Ready Your Shovels!

Classics and soon-to-be-classics! With “Unearthed”, SLASH ventures out to (re)discover treasures. This year also sees a tribute to one of the true giants of genre cinema. 

The Grim Reaper feared the day Chuck Norris knocked on his door. Need we say more about the legendary status this man achieved over his lifetime? Because he no longer walks among us, we want to pay him due tribute—with a picture unlike any other in his filmography. Silent Rage was tailor-made for Norris, yet it spices up his trademark action with science-fiction and—cue Frankenstein!—classic horror elements. The movie also seems caught between two stools: made in 1982, it came after the early martial-art flicks but before Missing in Action, which would redefine his image as an action hero. A welcome chance, then, to discover this hidden jewel in the master’s oeuvre—and the origin of the saying: monsters tell Chuck Norris stories if they want to scare their children.

Another title sees characters kicking and punching their way through the plot—a movie that, until recently, had circulated only as pirated VHS copies. Forty years later, an original print has resurfaced. At SLASH, its 4K restoration now celebrates its European premiere, and if you’re still not sold, peruse its film description—or simply read this sentence: If He-Man and the Masters of the Universe had done LSD with the Shaw brothers while churning out a martial-arts-horror-fantasy concoction, Thrilling Bloody Sword would have been the result.

Marcus Stiglegger, conversely, pulls another masterpiece from its erstwhile pigeonhole: Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom. The film and cultural scholar discusses the significance of Pasolini’s scandalous picture in a lecture and panel discussion following the screening, as the film may seem even more urgent to us today than it did to contemporary audiences. For a little taste, read his essay.

It is not the only film being reassessed in this year’s “Unearthed” section. Together with our guest, Swedish ’70s icon Christina Lindberg (see Dana Linssen’s portrait), we look back on what may be her most remarkable work, the rape-revenge epic Thriller: A Cruel Picture, in which graphic exploitation shares the screen with a healthy slab of empowerment. And one riveting life story.

And on top of everything—how could it be any other way?—§Freaks§, the lifeblood of the festival. As usual, it rounds off this year’s edition.