I was talking to a friend recently about the times that we
live in today. I asked a young lad If he could identify a noise and he didn’t recognize
it however the girl and I recognized the noise as the noises that would be made
by a dial-up modem connecting to the internet.
That is a definite sign of the times that we live in.
I remember when I graduated high school 15 years ago and the
changes in technology that we faced at the time. In 1998 DVD was brand new and
had not taken off yet as the main media and VHS was the dominant media in the
market and Blockbuster was at the time the only place to rent a movie after
they had run all of the independent video stores out of the business and this
was a time before torrent and NetFlix.
It was also a time where many stores and theaters would not
carry certain films because they were deemed too controversial to be carried.
Today is different because many of these films are deemed tame by today’s
standards.
Mark Twain said many years ago that censorship was “Like
telling a man that he can’t have a Steak because a baby can’t chew it”. That is
the way I feel about many films and there was a time after Blockbuster and
Wal-Mart took over the industry they refused to carry many films and music
because of mature ratings.
I personally worked for a time at Blockbuster and after many
of these incidents occurred I left and began working for Virgin Megastore where
these titles were carried.
Today Blockbuster is gone and Wal-Mart and the remaining
retailers all carry the titles that they at one time refused to carry. Other
films are easily accessible through Itunes, NetFlix, and Amazon Instant videos
as well as the file sharing sites and viral video sites like YouTube.
In those days if it wasn’t for the internet to keep
awareness of these films alive many of them would be forgotten because of
censorship.
In the area that I grew up in Blockbuster had taken over all
of the video stores in the area and It was increasingly difficult for me to
find many of these old films.
One of the films that I had trouble finding was I Spit on
Your Grave.
Now I have to ask myself what is the appeal of this film and
I have to say it was originally the forbidden aspect of the film and later I
became an avid defender of the film.
My relationship with I Spit on Your Grave begins when I was
18 years old. The Video Works store that I misspent many years of my youth at
one time carried the film and by the time I was 17 years old and the film was
on the list of being 18 years old to rent I patiently waited to turn of age so
that I could rent the film and watch it and see what ALL of the hype was about.
That hype would lead me to one of my most controversial moments in my life at
this point.
I had already heard of the Hype before seeing the movie
talked about in Fangoria magazine as well as on houseofhorror.com ,
thecabnetofdrcasey.com (No Relation), and a slew of other horror websites that
I had began frequently checking out. I had managed to obtain a copy of Last
House on the Left and upon telling a friend of mine that it was disturbing he
promptly replied that I had to see I Spit on Your Grave.
I was in the store checking out a copy of Children Shouldn’t
Play with Dead Things and Phantasm when I saw a disturbance in the front
counter. A man had walked into the mature section and was upset because I Spit
on Your Grave was within reach of his 8 year old son who I was wondering why he
was in the mature section anyway. The man stated that he was a member of a
certain Baptist church in the area and they decided that the film was unfit and
they had earlier threatened to picket if the video was not removed from the
shelves which the store had refused on the grounds that they have the right to
show it if they wanted to.
This man then proceeded to open up the amaray and destroyed
the tape at the front counter. This action angered me to the point that the
very next Sunday I held a one-man protest outside their church angering the
community as well as the church and many in my school.
In 1999 I was at the local Bulldog video store in Sulpher,
Oklahoma visiting my parent’s Lake House and myself and my friend Slick did see
a copy of the film naturally I snatched up and watched it that weekend.
The movie was infact pretty disturbing but was not worth the
hype and controversy. This is where I bear in mind that I am a child of a time
where many of become desensitized by what we see on the nightly news and on
Tabloid Television. We see more violence on these programs than we see in films
like these or in Video Games and Comic Books.
If you had told me on the night that I had watched this film
that a decade later Camille Keaton would be a friend of mine that I frequently
have long conversations with her over the phone I would tell you not to humor
me.
Camille and I often speak about about the production of the
film as well as some of our own projects and conventions that we plan on
attending.
Also Joe Bob Briggs who provided the commentary on the 2003
Millenum Edition release of the film which remains on the 2010 Rerelease and
Blu-Ray release to promote the remake of the same name, was one of the main
people that introduced me to this film and before the releases that I have just
spoke of gave me more information on the film when I asked him about them on
his email list during the later days of Monstervision.
In his commentary Joe Bob proceeded to break down the film
and defend it against the controversy piece by piece going as far to point out
the camerawork as well as the editing and naming other films that came out
before the film.
The Commentary alone is worth the purchase of the DVD.
Needless to say this film has a special place for me for
those reasons among others.
The plot of the film goes like this.
