To avoid fainting, keep repeating "It's only a movie...It's only a movie..."
It seems to be 70s time these days - Rabid was from 1977, Shock Waves from 1977 as well, and The Last House on the Left is from 1972.
The first things I noticed was the soundtrack. It's very ...70s like. Jazzy. Snazzy. You can just feel the summers of love, and can smell the weed (well, that might just be me) pervading the air. Girls are not wearing a bra, Daddy remarks upon his little girl's nipples, gives her a little gift (see below, maybe to enhance the nipples)... and one o those girls, namely one of our initial protagonist, is going to a concert to visit a gig by a band that dismembers live chickens on stage. Want to see them live.
She and another female friend of hers have no intention to go to that concert, though - they are sitting outside together, exploring the wild, drinking whisky, laughing, having fun. On their way in their car to... somewhere else... they hear of a group of escapees of violent rapists and murderers.
Cut to the violent rapists and murderers - a quite nice group of young men and one woman, whose habits include drinking, smoking, possibly listening to wild music and misbehaving.
The paths of our two parties cross when the two girls meet the youngest of the bunch, as they approach him for weed... and he takes them with him, to get some Columbian Gold. However, things don't go as they are planned.
I find this scene strangely erotic.
Meanwhile, we learn that tomorrow, one of the girls would have her birthday, and the parents are busy preparing the gifts and cake for Mari (their daughter).
Who is, in the meantime, watching helplessly as her friend gets raped.
Next day - Mari's birthday - we can see her being carried out of the flat in which she and her friend found themselves, thrown into the trunk of a car ("right on top of your friend!"), whilst the gang of misfits drives somewhere else - with their car breaking down in front of Mari's place. They take her out of the trunk, down into the dense woods. The police decides to not see the car (could cause problems, you know)... good old law enforcement. You can always rely on them.
It's suspenseful to watch the girls trying to escape from the group of violent fugitives - engaging. Something that this movie has in abundance and which new movies from the US lack is suspense. You never quite know what will happen next, the plot isn't so watered down that you could as well have none, and the plot we do have is simple, straightforward and believable. There's nothing fancy about this movie. And I mean that quite literal. Besides for the beginning, with Mari an her friend drinking and enjoying themselves, every minute of this movie is bleak and mercilessly realistic. Me like.
There's also a constant comical element contained within the movie in the form of the incompetent policemen.
Things start to turn weir when the brutes, who killed Phyllis as well as Mari, show up at the house of Mari's parents. They behave a little bit suspiciously. Junior, the youngest member of the gang and a heroin addict, has nightmares in his withdrawal symptoms about letting the gang shoot Phyllis and kill Mari. Whilst throwing up, Mari's mother hears him, comes to help him to his bed... and notices that the gift her husband gave to Mari looks the same as the chain that Junior/Willow is wearing around his neck. Suspicious, she opens one of the bags of the gang... and finds the bloodied clothes of her daughter. A plan begins to form.
One hell of a bloody plan.
All in all, a pretty enjoyable movie with a satisfying plot, satisfying violence, realistic behaviour, and it looks pretty good for 1972.
7.85/10 things that aren't too little, just afraid *grins*
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