director/screenwriter
Meir Zarchi
producers
Meir Zarchi
Joseph Zbeda
cinematographer
Yuri Haviv
editor
Meir Zarchi
cast
Camille Keaton (Jennifer Hill)
Eron Tabor (Johnny)
Richard Pace (Matthew)
Anthony Nichols (Stanley)
Gunter Kleemann (Andy)
mpaa rating: R or unrated
running
time: 100m
u.s.
release: November 3,
1978
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
fan
website
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Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert
crusaded against it as if it were a threat to every woman in
America; their vitriolic reviews led to its being pulled from
a Chicago theater. It has been banned in several countries, including
England, where it was one of the more notorious Video Nasties.
I Spit on Your Grave is one of those white-hot controversial
films more people have heard about than actually seen, yet does
it really deserve its heavy reputation?
First of all, this needs to
be said: Writer/director Meir Zarchi may have made this film,
but that doesn't mean he's a filmmaker. A surprising percentage
of I Spit on Your Grave is flat-out tedious. Zarchi lets
his scenes -- particularly the ones in which nothing of import
or interest is happening -- meander on interminably. If you're
going to watch this -- it's not like you're going to miss much
in the way of music (there is none) or dialogue -- I highly recommend
doing so in the jocular company of Joe Bob Briggs, whose audio
commentary on the Elite Millennium Edition DVD is hilarious,
insightful, and essential. Joe Bob will bring you smoothly over
the many dull expository scenes, often pausing to point out how
boring or illogical they are.
The movie does wield crude
and considerable power, though. New York writer Jennifer Hill
(Camille Keaton, who must be dutifully name-checked in every
review as Buster's grandniece) heads for the boonies of Connecticut
to work on her novel in peace. She attracts the attention of
four louts -- the mostly interchangeable Johnny (Eron Tabor),
Stanley (Anthony Nichols) and Andy (Gunter Kleemann), and their
retarded acquaintance Matthew (Richard Pace). Matthew is a virgin,
and the other three men decide to procure Jennifer for him. She
is raped three times (once with a beer bottle) and nearly beaten
to death; Matthew is entrusted with the task of killing her,
but can't bring himself to do it. Jennifer survives, heals, and
sets about her revenge.
Perhaps I Spit on Your Grave
has bothered people for 25 years now precisely because there's
so little art getting in the way of the story: A woman is raped;
she takes revenge. As Joe Bob points out, this movie is hardly
the only "rape/revenge" film, yet other films like
Baise-Moi
(or The Accused) have escaped censure. Why pick on I
Spit on Your Grave? Well, Siskel and Ebert had themselves
to blame for the movie's instant cult status: As soon as you
go on TV, red in the face, and denounce a film as sick and degrading,
it practically guarantees curiosity. The duo would've been wiser
simply to let the movie die in silence.
But there's also a genuine
impulse of compassion in this work. Zarchi's famous story is
that he himself encountered a bruised, battered woman who had
just been raped. He films the violation scenes in a mood of horror
and disgust (and Keaton, who can't do much with dialogue, is
great at making us feel the physical anguish the role demands).
Yet he doesn't film the revenge scenes -- wherein Jennifer hangs,
castrates, axes, and outboard-motors her attackers into the next
life -- for cheap thrills, either. We may feel a savage release
upon seeing the scum dispatched, but there's no particular relish
in Zarchi's direction or in Keaton's performance. It's all rather
dispassionate -- almost predetermined. There are odd touches,
like Jennifer listening to Puccini while one of her victims dies
bleeding and shrieking in another room. I don't think the movie
believes in Jennifer's revenge. Disturbingly (for those of us
guiltily enjoying the bloody payback), it suggests that what
happened to Jennifer took away not her sanity but her humanity,
leaving a calloused spot where her soul once was.
This is a difficult and seriously
flawed film. But I don't feel it deserves to be hounded into
oblivion, nor do I think it needs to be hailed as an overlooked
masterpiece of contempt and fury. It is what it is -- a rape/revenge
thriller with an unusually intense emphasis on the suffering
of the woman. I don't agree that the movie fosters rape fantasies;
on the contrary, any reasonably sane man watching the atrocities
would cringe and wish he -- or the camera -- were elsewhere.
That's maybe the film's final sin: it doesn't look away. It doesn't
eroticize the rape, doesn't soften the rape, doesn't glorify
the retaliatory violence. The filmmaking is circa 1910, with
silent-movie acting to match. I Spit on Your Grave makes
people angry, disturbed, depressed (Ebert's word). Of course
it does. The camera just stares, refusing to editorialize or
to put a stylistic barrier between you and the cruelty. You are
there, and you're not doing anything to stop it.
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