I Spit On Your Grave A.K.A. Day Of The Woman
(1978) 101 Min.
Rated: R (Sexual violence, multiple rape scenes, gore)
Country: USA
Director: Meir Zarchi
Stars: Camille Keaton, Eron Tabor, Richard Pace
Links: IMDB | Wikipedia
Rating: ★☆☆☆☆
After a woman gets sexually assaulted by four local men she decides to murder them.
Synopsis:
Jennifer (Keaton) is a writer who heads off to rural Kent, Connecticut with the intent of writing a novel.
She stops at a gas station to fill her car and this attracts the attention of some local guys. Johnny, the gas station manager and two local guys, Stanley and Andy. Later she has her groceries delivered by a dim-witted man named Matthew. Matthew is friends with the other men and tells them about Jennifer, claiming he saw her breasts.
The men prowl around her cottage by the lake in their boat. Soon they attack her, ripping off her clothes and pinning her down. They initially plan for Matthew to lose his virginity by raping her, but he’s reluctant so Johnny rapes her instead. She wanders off and gets raped anally by Andy. She crawls back to the house where they are waiting for her and assault her again. After getting slightly drunk Matthew also partakes in raping Jennifer. The men rip up her book and Stanley assaults her. Johnny instructs Matthew to kill her as they leave, but Matthew instead runs a knife through her blood to show as proof he’s killed her.
Jennifer takes a few days to heal herself and put herself back together. She goes to a church and prays. She has a plan and decides to take revenge on the men.
Again at the cottage she has Matthew deliver her groceries. She seduces him outside and springs a trap where he is hung by a noose and killed. She dumps his body into the lake.
Jennifer goes to the gas station, finding Johnny there. She entices him into her car and pulls a gun on him. Johnny blames Jennifer for seducing them. Jennifer plays along and takes him back to the cottage. She gets him into a bathtub and gives him a handjob, suddenly she takes a knife and cuts off his genitals. She locks him inside the room and he bleeds to death. Jennifer dumps his body in the basement.
Stanley and Andy take a boat to Jennifer’s cottage in search of Johnny. As Andy goes to the house with an axe, Jennifer swims up to the boat and knocks Stanley out of it. Andy tries to attack her, but she gets the axe. Andy tries to rescue Stanley but Jennifer attacks him with the axe, killing him. Jennifer is on the boat and Stanley attempts to climb onboard near the motor. Jennifer turns on the motor, killing Stanley. She speeds off in the last frames of the film.
Review:
Aside from the length of the repeated rape scenes that take up a large portion of this film, most of the acting is ham-fisted and cartoonish. I tried to like this film as a revenge piece, but it really is fairly hard to watch. I feel like someone can make a rape-revenge film, but the way it’s handled in this movie is just plain bad.
The low-budget aspect only furthers the unpleasantness along with a bare script. The villains are cartoonishly evil, chasing the heroine around in a forest only to assault her repeatedly for the first half of the film. There is almost no character development. Everyone is a simple flat character.
This is a movie that you don’t have to see to believe, in fact it feels like the cult status makes people want to see it. Since it was banned in other countries it becomes somewhat of a collectible, but in reality it’s just not a very good film.