“I Spit on Your Grave” (1978)

Studio: Cinemagic Pictures
Starring: Camille Keaton, Eron Tabor, Richard Pace, Anthony Nichols, Gunter Kleemann
Directed by: Meir Zarchi
Rated: Unrated
Running Time: 100 min.

Synopsis: A woman is brutally attacked by a group of men in the forest and left for dead. She survives the ordeal and gets revenge on her attackers.

REVIEW

One of the most shocking and brutal films ever made and a movie that has been censored, recut, and banned in several countries, I Spit on Your Grave is a graphic rape/revenge film and is up there with Cannibal Holocaust as one of the most controversial movies in motion picture history. First off, I first saw this film about 20 years ago in my teens when I was tracking down all the best and outrageous horror films, when I came across the title and the provocative cover. Didn’t know too much about the film when I saw it but by the poster and title alone it was worth checking out and after all these years the film still holds up and still leaves you with an uncomfortable feeling after watching it, but at the same time you also just finished watching a well crafted film.

This was Meir Zarchi’s directorial debut and he originally released the film as Day of the Woman. The movie starts out with a woman, Jenny, (played by Camille Keaton, who was married to Zarchi at the time) from New York City driving to Upstate New York to stay in a cottage by the river for the summer. Just before getting there, she stops at the local gas station, which is just one pump and a shack. The gas station attendant, Johnny, and two backwoods northern hicks who hang around the station, eyeball the new girl in town. As she makes small talk she happens to tell them she’s staying for the whole summer up at the cottage by the river. Soon she will regret being friendly to the town folk.

When getting to the cottage she’s overjoyed with the place. Jenny even takes a skinny dip in the river and rejoices in her freedom and peacefulness of the setting. Soon afterward she orders some groceries to be delivered. A mildly retarded man, Matthew, delivers them. The two make small talk and she tells him she’s a writer working on her first novel. Matthew is delighted to meet her and asks to be her friend and she says yes. Excited, Matthew tells Johnny and the others about her and how pretty she is. Later, on a fishing trip, the guys are tired of their boring lives up in the country. They start to tease Matthew and tell him they got to get him laid. They ask him what kind of woman he would want. He tells them one like Jenny.

During the first few weeks of the summer, Jenny sits by the lake and starts working on her novel. Her peacefulness starts to crack apart a bit when two of the men keep riding their boat across the river. Then in the middle of the night, Jenny hears strange noises outside. Then one afternoon when she’s sunbathing in her canoe, the two men come back on their boat to harass her. They then grab her towrope and pull her to shore then chase her in the woods. She is stopped by Johnny and all three of them strip her nude and start to beat her. They hold her down to the ground while she screams in terror. Johnny calls to Matthew to get over there. They got her for him and want him to rape her. Jenny is surprise to see the person she just befriended be with these vicious men. Matthew won’t do it, so Johnny attacks and rapes her instead. These scenes are very difficult to watch. You feel for Jenny and want someone to stop this and hope she can escape. After Johnny is done, Jenny crawls off into the forest. Matthew helps her up as they let her walk away, but the four are not done with her yet. They’re playing a game.

Traumatized, Jenny walks in a trance through the forest when she is confronted again. This time she is raped by one of the other men on top of a rock. In the aftermath, Jenny is just left there. Silence falls, as she just lies there brutalized. The four men head back to the boat and pull the canoe with them. Jenny makes it back to her home, hoping the nightmare is finally over. She gets to her phone to call the police when she is stopped by the men for a third time. She is beaten some more and this time they make Matthew rape her. Once again a very disturbing scene as Jenny is violated some more. Finally the men leave, but before they go they force Matthew to go back in the house and kill her. They hand him a knife and tell him to stab her in the heart. In the house, Matthew is afraid to do the deed and doesn’t stab her. He just takes blood from her mouth and puts it on the knife. Going back outside to the guys, he shows them the blood on the knife, they are satisfied and they take off.

