“Victim or Fugitive?” Exploitation expert Joseph Zito (Missing in Action) directs his debut film, a thinly-disguised take on the Patty Hearst kidnapping and her subsequent Stockholm Syndrome-induced recruitment by the bank robbing revolutionaries, the SLA. Judith-Marie Bergan is the tormented heiress (coincidentally named Patricia), with Dorothy Malone and Leif Erickson as her wealthy parents, the Prescotts. David Pendleton is Dory, the stand-in surrogate for the real life SLA leader, Cinque. And then there’s the icing-on-the-cake: Lawrence Tierney (Born to Kill, Reservoir Dogs) as a hardass FBI agent! Based on a forgotten porn novel (“Black Abductor”) published two years before the kidnapping – which had uncanny plot similarities to the later real-life events – filmmaker Zito was able to avoid any litigation from the Hearst family.
“What Abduction does do well is sleaze and mood.” – Annie Choi, Bleeding Skull
Marc Edward Heuck discusses Abduction on the New Beverly blog.