Writer Jennifer Hill moves from New York City to a small
town in upstate New York for the summer to write her first novel. Upon her
arrival she encounters a quartet of locals including Johnny the owner and
operator of a gas station and his two friends Stanley and Andy who hang out at
the gas station. Jennifer later encounters the mentally disabled Matthew who
befriends Jennifer after delivering her groceries to her.
Eventually one day the men kidnap Jennifer and brutally rape
her and leave her for dead. Well
Jennifer recovers and begins her quest for vengeance against the men who
assaulted her.
Jennifer’s vengeance is carried out in many different ways
from seduction to castration to flat out assault.
What I realized the most about I Spit on Your Grave is the
point of view of the film.
Many have complained about the length of the rape scene and
that is where I point out that there is actually four rape scenes that have a
long drawn out scene between them and the assaults themselves are actually
pretty short.
The excessive violence is also the main point of the
controversy that the film has been subject to over the years.
Anyone that has seen the process of bringing a rapist to
justice knows how hard the process is particularly for the victim.
Meir Zarchi revealed during his commentary on the DVD that
he was inspired to direct the film after he witnessed the real life aftermath
of an assault while walking past Central Park in New York City with a friend
and his daughter, a young woman who was assaulted emerged from the park. After
taking his friend’s daughter home they decided to contact the police before
they took her to the hospital. Zarchi quickly regretted that decision with the
way that the victim was treated by the authorities claiming that the officer
was “Not Fit to wear the uniform”. As a
result he produced and directed the film in which the victim of a gang-rape
takes the revenge into her own hands.
This is where I point out the 2004 film Irreversible
starring Monica Bellucci in particular the scene where her character is
assaulted in a tunnel and afterward she is brutally beaten and left in a coma.
In the end of the film her attacker is not brought to justice and her ex-boyfriend
and fiancé take revenge on the wrong person and are hauled off to jail. I ask
you which is worse?
Wes Craven’s First film Last House on the Left followed a
similar premise in which a duo of young women head into the city to attend a
rock concert are kidnapped raped and brutally murdered by a quartet of criminals who eventually seek
refuge inside the home of the parents of one of their victims. After the
parents learn of the fate of their daughter they take revenge against them.
The film is also regarded as one of the most controversial
films of the time.
Last House on the Left has been remade twice first in 2005
with Chaos which is far more brutal than it’s predecessor and the far more
lighter 2009 Remake of the same name.
The remakes mark a sense of irony taking into consideration
that Last House on the Left is in all regards itself a remake of Ingmar Bergman’s
film the Virgin Spring.
In slightly similar plot of the family taking revenge
against the ones that assaulted them is The Linda Blair film Savage Streets the
heroine takes vengeance against the gang that raped her sister and murdered her
best friend.
Then there are the other films that aren’t associated with
the subgenre with films like Charles Bronson’s Death Wish series as well as the
Dirty Harry films especially with Sudden Impact.
There is also some of
the films that have made the mainstream fare such as Jodie Foster’s film The
Accused, and Brian De Palma’s Casualties of War. The differences is in these
films is that the attackers are brought to Justice in the courts and not facing
brutal revenge at the hands of their victims.
These films are just a few examples of the infamous Rape
Revenge sub-genre.
The most recent example of the genre is the subplot of the
recent film the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,
The character of Lisbeth Salander is assaulted by her lawyer
and she takes her revenge by marking him as well as threatening to castrate and
kill him. The subplot is highly relevant in the sequels to the novel and the
subsequent film adaptations.
The author of the Millennium trilogy Stieg Larsson was
inspired to write the character after witnessing the assault of a woman and his
reluctance and fear to help her. The event made a massive impact on Larsson and
maintained the theme in his novels.
This is where I feel that I am an avid defender because of
many people that I have known in my life that have been assaulted and the fact
that I can see the aftermath of the attacks and the wrecking ball effect that
it has had on their lives. It is a result of these events that I have volunteered
for many rape prevention classes over the years.
In reality the film is by far from a feminist’s point of
view which I feel that is why the film is so controversial.
In many of the films the victim takes her revenge but the
woman is forever destroyed by the events that happened to her as well as her
own actions.
Such as the film Ms. 45 the main character Thana (Played by Zoë
Tamerlis Lund) begins taking her revenge out on any and all men that she sees
she is finally taken down and killed by none other than one of her friends
after killing her boyfriend in a brutal shooting spree at a Halloween party.
In I Spit on Your Grave Jennifer Hill is brutalized and
destroyed but after a couple of scenes where she is shown healing her body you
see her healing her mind and she begins writing her book again and slowly we
see the character that we met at the beginning of the film.
It is at this point
that the attackers ride their boat past her house seeing that she is in fact
alive and looking at them with revenge in her eyes.
Similar to the production of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre the
film was a victim of it’s ultra-low budget and in the fact that the film could
not afford stunt doubles.
