I Spit on Your Grave

Alternate titles : Day of the Woman, I Hate your Guts, The Rape and Revenge of Jennifer Hill

Tagline : "This woman has just cut, chopped, broken and burned four men beyond recognition. But no jury in America would ever convict her."

One of the films I've had the toughest time sitting through, and that's saying something. The plot revolves around a young writer, Jennifer Hills (Cammille Keaton), who's decided to rent a lakeside cabin out in the country, whilst she works on her new novel.

However, her hopes for peace and quiet are shattered when she catches the attention of a group of young rednecks, who decide to have a little "fun" with her. Dragging her off into the woods, they proceed to spend the next ten minutes brutally gang raping her.

Staggering away, she tries to make it back to her cabin. Only to find they've decided to come back for seconds, and so she ends up being held down, battered and raped again. Leaveing her to crawl away, she finally manages to make it back to her cabin. Only to find her attackers are there waiting for her, and so she gets beaten and done over for a THIRD time.

Leaving her for dead, she manages to recover and proceeds to go out and get revenge on the group. Starting with a retarded chap named Matthew, who she lures back to her cabin and proceeds to hang from a tree. She then seduces the second attacker, who she also lures to the cabin, then castrates him in the bath. Leaving him to remark "Oooh, feels so good it hurts", not realising what she's done until a spurt of blood shoots up.

Finally, the last 2 members of the group realise that something's amiss and head on over in their motorboat to sort her out, leading to a final bloody confrontation. Only for them to get a taste of their own medicine.

Brutal, shocking and most definitely not for the fainthearted, the film is in many ways like a female Death Wish. However, many will undoubtedly be put off by the horrendous rape scenes (which total around 40 minutes in the uncut version) and were heavily cut down for the film's UK release. But even in the cut UK version, are still a pretty unbearable ordeal, which had me reaching for the fast-forward button. Although, the scenes where she wreaks a bloody revenge will undoubtedly have you cheering.

Overall Marks : 7/10.

Terrifying Trivia

• The US distributors had to remove the second rape scene and tone down the other scenes of rape and violence in order to gain an R-rating from the US ratings board. However they then sneakily issued the full uncut version to cinemas as an R rated feature. The MPAA didn't catch on for over a year, despite the fact that many reviewers had complained about the film being too strong for an R-rating.
• The model used in the poster for the film, clutching the knife, was a then unknown Demi Moore. She confirmed this in her autobiography "Inside Out".
• Originally released in the US as "Day of the Woman", it failed to gain much attention. Distributer Jerry Gross subsequently retitled it "I Spit on Your Grave" and re-released it, which is when it gained notoriety.
• Features the longest rape in cinematic history, around 25 minutes. Although this is split between 3 seperate scenes, over a 40 minute period.
• Director Meir Zarchi apparently based the film on a real life incident, whereby he and a colleague came across a girl wandering through a park who had just been raped by a gang of thugs. They took her to a local police station, only to realise they should have taken her to the hospital, as the police were totally unsympathetic and were more interested in asking her "what she was doing there" and "why she wasn't at home". Despite the fact she had been badly beaten, and even had a broken jaw. He drew on this to produce a film showing the true unpleasantries of rape, and took inspiration from films such as "Death Wish", "Straw Dogs" and "Deliverance" to show the films heroine exacting her own revenge, rather than suffer any further indignities at the hands of police bureaucracy.
• Cammille Keaton, who plays Jennifer, is actually the grand-niece of the late silent movie star Buster Keaton
• Althugh only moderately successful at US cinema, when released onto tape, sales went ballistic. Reportedly outselling the then Academy award winning film "Ordinary People" by 20-1, and even getting as high as no 24 in the Billboard best sellers list of 1981.
• "Friday the 13th Part 2" was filmed in the same area in 1980.
• One crew member quit halfway through filming the second rape scene as he couldn't stomach watching any more violence. The make-up artist also quit halfway through the fil, as she had apparently been raped and couldn't stand reliving the horror of the attack.
• An un-official sequel tentatively titled "Return to the Grave" went into production in the early-90's, directed by Donald Farmer (former editor of US horror mag "Splatter Times"). The film starred Cammile Keaton again, but after she pulled out of the project partway through, the movie was shelved. It was eventually re-edited with some new footage and released under the title "Savage Vengance", with Cammille Keaton credited as Linda Lehl. The film was remade in 2010, which spawned a couple a couple of sequels of its own. After which a proper sequel entitled "I Spit on Your Grave : Deja Vu", which picks up the original story 40 years later, was finally released. With Camille Keaton reprising her original role.
• Though not released theatrically in the UK, the film was released uncut on video in the early 80s, prior to the introduction of the Video Recordings Act. The film is actually creditied, along with "Driller Killer", "SS Experiment Camp" and "Cannibal Holocaust", as being one of the films that started the whole Video Nasties furore of the early 80s, which ushered in VRA.
• The film was not submitted to the BBFC for a UK release until 2001, who cut around 7mins from the rape scenes before passing it with an 18 certificate. The 2003 re-issue was more complete, which zoomed in and reframed the rape scenes, so the more graphic moments happen off camera, but was still trimmed by around 41s during the second rape scene. For the 2010 re-issue, they submitted the original uncut version for classification, which faired better than the original release, but the rape scenes were still trimmed by just under 3 minutes. All the revenge scenes however were left intact.

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