Rumor Mill: Kidnapped Movie

So my little foray into the past at the close of my RE:A coverage put me in a nostalgic mood, and while I’m waiting with bated breath on this week’s release of Ghost in the Shell 2, I’ll continue down memory lane. Who among you has heard anything about a picture called Kidnapped Coed? Kidnapped Lover? The Kidnapper? Date With a Kidnapper? House of Terror? Unless you’re a rabid consumer of everything Something Weird has to offer (which, of course, you should be), this stream of genero AKA’s probably means next to nothing, as you are probably not aware of the stunted auteurship of one Frederick R. Friedel.

The anonymous grindhouse title Kidnapped Coed does precious little to evoke the rare viewing experience that awaits the audience, but once you’ve seen it you may ask, what brief combination of words could really do the trick? Sandra Morley is the innocent young daughter of a famous millionaire, which turns out to be more of a bane than a boon when she is absconded with by a tough-as-nails extortionist Eddie Mattlock. The kidnapper drives the schoolgirl deep into the North Carolina countryside where they encounter the strangest cross-section of their fellow man, dodge psychotic hillbillies and highway robbers, and eventually learn to love one another. Each moment of its 88 minute runtime is, if not constantly exactly action-packed, gorgeous to look at, transforming naugahyde upholstery into mother of pearl and jarred preserves into polished jewels. Even the seediest hotel room and the most derelict country lane are imbued with a spectral glow in Friedel’s vision. When the audience is not rapt to this scintillating spectacle, it will be taken aback by the blackly comic dialogue (“When it is my time to die I will most certainly be dead”) and the abrupt interludes of grisly violence. What else could you want, right?

Well, if you actually thought of anything, you probably won’t get it anyway. Coed was followed closely by a grimmer, dirtier, less patient genre effort called Axe. Axe concerns a trio of two-bit crooks who, after dousing a storekeep in Coca Cola and enacting a William Tell routine with her produce, descend upon a rural farmhouse inhabited only by a comatose old man and his teenage daughter Lisa. The unsuspecting crooks decide to make themselves at home, never realizing that their pubescent hostess is more than their equal in terms of efficient dispatch of human life. Lisa has spent her days in total isolation, slaughtering chickens and feeding their raw eggs to her vacant grandfather, and now that the stasis has been broken, she finds herself receiving Repulsion-like visions of what is to come, and she goes about the business of restoring the peace with a straight razor and the titular weapon.

Axe is not nearly so lovingly crafted as its older sister, and Friedel’s decreasing patience and sympathy are apparent. It does seem to have made a couple of video nasty lists, and the director’s distinctive sense of humor is still in effect, but his frustration remains to this day due to the fact that the blazing Harry Novak emblem on the front of Friedel’s films has outshined the director’s own name, and thus the films were seen not as products of a burgeoning auteur but as droplets in an ocean of generally dismissible sleaze. So: a little bird told me, not so long ago, that Friedel has been cooking up a plan to cut the two films together and release the hybrid to have it seen in the appropriate light.

Such recognition is richly deserved. Though Axe has its share of flaws, Coed vacillates between jarring violence and unadulterated sweetness with remarkable grace. Comparisons to David Lynch are unavoidable, and this is one of the only cases in which the parallel is truly apt. More than a few amateur critics will bandy about the term “Lynchian” as a cheap faux-literate way of saying “weird”, as if Lynch’s strangeness were arbitrary and indistinct. But Friedel’s brand of strange can only be described to the uninitiated as Lynchian, favoring old hat noir situations descending into unplumbed depths of weirdness, particularly vis-à-vis his cast of humanity oddities – the ominous elderly folk, seedy sadists, and genuine eccentrics who form the gauntlet through which his protagonists must pass. What really justifies this parallel to Lynch, however, is Friedel’s pervasive sense of tenderness; his ability to make even the most tacky and blasé Americana appear lush and luminous, his Leonean consideration of human facial expressions, his revelation of naïveté surviving under even the most squalid conditions, all point to a persisting romance that distinguishes the director from other hacks and pornographers operating under the auspices of Harry Novak. And let it not escape observation that Coed predates Blue Velvet by a decade. Who knows how it might have reflected upon Friedel if the aficionados of art house and grindhouse fare who embraced Blue Velvet had the recent memory of Kidnapped Coed in mind? It would be justice served if Friedel garnered greater visibility for his early accomplishments. But how plausible is his proposal for achieving this?

The dichotomy of Sandra’s coming of age and Lisa’s descent into psychosis might make for interesting storytelling, to say nothing of the curious pair of leading ladies the film would have in Coed’s snow white copperheaded peculiarity Leslie Ann Rivers (whose voice seems to be a full quarter century ahead of her body) and Axe’s somnambulant nymphet Leslie Lee. The trouble would lie in reconciling the two faces of Jack Canon. Superfox Jack is the male lead of both films, devil in the latter and angel in disguise in the former. Mr. Canon, who is something like a lanky laconic lovechild of Clint Eastwood and Harry Dean Stanton, is an out-and-out thrill-seeking sadist in Axe, but only toys with ersatz hardboiledness in order to send money to his ailing mama in the deeply romantic Coed. One could easily be presented as the past of the other, but will not Axe’s pervasive angst strike a dissonant note with Coed’s compassion? And how well will the filth Friedel allowed to filter into Axe sit next to Coed’s relative radiance? With any luck Friedel will show us all how it’s done. If anybody knows the guy, say something encouraging to him. And re: his thankyou's from Coed, get him to tell me who Adolph is.