late autumn 1972... that is almost a half a centrury ago...

I participated in the recording of the movie Thriller.

That I ended up there was because I was a part of Sweden's

first stuntman group, called Action Man Stunt Team.

Lead by a guy named Jan Kreigsman.

Jan was very innovative

and saw a space for stuntmen in TV and movie production in Sweden.

When it comes to the movie Thriller,

the idea was that Frigga was going to shoot me with a shotgun.

So the audience would really get chills.

In different stunt scenes, we used a high speed camera.

Which means you can film everything in ultra rapid.

The fight sequences were shot in 3,000 frames per second.

The normal action is 24 frames per second.

This super slow motion was shot and created with cameras unique

for that time.

The same ones used by Swedish intelligence forces filming experiments

with missiles.

I just knew my part In this,

I had no clue on the story in general.

I come there in the morning and meet the guys of the film making.

They say, "We want you to stay up there and get shot by Frigga,

and you fall down here."

It was a concrete floor.

I figured it was about six meters high.

They probably saw that I was a bit pale on my nose.

So they said, "Don't worry, we built it up with empty cartons,”

and he held up his hand like this.

It was over two meters high.

"So come back in an hour or so and it will be done."

When I came there I saw that it was not like that,

but it was like this.

And you did not want to show you were weak,

but she probably saw I was a bit pensive.

Then they said, "Sorry, we were out of cartons."

Okay.

I was quite alone as a stuntman in Sweden.

It was me first, then it became Jan Kreigsman and me,

and after that, Dan Linde came as well.

It was only the three of us, so there were not many to choose from for Bo.

I was not so satisfied afterwards, because I thought it looked so unreal

when you walked around in super slow motion.

Then it came out a long snake with blood from the mouth.

So it took forever before you hit the ground.

I thought it was almost excessive, but that's a matter of taste.

The film team was very small,

with young Film Lover as director and producer, plus eleven people,

including the sound effects guy.

This was the second film in film history to be shot

in the Swedish super 16mm format

with a modified A a ton camera.

The whole film, with extremely short shooting time,

editing at night time, and music produced during weekends,

was produced in 78 days from the first day of shooting

'til the final sound mix, and for less than 40,000 US dollars.

The blow up from 16mm to 35mm was done

in January 1973.

Heinz Hopf was great in the film.

He was often typecast as the bad guy, though.

There you go, little cutie.

So, here is how it looks.

You became addicted to heroin,

and not just any amphetamine,

it's the hardest drug that exists.

You have become both physically and mentally dependent.

If you don't get your dose, you die within 48 hours.

But we are not getting into trouble, right?

If you just do as I say, I will get you your two injections a day.

The third movie I did during my career,

I played against Heinz Hopf, and Heinz Hopf was actually -

a very upbeat dramatist at that time.

A very reputable actor. But then he had a villanious look, which fit very well,

especially in Thriller.

So that part was written for him.

Heinz and I came along very well and I think he

was an amazing person.

He was a good support when I made Thriller,

because I did not feel I had that support in Vibenius.

Christina Lindberg was very professional and the best actress Film Lover

ever worked with.

She did a great job in the film,

portraying a beautiful and strong woman

who finally overcomes her captors without becoming evil.

Christina was driving an original Swedish police car,

with sirens and blue flashing lights on, all without a license,

which caused some trouble.

The thing that was a bit typical for this movie

was that he did not cancel the scenes

we filmed at, but all of a sudden people

on the streets or any other place could

simply be at our recording location.

I especially remember one time...

We were filming outside Drottningholm, a castle just outside of Stockholm,

and it was a scene where I was going to slide with the police car

in a parking lot towards a small, narrow avenue.

The photographer had laid down on the ground,

just where I was going to stop the car. I guess I was a good driver

at that time, anyhow.

I did not run him over.

Me, in a full uniform with a black coat,

the gunshot, the patch on my eye,

my whole outfit in the movie. I drive forward, stop,

slams open the doors and take my gunshot pointing in this narrow avenue.

I was not going to shoot, just point.

When I take down my gun, I see people running for their lives.

People really ran for their lives, and of course,