Now free from her attackers, Jenny gets up and goes into the shower, washing all the dirt and mud from her body and washing away all the filth from all the men who raped her. After that she cries in the corner remembering all the horror she went through. She tries to get her life back together and hope she can get through the ordeal. Weeks later, the men wonder why no one has found her body. Since two hot summer weeks have gone by they don’t understand why no hasn’t smelled the body rotting. Two of the men go by her house on the boat and to their surprise they see her sitting out there. The two go back and inform Johnny and all three of them beat the hell out of Matthew and tell him to never come around again.

Thinking that the men will never go away, Jenny decides to get them back for what they did and to take them out for good. She drives to a church and asks God to forgive her for what she’s about to do. She then spies on some of the men. She sees that Johnny has a wife and a couple of kids. She then seeks out Matthew, who she watches deliver groceries on his bike. She then makes a call to the store for some needed items. When Matthew is given the address he almost flips out and frightened to go. He does anyway but takes a knife with him. Jenny is waiting for him outside. Matthew looks as if he seen a ghost. She tires to seduce him. At first he confronts her with the knife and says she’s ruined his life because he’s lost all his friends. Jenny gets him to drop the knife and lures him to having sex with her under a tree. She eventually takes a noose she had planted and puts it around his neck and hangs him.

Jenny then lures Johnny away with her. First he’s shocked to see her and not sure what to think, but he goes with her anyway. She drives to a secluded place and pulls a gun on him and tells him to strip. Fearing for his life, Johnny tires to talk his way out of it. He tells her that she wanted them to come to her, flirting with all the men, wearing next to nothing by the river. Like she was bait for them. Jenny listens to him and lowers the gun. She seems to be attracted to him now and tells him she’s bringing him back to her house for a hot bath.

SPOILER ALERT: For those of you who haven’t seen this film, they are some spoilers coming up getting toward the climax of the movie. The next part I’m about to talk about is probably one of most memorable scenes from the film and one of the most notorious scenes in movie history. While in the bathtub, Jenny starts to relax Johnny. She then starts to tell him she killed Matthew, but he doesn’t believe her. Jenny then slips a knife into the bathtub and in the ultimate form of revenge on her rapist, she castrates him. This scene will make any man cringe, but the bastard deserved it. Johnny just keeps screaming “Oh Jesus!” as blood squirts out. Jenny locks him in the bathroom and turns on her stereo as he screams and pounds on the door. Eventually he bleeds to death and she throws his body down in the basement.

Johnny’s wife starts looking for him and questions his other two friends. The two knows something is up and take the boat out to pay Jenny a visit, but she gets the upper hand on them like she did the other two by killing one with ax to the back and the other gets chopped up from the motor on the boat. Jenny takes the boat down the river and washes away her nightmare.

Although very hard to watch the film during the violent rape scenes the film is very well made and well told. All the characters are very convincing. You are very sympathetic towards Jenny and you don’t want to see her go through all the torture, but are rooting for her to get her revenge on all her attackers and sweet revenge she gets. All the men you just hate and want them to get theirs. All of them play their roles very well, they’re disgusting and mean and are almost as twisted as the group from Last House on the Left. The actor who plays Matthew does well in his part. At times you almost feel sorry for him, but he did take part in all of it so you’re glad to see him get hung.

One unique thing about the film is there’s no soundtrack, no score. Probably one of the few movies I seen with no music. Zarchi actually using lots of ambient sounds to drive the film such as birds, water, cars, motor from the boat, church organ, a record playing, and of course screaming. There are also points in the film where it’s just silent, which carries a big impact to some scenes. The photography and settings make the film as well. Upstate New York forest looks great on camera and there are tons of shots that have great atmosphere. The filmmaker creates a setting of tranquility and isolation at first for Jenny as she’s alone writing her book. Then when she’s attacked the forest is no longer tranquil but still very isolated as the men close in on her. The movie is also very rough looking and gritty. Zarchi has these in your face close-ups of the men during the rape scenes. Also the close-ups of Jenny capture her emotions in every scene.

For a film that has been banned all over the place for it’s brutality, to me it’s a well done film and a well crafted story with strong characters driving it. I Spit on Your Grave is grindhouse and exploitation at its best and still is very shocking to this day.