Candy Snatchers
The 1970s were undoubtedly the glory years of dirty, grimy, sleazy, low budget exploitation films, commonly known as “grindhouse cinema”. In the hallowed confines of 42nd Street in Time Square, New York (along with every other American movie theatre in any rundown, crime ridden, disreputable area of the country), an audience of degenerates deciding that they need a respite from the outside world of pimps, whores, drugs, and sickos would sit down and engage in films that pushed unheard of boundaries for decadence while the occasional rape or murder would sometimes occur amongst the theatre crowd itself. While some of these films have lived to see a new day in the era of HD and blu rays, not all that many of them are exactly notable in terms of quality, with only extreme violence or over the top acting being their saving graces. But some of them also came at the hands of filmmakers who would try to give it that little extra depth in the writing process, and this 1973 release (long unseen as it was said to literally be that depraved until it was actually seen and appreciated more by modern audiences) would prove to possess just that in the hands of writer / director Guerdon Trueblood, adding all kinds of little touches to the story that still remain audacious to this day (with obvious inspirations for later classics such as Ruthless People and even Big Lebowski). The plot concerns three misfits hatching a plot to kidnap a schoolgirl in order to force her diamond store manager father to hand over the place’s inventory to them and become insanely rich in the process. The trio is led by their female mastermind Jessie (Tiffany Bolling, a b movie queen of the era who later stated that this film ruined her career), a beautiful, blue eyed blonde who claims to have come up with her plan from watching a lot of TV shows. She is joined by her brother Alan (Brad David), an ultra narcissistic pretty boy with a misogynist streak a mile wide, and Eddy (Vincent Martorano) a bloated dumpling of a man who actually has a conscience but only takes part because of his insanely unrequited love for the female ringleader. Their target is Candy (Susan Sennett, soon to be married off to Graham Nash of Crosby, Stills And Nash), a cute but not stunningly beautiful teenager who is so naïve that she accepts rides home from strangers and throughout the whole movie maintains a Jiminy Cricket like sense of optimism despite being in such horrific danger. Their mark is in her father who manages the diamond store, someone who they think will give in easily if not for the fact that he is really a sociopathic danger to society in his own right, in reality Candy’s stepdad who married her mother for the substantial family fortune which she possessed, and is cheerfully awaiting the news of Candy’s imminent death so that he can stake his claim on her inheritance. As played by Ben Piazza (who later died of AIDS), we even get a bit of a twisted James Spader type vibe out of the character. Meanwhile, the big guy accomplice of the trio has taken on a protective attitude for little Candy, attempting to shield her from the rape happy narcissistic brother while also starting to get achings of overwhelming lust for his pretty ringleader Jessie, stretching to get himself out of the friendzone with a nice spontaneous rape of his own (after confessing to Candy just how much he loves Jessie) which leaves Candy alone and vulnerable for the forced advances of the pretty boy brother who later on even seduces and then kills Candy’s drunken lush of a mother (who believes the whole time that her daughter is having a sleepover because her duplicitous husband calmly told her so). But the movie’s storytelling masterstroke comes with the out of left field introduction of its most memorable character: a 4 year old heavily autistic little boy who lives nearby and manages to be a witness to EVERYTHING (including the rapes) when he’s not embarrassing his dad in front of his asshole boss or having the shit getting beaten out of him by his completely fed up mother. As played by the director’s actual young son, it’s not known for sure if the boy is actually autistic in real life (since he never acted or worked on a movie ever again), but his performance here as Sean Newton is at times, touching, infuriating and even downright creepy, literally showing almost total indifference to poor Candy’s plight (when he could very easily have saved her just by telling somebody where she was) and always shown throughout as being close around unbeknownst to the kidnappers before playing a key role in the unforgettable finale of the film. To have the character of a nonverbal, autistic child be (practically) the main character of a film this dark and twisted represents the greater achievement on display here, the seemingly prescient and cynical observation that at the end of the day, NOBODY is really a good person with only Candy’s youth preventing her from having her own soul be corrupted at this time as the story emphasizes that goodness is not a given ever with anybody. Couple that with a catchy, folk music theme song and you’ve got a bloody, nasty grindhouse classic that is way better written and presented than it has any right to be…
8/10