Northern Blights: Sleazy Swedes
The pulverizing popularity of Scandinavian crime fiction (Stieg Larsson, Henning Mankell) has brought attention to the dark side underneath the Swedish social-welfare utopia. But in fact Swedish movies have been exposing the blood and guts for decades. “Swedish Sensationsfilms” is a 320-page catalog of Scandinavian skin and sin, packed with movies that demand to be ogled, not pondered. The book reveals that beneath the placid Swedish psyche there boils an insatiable appetite for trash, sleaze and debauchery. Some film scholars, however, might take exception with volume’s claim that Ingmar Bergman’s “The Virgin Spring” spawned a cycle of slasher flicks.
