Between 1984 and 1986, WVEU (Channel 69) in Atlanta dropped its VEU affiliate programming and served up a schedule of cartoons, music videos, syndicated series and low-budget feature films. Among the latter were such Crown International drive-in faves as The Stepmother (1972) and Trip with the Teacher (1975) starring Zalman King in his most wacked-out performance (and probably the reason that he gave up acting for producing). Other ‘can you believe this?’ oddities that turned up were The Baby (1973) in which a man-hating mom (Ruth Roman) raises her son to be a gurgling, helpless man-baby and The Psychopath (1975) about a deranged kid’s show host who murdered abusive parents. You never knew what was going to turn up on Channel 69 but for a film buff it was a treasure trove of marginalized cinema. It was here that I first saw The Candy Snatchers (1973), a film which in many ways is just as misanthropic, sleazy and uncompromising as Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left which came out the following year. It was actually shocking to see this movie play in a late afternoon slot where school kids could easily tune in but the simple truth is that hardly anybody watched Channel 69 making it easy for something like The Candy Snatchers to pass unnoticed by all but a few.
Possibly inspired by the real-life Barbara Jane Mackle abduction case (the kidnapping of the Emory University co-ed occurred in 1968), The Candy Snatchers follows a trio of kidnappers – Eddy (Vince Martorano), an ex-army veteran, and a warped brother and sister, Alan (Brad David) & Jessie (Tiffany Bolling) – who apprehend the daughter of Avery Phillips (Ben Piazza), a jewelry store manager. Candy (Susan Sennett), the teen-aged victim, is blindfolded, gagged and placed in a shallow grave with an air pipe while her father is warned that his daughter will be killed if he doesn’t meet the gang’s demands of a fortune in diamonds. What the trio doesn’t realize is that Phillips is Candy’s stepfather and stands to inherit more than a million dollars in the event of his stepdaughter’s death.
A second subplot introduces a mute young boy named Sean (Christopher Trueblood, son of the director) who witnesses Candy’s entombment but his strange reaction to it suggests he might be mentally challenged or possibly even a threat to the victim (he playfully drops peanuts down her air pipe and then toys with the air flow!).
Also in the mix are Candy’s alcoholic mom (Dolores Dorn of Sam Fuller’s Underworld U.S.A., 1961) and adulterous father (he’s having an affair with his secretary) and Sean’s hateful, bickering parents. Needless to say, the kidnapping goes awry with numerous twists and double crosses before it all ends in one of the most nihilistic endings of all time. And all of the story threads play out in a much grimmer portrait of Los Angeles than seen in most films set in the ‘city of angels.’ It should also be noted that The Candy Snatchers was photographed by Robert Maxwell, a cameraman who has specialized in low-budget wonders and exploitation flicks such as Girl in Gold Boots (1968), The Ramrodder (1969), Sweet Sweetback’s Baadassss Song (1971) and The Centerfold Girls (1974).
If you can overlook some of the truly terrible performances, rock-bottom production values, and the overstated folksy theme song (“Money is the Root of All Happiness”), you will discover a truly disturbing little movie that follows no formula but the rhythm of its own crazed drummer. Directed by Guerdon Trueblood, the film is truly a product of its era, fueled by a sense of outrage and anger that was indirectly a reaction to Viet Nam, Watergate and the Nixon administration. The Candy Snatchers flaunts its contempt of society through its main characters who will do literally anything for money but the film is more than a contemporary film noir about human greed.
It’s also about the victimization of the young and innocent with the teenaged Candy reduced to human collateral and Sean the damaged end result of his mother’s constant abuse. Outside his terrible homelife, Sean’s exposure to the real world is equally bleak; he not only witnesses the kidnappers bury Candy but sees her raped as well. (And here you have to wonder what was going through the mind of this child actor during the making of the film?). Yet, the movie’s depiction of Sean is just one of several unsettling but compelling details which make The Candy Snatchers unique for an exploitation film.
There are certainly no heroes in The Candy Snatchers but of all the loathsome characters on display, Eddy is the most complicated for audiences. Alternating between wanting to save the girl from certain death and resisting his urge to molest her, Eddy occasionally reacts from a guilty conscious which makes him the closest thing the film has to a sympathetic protagonist – until he brutally rapes Jessie in the bathtub.
The Candy Snatchers goes in directions no mainstream Hollywood film would ever attempt and is one more example of why the seventies looks like the golden age of the exploitation film today. Some of the most interesting and original low-budget films, aimed at drive-in and grind house audiences, emerged from this period – Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes (1977), Paul Bartel’s Private Parts (1972), George Romero’s Martin (1977), Jeff Lieberman’s Blue Sunshine (1976). Now, we have another title – long out of circulation – to add to this list.
In recent years, Tiffany Bolling commented on The Candy Snatchers in an interview for the Temple of Schlock website: “Oh, that was the worst film in the history of the world. It was so bad…that was a time during my career when I was doing cocaine, and I didn’t really know what I was doing, and I was very angry about the way that my career had gone in the industry…and what I’d been faced with, and the opportunities that I had and had not been given. And wanting to work as an actor, just saying, hey, I want to work; I don’t want to do this stuff, but I need to pay my rent. Of course, I didn’t know the Lord then either…I don’t know why I did it, [but] I did it, and the hardest thing for me, as I look back on it.”
The actress might dismiss The Candy Snatchers and other low-budget efforts she made over the years but some of her earlier work has acquired cult followings thanks to their release on DVD and Blu-ray such as Bonnie’s Kids (1972), a sleazy crime thriller, Wicked, Wicked (1973), a murder mystery shot in a split-screen technique called “Duo-Vision,” the drive-in classic Kingdom of the Spiders (1977), co-starring William Shatner, and Love Scenes (1984), in which Bolling plays the star of an erotic film.
In September 2005, The Candy Snatchers was released by Subversive Cinema a “Deluxe Collector’s Edition” DVD. The disc included several extra features: the original trailer, a stills gallery, bios on the cast and crew, and best of all, a featurette, “The Women of Candy Snatchers.” The latter is composed of interviews with actresses Susan Sennett and Tiffany Bolling and comes off more like a therapy session for both actresses. For Ms. Sennett, the film seemed to represent the nadir of her career, one that reminded her of a sad and difficult time. Ms. Bolling, on the other hand, thought she was doing something radically different that would bring her more exciting and challenging roles. Looking back, she realizes The Candy Snatchers actually killed any momentum her career had had to that point, not that you could say Tiffany Bolling was ever cast for her “acting” talent. The DVD also featured a foldout reprint of the Italian theatrical poster for the film and three postcards.
An even better option is the Blu-ray/DVD combo pack released by Vinegar Syndrome in February 2020 and featuring a new restoration in 4K from the original 35mm camera negative. The pack also comes with a slew of new supplements such as interviews with director Guerdon Trueblood and actor Vince Martorano.
Other links of interest:
https://templeofschlock.blogspot.com/2009/06/breakfast-with-tiffany-interview-with.html
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/TheCandySnatchers
Piazza, Ben Daniel
Cinema Sojourns 