Quartile rating: 6/10 · 1 rating
On the eve of her 17th birthday, Mari and friend Phyllis set off from her family home to attend a rock concert in the city. Attempting to score some drugs on the way, the pair run afoul of a group of vicious crooks, headed up by the sadistic Krug.
Wes Craven's debut is a raw, deeply uncomfortable rape-and-revenge exploitation film that holds historical significance as a progenitor of the genre. The plot is threadbare and tonally inconsistent, lurching between brutal sadism and absurd slapstick comedy involving bumbling cops that undercuts the horror. Acting is uneven across the board — some performers deliver genuinely unsettling work (David Hess is menacing) but the overall cast is amateur and ragged. Cinematography is grainy and rough, functional at best, lending a grimy vérité quality that was partially intentional but also a product of its extremely low budget. The ending — the parents' revenge — is abrupt and unsatisfying, lacking the catharsis the setup demands. Novelty earns a modest bump: while the rape-revenge formula would become a genre staple, Craven's film was one of its earliest and most confrontational articulations, and its raw ugliness gave it a singular, transgressive identity that distinguished it from contemporary genre fare.