The Candy Snatchers (1973) – DVD

**½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras A
starring Tiffany Bolling, Susan Sennet, Ben Piazza, Vince Martorano
screenplay by Bryan Gindoff
directed by Guerdon Trueblood

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Hypocrisy and bet-hedging are exploitation hallmarks. Cecil B. DeMille is the patron saint of this cinematic subset, where the money shots are often placed between moralistic quotation marks in order to give outs to the voyeuristic viewer. When The Candy Snatchers tries to convince itself it's about more than the rape and grunting for which it's clearly been designed to showcase, it's entertainment enough. This is a film where dollarbook Marx rubs shoulders with the sub-Sirkian moral inversion of bad people good/good people bad–a film whose attempts at social commentary and "drama" are so strained as to run the gamut from puzzling to hilarious. And though it eventually has to follow up on the leering and brutality that is its stock-and-trade, its delusional contortions are elaborate enough to dazzle and amaze when its mission statement falls to pieces.

"Money is the root of all happiness" is what passes for politics in this movie–and in case we miss the slogan, it's featured both in the atonal theme song and on the bumper of a van belonging to a trio of kidnappers. This second-string Wild Bunch consists of calculating blonde Jessie (Tiffany Bolling), her mad-dog killer brother Alan (Brad David), and vacillating veteran Eddy (Vince Martorano), and their plot is to snatch 16-year-old Candy (Susan Sennet) and hold her for ransom in a pit. Unfortunately, the victim's stepfather (Ben Piazza) isn't terribly concerned–if she dies, he inherits a million dollars and gets to run off with his secretary. The whole thing quickly degenerates into bickering and finger-pointing; Candy's only hope is the autistic child Sean Newton (Christopher Trueblood, director Guerdon Trueblood's son) who happens upon her helpless corpus.

You see, the kidnappers aren't so bad–they just want to get ahead, in a materialistic society, where everything is for sale. Dig it? Never mind that Alan admits to killing twelve people, or that Eddy for no apparent reason rapes Jessie, or that there's a weeping teenager at the bottom of a hole in the backyard–everyone has their reasons, making this Jean Renoir's first drive-in movie. Stranger still is the subplot involving Sean, whose mute incomprehension is treated with scorn by his family (especially ludicrous mother Bonnie Boland) and some bearded loser I mistook for a shrink before I realized I had no idea who he was. The ultimate outsider! Lost and abandoned in a cruel and callous world! Incidentally, "autistic" in this movie is merely a euphemism for "can't really talk."

To be sure, this is ripe material for some pre-melodrama Fassbinder quickie, but the whole thing is done without irony–beyond, of course, the showpiece ironies designed to make it look dashingly jaded. Of course Alan asks of the burial plot: "How did you think of it?" And of course Jessie's response is: "I didn't–saw it on TV." Ah, the degradation of the younger generation. The threadbare cover for the enterprise is riddled with zingers like that and would probably earn it a full three stars for camp were it not for the unpleasant rape scenes. One can barely overlook the moment where Eddy attacks Jessie, which is a transparent ruse to get ex-Playmate Bolling's kit off, but Alan's assault of bound-and-helpless Candy is guaranteed to make you queasy. It's here that the film's fig leaf of importance falls off to reveal something less appealing than limp statement-mongering or straight-up, bell-bottomed cheese.

THE DVD
Subversive ushers The Candy Snatchers to DVD in an astoundingly clear 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer. The image is super-sharp with bright, vivid colours. While saturation is perhaps kicked up a notch too high (light greens are practically radioactive), for a film of this stripe you could hardly imagine a better presentation. The Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo sound is almost as good, a hair soft yet completely free of unwanted noise or defects.

Extras include "The Women of Candy Snatchers" (31 mins.), in which ex-teenage victim Susan Sennet and ex-kidnapper Tiffany Bolling revisit their roles with depressing candour. Anyone involved in the male-gaze debate will want to hear the moderate, grown-up Sennet describe her horror and sadness at being tossed in a pit and buried or stripped at knifepoint for her rape scene. Bolling–now politically "to the right of [George] Bush"–is more upbeat, at least pleased that she looked good nude but still disappointed at the general brutality of show business. That the non-union and permit-free production was gruelling and unpleasant is par for the grindhouse course, but the regrets of the intensely civilized Sennet haunted me more than any DVD extra ever has. Subversive having the guts (or obliviousness) to air her gently scathing remarks seems incredible to me, as they should give exploitation fans serious pause. Also included are bios for Bolling, Sennet, Ben Piazza, Vincent Martorano, Guerdon Trueblood, and Bryan Gindoff, a lobby card gallery, PG- and R-rated trailers for the film, and trailers for Metal Skin, The Freakmaker, Battlefield Baseball, and The Witch Who Came from the Sea.

92 minutes; NR; 1.85:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 2.0 (Mono); DVD-9 + DVD-5; Region One; Subversive