Considered one of the most difficult to watch films ever made, with very graphic rape scenes that roughly make up approximately half the film, I Spit on Your Grave, formerly known as Day of the Woman, is one of the most notorious films ever made. I Spit on Your Grave, in what amounts to Deliverance only with a woman instead of four men, tells the sad story of a female writer named Jennifer retreats from the city and goes to a lake house simply to write a book. She sunbathes, she relaxes, and she catches the eye of some of the locals including a mentally handicapped grocery story handyman. Sadly, during one of her fun trips out to the lake on her boat, a group of four men tow her boat to the shore and then rip off her clothes, beat the living shit out of her, and then brutally rape her. Horrifically, this is only the beginning. Throughout the entire rest of the first half of the film, Jennifer is beaten repeatedly and then raped over and over and over again. When she recovers from the trauma, she takes it upon herself to seek bloody and horrible revenge.

I Spit on Your Grave is a very nasty film. It is certainly one of the most uncomfortable and tough films to sit through from beginning to end. It’s notoriety is very well deserved indeed. The rape scenes are among some of the most horrible I’ve ever had the displeasure of sitting through, and the scenes of revenge (well two of them anyway) are just as terrible. The film is deadly slow-paced and the rape scenes happen in real time with very little left to the imagination. It is a struggle to sit through, and if you watch it on a tape or on disc there will be more than a few points where you will be tempted to fast-forward through just so that the film can just continue. Scenes of Jennifer crawling along covered in blood and being raped go on for what seems like an eternity. This is very strong stuff. So yes, lets get all that out of the way. It’s as disturbing as folks like Roger Ebert and many other folks have said it is. However, is the film any good? Well not really. I won’t say it’s bad, because it is not. There is a lot here that works. Firstly, it is an emotional film. The first half of the film is deeply heartbreaking and it’s unlikely that people will watch it without at least some kind of visible reaction to it. It’s pretty much impossible to sit through the rape scenes in this film, completely stone-faced. The performance of Camille Keaton really helps in allowing the audience to sympathize for her and feel sorry for her. It’s actually a pretty impressive performance. She’s like a completely different kind of character in the second act of the film, and her transformation to naive and sweet-natured victim of rape to cold-blooded seductress is believable and competent. In terms of dialogue, she’s a little iffy, BUT I will give her a lot of credit. She pulls off the emotions and the mannerisms in a way that seems nothing short of naturalistic. None of the performances in the film are bad really. The dialogue scenes are almost always bad and poorly recorded, but nobody here does a bad job in terms of looking the part and being believable in a visual and emotional sense. The film has an effectively raw and exploratory feel to it that helps it work as a horror film. The first two murder scenes, as mentioned earlier, are absolutely disturbing and unbelievably sickening to watch. The look of the film is ugly as sin, and the film is shot really poorly and in a clunky manner, which works in a lot of ways except for in the dialogue scenes. A good amount of the shots in the film are master-shots. One thing I can certainly say for sure is that, even though this is not as well made a film as Wes Craven’s original Last House on the Left, I will say that it scared me more and had a much bigger effect on me.

Unfortunately, this is still not a good film. Mind you, it’s not so bad that I hated it. I don’t hate it at all. I just think that it’s very noticeably weak. The lack of a soundtrack really bothered me. There isn’t even really much ambient noise really. There isn’t any sort of tone set, which I normally don’t mind with this kind of film. Something about the bluntness and the way that this film carried itself just came across as tedious and rather bland. I think it had to do with the fact that the four rapists in this film are depicted in such a standard and half-assed way. I mean, I really wanted the film to explore how nasty these characters are and how they are so cold. I’m not saying that the film should have given us an answer for their reasons to rape Jennifer. I don’t need answers, I just wanted something stronger and more dark. I wanted the film to at least attempt to show them as human beings. The murder scenes are still horrible, but they could have been so much more emotionally hitting. They already are visceral enough. I would have liked Zarchi to have maybe shown more of Jennifer and perhaps her as a little more than just a cold-blooded killer. The film features a scene where she goes to church and begs for forgiveness for the murders she’s about to commit, but there’s no set-up for the scene in question. There is so little interaction between her and the audience that her actions come off as just by-the-numbers, and when it gets to that point the film just stops being scary. My biggest gripe with the film, however, has to do with the final ten minutes in which she quickly and conveniently takes out the final two guys. Call me crazy, but the final death scenes come off as very rushed and lacking in any sort of sense or build-up. In fact, you could say that the final two death scenes are committed almost by pure coincidence. They don’t seem at all planned out, and it’s like they just showed up so that she could kill them. The first two men she seduces, has sex with, and then brutally murders just as they’re about to climax. It’s absolutely horrible and you really feel shocked by it. She uses sex as a weapon and it’s truly trashy and tasteless. With the last couple of guys she sorta uses sex as a weapon as well, but not really. It was like Zarchi got tired of his own film and then just ended it quickly. As a result, I felt a bit frustrated and slightly cheated. After all the agony and misery the film shows, I either wanted it to be extended or to be justified, and in the end this film really doesn’t do either of those things.

This is one of the hardest films I’ve ever had to rate. The first time I saw it I thought it was a piece of trash and I just dismissed it. I appreciated this film a lot more on my more recent viewing. On one hand, this film pisses me off in a lot of ways. The rape scenes and the death scenes are far too effective and realistic for this kind of material, which in a way is a good thing. Anyone watching this for a good time or for a good horror film are recommended by me to look elsewhere, because with this film you are getting a lot more than just a good horror film. I do think the film is scary and has a lot of effective and harrowing moments. On the other hand, it is badly made and has a real let-down of an ending. There’s a lot that I just downright dislike and despise about this film. It did make me react, however, and it is one of the nastiest films of it’s kind. It’s reputation is well-deserved. I think it’s alright. I think it’s worth watching. I do think that there are more effective films of it’s kind, such as Night Train Murders, Deliverance, Vulgar, and In a Glass Cage, but I also think it’s just as good, if not better, than a lot of ‘supposed’ classics such as Last House on the Left, Thriller: A Cruel Picture, and Cannibal Ferox. I think that this sits, uncomfortably, in the middle with all of these horror films, and I encourage anyone who is a fan of horror and a fan of cult cinema to at least give in a try and see what they think of it. At the very least, you will be able to say that you have seen it. I actually do like it, and since I can’t help but appreciate it, despite how bad it is, I’ll give it 6 out of 10. It’s not the vile bag of garbage that Roger Ebert claims, but it’s not one of the greatest films of it’s kind. It’s one of the most notorious films ever made, and the least I can say is that it lives up to it’s history.

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