DATE WITH A KIDNAPPER

A woman living in a boarding house is kidnapped by a small-time criminal. Soon others in the gang try to take her away from him so they can get the ransom.

Don’t go into KIDNAPPED COED expecting sleazy no-budget bad film ineptitude. Frederick R. Friedel’s terse, bizarre, dream-like 76-minute kidnapping-gone-wrong programmer is something of a mini-exploitation-masterpiece.

It plays more like an art film, with carefully-framed tracking shots and compositions, focused on building atmosphere and silence rather than action and dialogue, and all sorts of little touches that could only come from the hands of an accomplished auteur with imagination to spare, not a talentless hack. On the minus side, the ending kinda leaves you hanging and wanting for more, and Leslie Ann Rivers’ co-ed character is less fleshed out or convincing than John Canon’s mummy’s boy kidnapper. Canon is like the poor man’s Nic Nolte–lotsa facial tics and jittery acting, but it works. If KIDNAPPING COED treads creakingly familiar path, Friedel’s innovative direction turns it into something else entirely and makes it worth treasuring as a hidden gem. Cinematographer Austin McKinney also shot Friedel’s AXE, the trash classic THE LOVE BUTCHER and Jack Hill’s PIT STOP.