The new music video for Purity Ring’s... | yes! a bunny stream of conch

The new music video for Purity Ring’s Lofticries was adeptly devised by David Dean Burkhart entirely out of original footage from Bo Arne Vibenius’ infamous 1973 Swedish exploitation film Thriller: A Cruel Picture.

Banned in Sweden in 1974, Thriller: A Cruel Picture follows Christina Lindberg as Madeleine/Frigga, a quiet girl who has remained mute since a traumatic childhood sexual assault. Several years later, she accepts a ride from Tony (Heinz Kopf), who subsequently forces her into heroin addiction and becomes her pimp. In due course she is stabbed in the eye for denying a customer (odd fact: actual cadavers, ammunition and saline injectables were utilized throughout the film’s production and the producers went so far as to take out a sizeable life insurance policy on Lindberg) and she thereby resolves to stash away money in order to purchase weapons—along with driving and shooting lessons—so as to finally exact her sweet and rightful revenge. So yeah, total romcom.

Burkhart did a downright bang-up job repurposing the footage for the music video; not only did the archival scenes eerily befit the tenor of 2011’s Lofticries, but the contemporary score and recutting process lent a newfangled, spine-chilling poignancy to the controversial film. (Quentin Tarantino even deemed Thriller: A Cruel Picture as “the roughest revenge movie ever made” and often credits it as a massive influence on his work, particularly the Kill Bill series.)

Download the Lofticries MP3 here.

Check out Purity Ring on tumblr here.