Swedish Sex Games (The Intruders) (1975)

Richard (Chris Chittell) discovers, by chance, that the wife of an atomic scientist (Jacqueline Laurent) has had an affair, and that their son (Stellan Skarsgård) was driving a car drunk ,and without a drivers licence. Since Richard is a person with a devilish mind, he shows up at the scientist’s (Börje Nyberg) home with his girlfriend (Gilda Arancio), whom he presents as his sister, and sets in using his ‘weapons’ to pressure every person in the house, he gets all the sex he wants, until everybody is changing partners with everyone else.

At first glance you’d be forgiven for mistaking The Intruders as a sexploitation take on Easy Rider, opening as it does with softcore sex intercut with a couple thundering down backwoods roads on their motorbike. The unshaven, longhaired look of the male part of this couple making him instantly identifiable as a product of the hippie era and a man who has endured a lengthy spell living out on the road. However don’t be fooled, we’re in Sweden here, rather than the America of Easy Rider, and biker Richard (Chris Chittell) is a real wolf in hippie’s clothing who doesn’t mind making either love or war!

A series of remarkable –if implausible- incidents play out over a couple of hours that provides Richard with the basis for a crooked, blackmail scheme. Along with his travelling companion and ‘half-sister’ Paula (Gilda Arancio) Richard encounters a drunk at the wheel motorist (Stellan Skarsgard) and helps him out after he drives his car into a ditch, then chances upon a couple, Helen (Jacqueline Laurent) and Philip (Burt Bellman) having sex at a remote farmhouse. The couple’s post-coital chat making it obvious that both are married to others and that Helen would like nothing better than her husband to be dead “if only Simon would die, why must we always be separated?”. Later in the day Richard and Paula happen to be passing as Nobel Prize winning scientist Simon Delaney (Borje Nyberg) is giving an interview to a Television crew, in the process parading his family for the TV cameras and announcing his discovery of a valuable formula for a petrol substitute. Richard eyeballs a few familiar faces in the Delaney family line-up, Simon’s son Peter being the motorist he’d encountered earlier in the day, and Simon’s wife being the adulterous Helen from the farmhouse.

Ignoring Paula’s protests, Richard re-introduces himself to Peter and Helen then swiftly blackmails them into letting him and Paula stay at the Delaney house where he is passed off by them as a ‘friend’ of Peters’ to the Delaney patriarch. Richard might claim to just want a place to crash, but in reality he has his crafty eye on stealing Simon’s formula and with disturbing efficiency is quickly worming his way into the Delaney household. Richard’s unshaven look, bandana, and well worn biker clothes soon disappear, replaced by smart business suits and a posh, well groomed hippie look a la a 1970s Richard Branson or Noel Edmonds, in order to blend into his new, polite society surroundings.

Naturally all this meets with the approval of Simon, especially when Richard starts to feign an interest in Simon’s scientific research and knowingly play up the ‘son you’d wished you’d had’ role. Simon’s embracing of this total stranger further adds to the despair of the son he did have. The sad, sensitive Peter having never shared his father’s obsession for science, preferring instead a career as a poet, only for feelings of inadequacy, and his father’s disapproval, to increasingly turn him towards the bottle. Although the formula is Richard’s primary aim, along the way he delights in being the thorn in the side of Peter and the married into money Helen, the type of privileged people Richard loathes with a vengeance. It amuses Richard no end that his influence within the household grows to the extent that Peter has to ask him, rather than his father, for permission to borrow the family car. Helen’s sexual interest in Richard also affords him the kick of getting to fuck a rich man’s wife and right under his own roof too.

Inevitably Richard’s antics set into motion a very intricate- attention demanding- plot, overcrowded by sexual encounters and numerous characters conspiring against one another. So much of which goes on in The Intruders that you’re surprised characters don’t have to jot down who they are fucking, blackmailing or double-crossing, just to remember where they are up to. The very busy Helen is not only having an affair with Philip, but with Hans, Simon’s chauffer, who is secretly working alongside Richard. Helen is also sleeping with Ulla (Anita Ericssson), the Delaney’s maid, who she sends off to fuck Richard in the hope Ulla will be able to screw an answer out of Richard as to what hold he has over Peter. Ulla though finds herself being sweet-talked by Richard and torn over whether to help him steal the formula or her loyalty to the Delaney family. Whereas Ulla starts to warm to Richard, Paula becomes increasingly sickened by him, and changes her allegiance to Peter. In fact barely a scene goes by in The Intruders without Paula calling Richard a “bastard”, generally answered with an incensed response of “you bitch”, an insult Richard uses so often in the film that it feels like the character’s unofficial catchphrase. Will Paula, Peter or Helen be able to bring about Richard’s downfall? Or has Richard, as he triumphantly proclaims mid-way through the film “got the Delaneys by the short and curlies”.

Alternate Titles
Fait acompli USA video title
Hungry Young Women 1977 A Lambist Film (English dubbed), hard version
Inkräktarna Swedish video title
Let Us Play Sex