Sunburst

The original poster
















a.k.a. Slashed dreams
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072179/
”Rape is Something That Happens to Someone Else” as the tagling says.
In this ”back to the nature” and pre darker time drama movie we follow Jenny (Kathrine Baumann) and her friend Robert. They are leaving school to
visit Jennys friend Michael Sutherland (a young Robert "Freddy
Kreuger" Englund) who have dropped out of school and lives in a small cabin in the woods somewhere.

Jenny


has just left her abusive and a bit violent boyfriend (as violent in that sense that he shouts and wanna start trouble) and feels that there are something more to life then just the ordinary; school, education, work and normal life.
It may also have something to do with her professor that teaches about being positive and ”aquerian age” - a new way of thinking.


Jenny finds Michaels home














When Jenny and Robert are heading to his cabin, they find it rather quickly, Michael is no where to be found. So, ofcourse they goes to the nearest lake and goes skinnydipping.

Jenny surely was a master when it comes to walking on water




As much as in real life, when a young woman baths nude, there is always someone sneaking around in the bushes nearby. At first neither Jenny or Robert gets afraid by their presence allthough the two sneaking men are acting a bit strange. Later on the night the two men comes back to the cabin and rape Jenny.

If you get turned off knowing it is a rape in it, you might think again. Sunburst isn´t exactly a rape revenge movie, atleast not in those terms as you might think.
The rape scene itself is more that Levon and Danker hitting her.
This isn´t a horror, not even a thriller, it´s an drama about innocence
(remember this was made in 1975, with all the flower power attitude) and the
change of the world/our time getting more nastier and violent. It´s more
interresting then scary (it´s not even good acting to be honest). To watch this
and compare it with other movies about rape that have been made the last 10-20
years, Sunburst seems a bit experimental in going into a darker period of time
in the exploitation movie era.

Levon and Danker













There isn´t either any dancing ”hippies” that speak about love and freedom, no one is even smoking weed in it. Even though Jenny, Michael and Robert are indeed none violent, wich is clearly shown in both the rapescene and the revenge that happens later on.
As for a ”normal” rape/revenge flick the payback so to speak would have been violent and pretty much nasty. You know, in some way coreographed brutality. In sunburst it actually feels, as much as the entire movie, as this is real people and this might have happened (or if you wanna be a bit mean, it is acted and performed as a theatre act).


Somehow Sunburst is a nice film, a bit innocent and a interresting time (at
least for us that have lived in the 70´s) that may never come back, wether we
want or not. Levon and Danker (the two rapist) can be seen as a metaphore for
the troubleling times that was about to come out of the Vietnam war, Watergate
and the all things that changed the world - into a more darker and insecure
place.

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Michael, don´t go in there.
Why? I wanna see her.
Jenny was raped last night...
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A longer scene from the movie. SPOILERS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKXUWP_ZyCQ

New release poster