Camille Keaton had to do many of the film’s scenes
that involved the character’s journey through the woods to civilization had to
walk through the woods and streams naked and exposed to the elements, and
insects even needing to be rushed to the emergency room one day after being
bitten by a massive amount of poisonous insects during the production of the
film. Ever the trooper Camille refused to alter the production schedule of the
film to recover and continued production as scheduled.
Zarchi revealed in the commentary that Richard Pace who
played the mentally disabled Matthew during
the filming of his death scene reacting to a fear of heights began to panic and
started to really choke and hang eventually passed out and had to be revived
after being lowered. When he came to he simply asked if the shot worked.
Eron Tabor played the woman hating gang’s leader Johnny,
Tabor who was also a composer and a pianist was really nervous about the knives
in the scenes in particularly the infamous bath tub sequence.
This sequence is the part of the film that is the most
talked about. Jennifer seduces her attacker and while manually
stimulating him she takes a giant butcher knife that she stole from Matthew and
slicing off his penis (which you don’t see but you know that it is happening) and the macho Johnny is reduced into a screaming
crying mess that Jennifer allows to bleed to death.
Anthony Nichols was a cast member highly skilled at driving
the motorboat and he even instructed Camille Keaton on how do drive the boat in
her scenes.
Various members of the crew ended up leaving the production
while the scenes were being filmed because of the excessive violence. These
crew members included the Make-up woman as well as the Electrician.
Early on in pre-production Zarchi hired a production manager
that many on the cast and crew could not stand because of his arrogance and
Zarchi let him go early into the production.
After the scene in the church where Jennifer asks for
forgiveness for what she is about to do was filmed the reverend of the church
contacted Zarchi asking that he turn
over all footage of the inside of and around the church because he was told
that Zarchi and his crew were filming a porno film.
It was later revealed that the reverend was told this by the
fired crew member who followed the crew from New York City to Kent, Connecticut
where 90% of the movie was filmed to spread the rumor around the town about the
crew making a porno film.
He then explained the plot of the film to the reverend and
was not only given his permission but was instructed that if anyone else had a
problem with the film have them speak to the reverend himself Effectively
giving the film the protection of the church.
I Spit on Your Grave has no musical Score to the film. This
was not done for budgetary reasons Zarchi stated that he felt that the film
needed no score for the film and he did have various music in the movie such
Andy playing his Harmonica.
The MPAA constantly refused to grant the film an R-Rating
since the NC-17 rating had not been invented yet the film would constantly
receive an X-Rating that at the time and is still today looked on as porn
films.
Meir Zarchi self-distributed the film under the title Day of
the Woman which did not do well and deeply in debt he had a company
redistribute the film under the title I Spit on your Grave which Zarchi hated. As
a matter of fact on the release of the Millennium edition release of the film
Zarchi had the DVD titled I Spit on Your Grave aka Day of the Woman.
Zarchi also hated the new poster for the film that featured
a shot of an actress’s backside (Not Camille) holding a knife with the tagline,
“This Woman Has Just Cut, Chopped, Broken and Burned Five Men Beyond
Recognition. But No Jury in America would Ever Convict Her!!!”…I Spit on Your
Grave.
First off there were only four men and not five. Second off
the never broke or burned any of them.
The film definitely takes a female point of view. In reality
the only men that you see In the film are the rapists. There is however an
organ player in the film and a butcher cutting meat in a store.
No One notices that in the scene where Jennifer is being
chased through the woods there is clearly an audio person in the shot.
Roger Ebert openly campaigned against the film referring to
it as "a vile bag of garbage...without a shred of artistic
distinction," and said that "Attending it was one of the most
depressing experiences of my life."
Ebert himself alongside his partner Gene Siskel would even stand outside
of theater to urge people not to see the film. Convincing theater management to
cancel screenings and eventually got the distributer the pull the movie.
I Spit on Your Grave is banned in some countries because of
the excessive violence in the film in the revenge sequences as well as the flat
out violence in the rape sequences.
It is campaigns like these that have both added to the hype
of the film and also spawned the outrage that has hurt the film.
Many of the
film’s detractors later admitted that they haven’t even seen the film yet they
still spoke out against it.
One of the first reviews that I did here on the Video Creep
Blog was the 2010 Remake of the Film.
Click Here for that review.
A sequel for that film will be released later this month.
All in All I am still a fan of the original and I highly recommend
it to all of you.
Those of you that are of age that is.
By the Way nowadays you can find I Spit on Your Grave on NetFlix, Wal-Mart, and Hulu.
4 Dead Bodies
2 Breasts
5 Beasts
2 Boat Chases
Axe to the Back
Boat Motor to the Intestines
Hinging
Severed Penis Fu
4 Stars
One of the True Classics and definitely Check it out
