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Blu-ray isn’t just for tech geeks and event movie fetishists.  Films you wouldn’t imag­ine being capa­ble of an a/v upgrade some­times look stun­ning in this for­mat — and this can be a boon to the exploita­tion movie buff.  For instance, the Blue Underground blu-ray edi­tions of New York Ripper and The Toolbox Murders uncov­ered a layer of artistry in the pho­tog­ra­phy of both of those scuzz-classics.  Anchor Bay recently threw their hat into the “grind­house goes blu-ray” ring with their blu-ray edi­tion of the orig­i­nal I Spit On Your Grave — and the results are truly impressive.

I Spit On Your Grave had received a nice DVD back in 2002 when Élite Entertainment did a “Millenium Edition” of this film.  That disc boasted a THX-approved trans­fer and looked pretty damn good.  However, the height­ened res­o­lu­tion of the blu-ray for­mat on this new disc allows for a depth of detail and color that show off how care­fully shot the film is in its own min­i­mal­ist style.  Much of the film takes place out­doors in natural-lighting sit­u­a­tions so the boost in res­o­lu­tion really makes the film’s stark look eas­ier to appre­ci­ate.  In terms of sound, the disc uses a 5.1 stereo remix.  Purists won’t be happy that the film’s orig­i­nal mono mix was dropped (it was on the Millenium Edition DVD) but this mix works nicely.  There’s not a lot of direc­tional effects going on but its HD-level of clar­ity shows off how good the sound effects work is in this film.

There’s also a solid col­lec­tion of extras on this blu-ray, most of which were ported over from the Millenium Edition DVD.  There’s a brief alter­nate titles sequence that uti­lizes the film’s orig­i­nal Day Of The Woman titling, trail­ers for the film under its Day Of The Woman and I Spit On Your Grave guises, a selec­tion of t.v. spots and radio com­mer­cials and an image gallery that includes inter­na­tional ad art.  It’s inter­est­ing to study the dif­fer­ences between the Day and Spit trail­ers: the Day trailer is a bit dis­jointed but the Spit ad cam­paign is a self-assured jug­ger­naut of exploita­tive hooks.  It’s one of the all-time great exploita­tion film trail­ers and any stu­dent of the form should check it out.

However, the best of the inclu­sions from the pre­vi­ous DVD are two stel­lar com­men­tary tracks.  The first belongs to writer/director Meir Zarchi and its one of the most metic­u­lously detailed direc­tor com­men­taries Your Humble Reviewer has ever heard.  You can tell that Zarchi pre­pared for this track very care­fully because he fills each cor­ner with a carefully struc­tured stream of com­ments that cover every­thing from inspi­ra­tion to pro­duc­tion to dis­tri­b­u­tion.  He’s a skilled racon­teur with a wry sense of humor and it’s a joy to lis­ten to his fond, some­times impas­sioned take on his work (the key moment is a har­row­ing account of how the film was inspired by a real-life inci­dent he wit­nessed).  There’s not a dull moment on it.

Zarchi’s track is accom­pa­nied by a critic’s track from Joe Bob Briggs that is just as impres­sive.  He offers a sin­gu­lar mix­ture of humor and insight as he breaks down the film and offers strong rebut­tals to the mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tions it has suf­fered over the years from crit­ics like Siskel and Ebert.  His secret weapon is that he is as smart as he is funny and this allows him to read the film and the writing/directing choices Zarchi makes with the insight of a film-aesthetics scholar.  He never lies about the film’s short­com­ings but he makes a strong case for its impor­tance — and like the Zarchi track, the end result never has any dull stretches.  Simply put, these tracks are two of the best com­men­taries you’ll ever hear on an exploita­tion film.

The one new extra is a half-hour inter­view piece with Zarchi.  As with the com­men­tary, Zarchi is fun to lis­ten to and brings a cer­tain wry humor to his obser­va­tions about his film’s che­quered his­tory.  The inter­view fleshes out a num­ber of top­ics that Zarchi touches upon in his com­men­tary track and adds some inter­est­ing new mate­r­ial about Zarchi’s rela­tion­ship with star Camille Keaton and some of the chi­canery that went on with the dis­tri­b­u­tion of his film dur­ing its hey­day.  Unfortunately, the inter­view piece isn’t as care­fully assem­bled as it could have been: his com­ments aren’t as care­fully or tightly struc­tured as they could have been and the attempts to inte­grate clips from the film are awk­wardly deployed and timed.  The end result often feels like a rough cut that needed a few more passes.  That said, Zarchi’s unex­pect­edly charm­ing pres­ence is enough to pull the viewer through this piece’s rough spots (par­tic­u­larly when he says “F-U-C-K the M.P.A.A.”).

In short, Anchor Bay’s blu-ray of I Spit On Your Grave is a deal that the exploita­tion film scholar can’t afford to pass up: the trans­fer is stel­lar and the sup­ple­ments deliver the goods.  If you have any inter­est in see­ing this film on home video, this is the way to do it.