The Kidnapped Heiress

The French film poster for SEXUS (1965).

When it comes to crime films, what’s your pleasure? The genre breaks down into so many sub-categories that it helps if you have a particular theme in mind. Bank Heists? Home Invasions? Police procedurals? Gang wars? How about kidnapped heiresses? James Hadley Chase’s 1939 pulp fiction novel No Roses for Miss Blandish is a classic example of this edgy situation and has been adapted for films at least twice – the 1948 British noir of the same title starring Jack La Rue and The Grissom Gang (1971), Robert Aldrich’s violent remake with Kim Darby as the unfortunate victim. Even real-life cases involving kidnapped heiresses have inspired numerous crime dramas such as the 1974 kidnapping of Patty Hearst which spawned Abducted (1975), a sleazy exploitation rip-off from director Joseph Zito, The Ordeal of Patty Hearst, a 1979 made-for-TV dramatization, Patty Hearst (1988), Paul Schrader’s take on the events with Natasha Richardson in the title role, and probably the best of the lot, Robert Stone’s 2004 documentary, Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst. But, if you want to see an arty, minimalistic treatment of the kidnapped heiress theme with erotic interludes and a cool jazz score by trumpeter Chet Baker, look no further than L’enfer dans la peau (1965), a French softcore crime drama from director/writer/producer Jose Benazeraf, and released in the U.S. in an edited form entitled Sexus.

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Don’t Mess with a Vietnam Vet

Among the slew of Hollywood movies that followed in the final days of the Vietnam War and used that as the subject, Rolling Thunder (1977) is a fascinating aberration. On the one hand, it flirts with serious issues and societal problems addressed in such post-Vietnam dramas as Coming Home (1978) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989) but it is also a violent revenge film that exploits a Vietnam veteran as an avenging angel.

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