{"id":3747,"date":"2024-08-29T21:44:42","date_gmt":"2024-08-29T21:44:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=3747"},"modified":"2024-10-14T11:15:58","modified_gmt":"2024-10-14T15:15:58","slug":"hostage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/08\/29\/hostage\/","title":{"rendered":"Hostage"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Hostage<\/strong> [aka Savage Attraction]<\/strong> (1983)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 New World\/Drama-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 90 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated (sexual content, nudity, violence, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Frank Shields\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: John Lind and Frank Shields\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Davood Tabrizi\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Vincent Monton\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: May 5, 1983 (Australia)\/September 7, 1984 (Philadelphia, PA)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Kerry Mack, Ralph Schicha, Judy Nunn, Clare Binney, Lydia Kreibohm, Henk Johannes, Benno Sterzenbach, Moshe Kedem, Michael Harrs, Burt Cooper, Gabriella Barraket, Ian Mortimer.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: N\/A<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0Take a gander at the poster I selected for this review. Look at the sexy lady in the negligee posing provocatively on the bed. Read the tagline talking about \u201ca 16-year-old girl looking for excitement\u201d and \u201cthe men who turned her innocence into something savage.\u201d With a title like Savage Attraction<\/strong>, it has to be a dirty movie, right? WRONG! This is what we call a \u201cbait and switch\u201d. All of the above is a means of luring people into the theater with the promise of softcore sex only to give them a crime drama about a young girl married to an abusive psychopath. Its original title is Hostage<\/strong> and it\u2019s based on the supposedly true story of Christine Maresch, an Australian teenager who committed bank robberies with her husband Walter in the late 70s. I say \u201csupposedly\u201d because I can\u2019t find anything on this case other than this movie. I Googled Christine\u2019s name and Hostage<\/strong> is all that came up.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I was one of the suckers that bought a ticket to Savage Attraction<\/strong> when it hit US theaters in \u201984. My 16YO self thought it was going to be like one of the dirty movies shown on late night Cinemax. I guess you could say the poster served its intended purpose. At the time, I didn\u2019t like it. I felt cheated which I let cloud my objectivity. Although I never forgot the experience, I never felt compelled to watch it again until I recently came across it under its original title on one of my streaming services. In the 35 years that passed, I developed an appreciation for Ozploitation so I decided to give it another chance. This time, I liked it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Hostage<\/strong> opens in 1974 with Aussie teen Christine (Mack, Desolation Angels) running away from an abusive household and joining a carnival where she meets Walter (Schicha, Loft), a charming German maintenance worker who flatters his way into her heart. He proposes marriage and shoots himself when Christine turns him down. He refuses life-saving surgery unless she marries him first. Once married, they move in with her mum (Nunn, Prisoner: Cell Block H) who clearly disapproves of their union. It isn\u2019t long before she gives birth to a daughter. Naturally, the real nightmare has yet to begin.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Walter is clearly unhinged. He\u2019s prone to fits of anger and violence. He\u2019s also very controlling. First, he tricks Christine into moving to Germany by promising he will arrange an abortion for her once they arrive. He\u2019s lying, of course, abortion isn\u2019t legal in Germany (at least not at that time). Next, she discovers he\u2019s a member of the Nazi Party and plans to help restore his fatherland to its former glory under Hitler. Angry about Christine sneaking off to Holland for an abortion, Walter makes her help him rob a bank by threatening to keep her from their daughter. The robbery gets him exiled from Germany by the Party as he can no longer be trusted. As they go from place to place, Christine grows more terrified of her husband and wants to escape with their daughter. Of course, he won\u2019t let that happen.<\/p>\n

\u00a0All things considered, Hostage<\/strong> is a more appropriate title than Savage Attraction<\/strong> although I must admit to liking the latter one better. Why? It\u2019s a cool sleazy title even if it is misleading. As for the movie itself, it\u2019s an interesting piece that mixes domestic melodrama with international crime. It sometimes seems too far-fetched to be true. Take the main characters\u2019 detour to Turkey where they\u2019re propositioned by a fez-wearing Turk who wants to buy Christine and their daughter. It results in a violent altercation where one man has his throat slit (graphically, I might add) and another is run over by their car. For my money, it\u2019s the best scene in the movie. Still, it\u2019s hard to believe this actually happened…. that is, if any of Hostage<\/strong> happened at all. I\u2019m not saying it didn\u2019t but why can\u2019t I find anything on it?<\/p>\n

\u00a0I must admit that the acting is pretty good for a cheap tabloid-style melodrama. Mack, an attractive lady, endows Christine with naivety and frightened submissiveness as she simultaneously loves and fears her increasingly paranoid and possessive husband. Although the situations aren\u2019t always believable, her character is. As Walter, a delusional person who truly believes in his wrong-headed cause, Schicha is scary as hell. He\u2019s completely bonkers. He\u2019s also in love with Christine although that doesn\u2019t mean much for a person who confuses love with control. The two actors have volatile chemistry. Their scenes together seethe with tension, violence and sexuality.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The more I think about it, the more I like Hostage<\/strong>\/Savage Attraction<\/strong>. I know, New World made a dumb move marketing it the way they did, but can you blame them. The case on which it\u2019s based wasn\u2019t widely known stateside. To break even at the box office, they needed a hook and sex is always a great one. It\u2019s a classic New World stunt. I LOVE IT! The movie itself is good crazy fun with a climax that prefigures Dead Calm, another great thriller from Down Under.<\/p>\n

\u00a0If you like Ozploitation, it\u2019s definitely worth a look. As for me, I still find it funny how some bad movies improve with age. Hostage<\/strong> or Savage Attraction<\/strong>, whichever you prefer, is a more satisfying watch than a lot of big studio pictures from the past couple of decades. I never thought I\u2019d write that sentence, but here we are.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hostage [aka Savage Attraction] (1983)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 New World\/Drama-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 90 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated (sexual content, nudity, violence, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Frank Shields\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: John Lind and Frank Shields\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Davood Tabrizi\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Vincent Monton\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: May 5, 1983 (Australia)\/September 7, 1984 (Philadelphia, PA)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Kerry Mack, Ralph Schicha, Judy Nunn, Clare Binney, Lydia Kreibohm, Henk Johannes, Benno […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4948,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-b-movies","category-guilty-pleasures"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Hostage-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3747"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3747\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4949,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3747\/revisions\/4949"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}