Product: Day of the Woman (1978)
Rating: 3.0
Uncompromisingly brutal
It is hard to give this any stars without misleading others. It is what it is, and one either accepts the viewpoint of the violence, or is massively offended.Rather then go into the movie, I will direct my comments to the disc contents. First, the movie looks pristine, so it had to have been remastered. The trailer clips and some of the other supplemental materials show a gritty appearance of the movie. The actual movie does not show any of that.Zarchi's feature, The Values of Vengeance is a recent recording, as he talks about the 2010 remake. He gives background on making and distributing the movie. The commentary he has with the movie touches on some of what he amplified on in the feature. It is quite clear that he was very unhappy when the title of the movie got changed from Day of the Woman to its current title. His commentary is actually quite useful for anyone who wants to know what it is like to make a movie on a budget. And then try and get it distributed.The commentary by Joe Bob Briggs was, in my opinion, off putting. A lot was to rebuttal the reviews by Siskel and Ebert when the movie came out. And references to other movies in the genre of horror and brutality. Perhaps this is simply that I am not used to that type of a commentary on a movie. A lot of time was also put into showing that the movie was really from the point of the victim, Camille Keaton, then the attackers. There apparently is a disconnect, as some of the comments that he wondered about were already answered by Meir Zarchi's comments on the movie. So apparently they were done independently.So if one accepts that this movie fulfilled the message it was intended to do, it could get five stars. But if violence and brutality is something offensive, then one would probably give it zero stars.However, the genesis of this movie was when Zarchi actually came across a rape victim shortly after it happened, and he has captured the trauma of the event. And in his commentary, he has special scorn for how the police handled the victim.Nudity? Yes. Titillation? Absolutely not. There is no glorification of the attack. It is brutal and violent.This clearly is a movie for mature adults only. Not just adults. But mature adults.