Flat out balls-to-the-wall grindhouse/exploitation filmmaking collides head on with a crime noir aesthetic in Gordon Trueblood's 1973 drive in hit, The Candy Snatchers. Never before given a legitimate home video release anywhere since its theatrical run over thirty years ago, this has always been one of those often talked about but rarely seen films of genre lore but Subversive Cinema change all that now with the films DVD debut.

Jessie (Tiffany Bolling of Wicked, Wicked and Kingdom Of The Spiders), her brother Alan (Brad David) and their friend Eddie (Vince Martorano of Cornbread, Earl And Me) are a gang of small time thugs who get a bright idea one day – they decide to kidnap a high-school girl named Candy (Susan Sennett of Big Bad Mama) and stash her away in hopes of extorting a half a million dollars in diamonds from her father, Avery (Ben Piazza of The Bad News Bears), who manages a large jewelry store. The pull up behind poor Candy one day and grab her, tie her up, and blindfold her in the back of their van. They drive her up to the hills outside of Los Angeles and there they bury her alive, with a small pipe coming out of the hole she's been put in so that she won't suffocate. The crooks think they've gotten away with it and that their plan will go off without a hitch, but they're wrong – a young boy named Shawn Newton (the director's son, Christopher Trueblood, credited on screen only when the end credits role as 'Christophe') has seen them and he knows exactly where Candy is located. Too bad for Shawn he can't talk and that his parents mistreat him so often.

They notify Avery about the kidnapping and the required ransom and then they sit and wait at the drop off point for him to show up with the goods. Soon though, the crooks realize that Avery isn't coming and they don't know why and this soon becomes a very big source of stress for them. Surely a father would gladly pay whatever price necessary to save his daughter's life, right? And what about Shawn? Will he be able to convince his abusive mother that someone is buried out there in the hills or will she continue to ignore him and focus only on what he does wrong, rather than what he does right?

A few seriously cool twists and an equal amount of stand out sleazy set pieces makes The Candy Snatchers a pretty tense viewing experience. The movie starts off with a bang and is paced really well and because of that it's able to keep up the momentum until the end credits hit. Some clever foreshadowing in the form of the opening theme song and the bumper sticker on the three hoods' van gives us some clues of what is to come but for the most part the film really benefits from the unpredictability of the whole affair.

Director Gordon Trueblood worked mostly in television before helming this film, though he did later go on to write Jaws 3-D, but his experience scripting tight cop shows like Adam-12 and The Streets Of San Francisco probably helped him learn how to make the most out of a low budget and a limited amount of shooting locations. The script from writer Bryan Gindoff keeps you guessing right up until the end. Performance wise, Bolling steals the show as the vicious Jessie but Martorano as the only sympathetic character out of the three thugs turns in a pretty decent job here as well. Sennett is fine as the damsel in distress, but without much dialogue her role is limited. Surprisingly enough, 'Christophe' is able to portray a lot of emotion and some genuine childlike innocence in his completely silent role which adds a really unique element to this one that further sets it apart from other roughie/exploitation/crime films of the same era.

The DVD

Video:

Subversive has done a fine job on this 1.85.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer culled from the film's original negative. The colors jump off of the screen at you, the lighting hues used in various scenes look rich and atmospheric, and the black levels stay strong throughout. In terms of print damage there is the odd speck or scratch here and there but by and large, aside from the normal amount of expected film grain, the picture is very, very clean looking. As far as digital issues go, there aren't any mpeg compression artifacts to note but there is some mild line shimmering in a couple of spots. Thankfully it doesn't prove to be too disturbing or disruptive at all. Overall, this is a very detailed, very clean and surprisingly excellent transfer for what has been, until now, a pretty difficult film to track down.