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It’s amaz­ing how some exploita­tion films retain their power long after they are removed from the times that spawned them.  No mat­ter how much social and cul­tural mores change, some films will always have that taboo-shattering abil­ity to push a viewer’s but­tons.  A per­fect exam­ple of this type of film is the orig­i­nal ver­sion of I Spit On Your Grave.  It is a rape-revenge film, always one of the most con­tro­ver­sial exploita­tion sub­gen­res, and it presents its cho­sen sub­ject mat­ter in a raw, uncom­pro­mis­ing fash­ion that retains the abil­ity to jan­gle nerves over 30 years after the fact.  It is a flawed film in many ways — but it is also an unfor­get­table, vis­cer­ally effec­tive piece of work that has earned its place in film history.

I Spit On Your Grave was orig­i­nally titled Day Of The Woman, a title that more accu­rately reflects its sto­ry­line.  The focus is Jennifer (Camille Keaton), an inde­pen­dent woman from the city who rents a home in a small town to work on her first novel.  Unfortunately, she attracts the atten­tion of a quar­tet of local men who are idle, sex­u­ally frus­trated and eager to prove their machismo to each other.  Johnny (Eron Tabor) is their leader and he decides she will pro­vide them with the enter­tain­ment they crave.  They descend upon her home with the idea of help­ing Matthew (Richard Pace), the “halfwit”/resident vir­gin of the group, to finally lose his vir­gin­ity at Jennifer’s expense.

And this is where I Spit On Your Grave goes to a place that shocks even vet­eran exploita­tion film fans.  Writer/director Meir Zarchi doesn’t spare the viewer one moment of Jennifer’s ordeal — she is stripped, beaten and vio­lated in mul­ti­ple ways dur­ing a sequence that occu­pies 25 min­utes (a full quar­ter of the film’s run­ning time).  Each of the men plays a role, degrad­ing Jennifer until she is left bro­ken and anguished.  Johnny orders Matthew to kill her when it is all over — but he can’t go through with it and fakes the proof (a bloody knife) to appease them.  Jennifer sur­vives and nurses her­self through an ardu­ous recu­per­a­tion — and once she has healed, she uses her body and mind to take a revenge that suits the crimes com­mit­ted against her.

The end result is exploita­tion cinema’s ver­sion of a Rorschach test, the kind of film in which every­one sees some­thing dif­fer­ent depend­ing upon the mind­set and val­ues they bring to the table.  Part of this comes from Zarchi’s design of his nar­ra­tive: the film strips all its sto­ry­telling con­ceits — char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, set­tings, dia­logue, even music — to the bone.  This min­i­mal­ist approach puts the often-shocking con­tent of the story into sharp relief, strength­en­ing the punch of its raw ele­ments.  As John Bloom (a.k.a. Joe Bob Briggs) once astutely noted, the fin­ished prod­uct some­times feels like a Greek tragedy.

I Spit On Your Grave fur­ther dis­arms the viewer with its dis­pas­sion­ate visual approach: scenes are often allowed to unfold in wide shots and long takes, with Zarchi min­i­miz­ing how much he allows his visual style to com­ment on what’s hap­pen­ing.  It must also be men­tioned that this film has no musi­cal score — the only music heard in the film comes from onscreen sources — and Zarchi’s refusal to tell us how to feel about events via sound­track music plays a cru­cial role in throw­ing the viewer off-kilter.

Zarchi’s avoid­ance of lay­ing out a mes­sage in a con­ven­tional way is a source of power but it has also left the film open to mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion.  I Spit On Your Grave was famously attacked by Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert for being misog­y­nist and lurid, a com­plete mis­read­ing of the film that sug­gests both men were too stunned by the raw con­tent to apply their usu­ally strong intel­lects to what was on the screen.

If you pay close atten­tion to the por­trayal of the char­ac­ters, it’s quite obvi­ous that Zarchi intends us to be on the side of his hero­ine.  Her ordeal is pre­sented to us in unflinch­ing detail to ensure the audi­ence feels the pain it brings and his pre­sen­ta­tion of rape focuses on the cruel, unthink­ing bru­tal­ity of this act.  Anyone who walks away from that sequence think­ing that it aims to tit­il­late the audi­ence or glo­rify the attack­ers is say­ing more about their per­cep­tion of life and human­ity than any­thing about the film.

However, in fair­ness to its crit­ics, I Spit On Your Grave also has some sig­nif­i­cant flaws that keep a lot of peo­ple from tak­ing it seri­ously.  For starters, the men in the film are pre­sented in a way that stacks the deck against them in a too-obvious fash­ion: Johnny is the only male char­ac­ter who gets some sem­blance of dimen­sion and those moments only to make him more hate­ful (for what it’s worth, Eron Tabor is actu­ally quite good as Johnny and gives him a sense of con­trolled menace).

The film takes its biggest mis­step in its pre­sen­ta­tion of Matthew: though he is described as a halfwit by his friends, he is writ­ten in a low-comedy fash­ion that makes him seem more like a comic-relief nerd than a men­tally dis­abled char­ac­ter.  Richard Pace’s per­for­mance of the char­ac­ter is too broad, mak­ing it seem like the char­ac­ter walked in from a slap­stick comedy.

There are also a few nar­ra­tive rough spots.  Having Johnny entrust Matthew with the mur­der of Jennifer is sim­ply too much to ask of the audi­ence: it makes the oth­er­wise savvy Johnny look fool­ish and is such a huge logic loop­hole that it tends to pull many view­ers out of the story.  Finally, there is a cer­tain prob­lem in the struc­ture of Jennifer’s revenge: with­out say­ing too much, the order in which the men are killed isn’t as effec­tive as it could be and this detracts slightly from the power of the finale.

However, none of these admit­tedly notice­able flaws can take away from the over­all power of Zarchi’s film.  I Spit On Your Grave has often been described as a film that you expe­ri­ence — and the major power fuel­ing that impres­sion lies in Camille Keaton’s per­for­mance.  Her line read­ings are a lit­tle rough in the early scenes but once the story gets mov­ing, the film relies on Keaton’s impres­sive skills for non-verbal act­ing.  She doesn’t just show us the suf­fer­ing of her char­ac­ter — she embod­ies it, using every inch of her frame and expres­sive face to con­vey her character’s anguish.

On a side note, much to-do is made of Keaton’s fre­quent nudity in the film — not to men­tion the fact that she uses her body to lure the men into her revenge — and crit­ics often use this as an “easy out” to dis­miss the film.  Such prud­ish cluck­ing over­looks not only the brav­ery of her per­for­mance but also the character’s total com­mit­ment to her vengeance.  Jennifer Hills is will­ing to use any means nec­es­sary to draw the tar­gets of her vengeance in and the fear­less man­ner in which Keaton por­trays this plays a vital part in the finale’s effectiveness.

To sum up, I Spit On Your Grave is what you might call a “flawed clas­sic”: it has nar­ra­tive and per­for­mance issues that keep it from a reservation-free mas­ter­piece sta­tus yet its dis­tinc­tive, bold approach gives it a raw power that time can’t erode.  As a result, it is one of the true must-sees in exploita­tion cin­ema his­tory  - and whether you watch it through 1978 eyes or modern-day eyes, this uncom­pro­mis­ing howl of rage will come after you where you live.