Product: Day of the Woman (1978)
Rating: 3.0
Very disturbing exploitation film
Getting back to the series of reviews I did on exploitation horror films like "The New York Ripper" and "Zombie," I now take the time to analyze the fiercely disturbing "I Spit on Your Grave" from writer-director Meir Zarchi. I'd seen the box for this film on movie store walls since I was about ten, and had been interested in seeing it ever since, but had always ended up passing it up for something else. Was it worth the wait? Yes. Could it have waited longer? You bet. It is a good film, but it's far from being a great film. The cult appeal of it is obvious. It was made on a low budget with shoestring cinematography and almost no makeup effects whatsoever. The makeup effects we do see are bad, so it's no wonder Zarchi decided to hide that gruesome castration behind the porcelain wall of a bathtub. Such things are better left to the imagination, as John Carpenter has pointed out to us; how it will look in the audiences mind is infinitely more terrifying. Zarchi isn't of that school though, and the violence in this film is put on display wholesale for us to digest and possibly throw up. "I Spit on Your Grave" is a merciless film.The plot of the film is simple: A woman rents a cabin out in the woods, craving peace, quiet, and solitude to work on her first novel. She is quite attractive, and this is the first thing four men in town happen to notice when she stops by a gas station and later on gets a visit from the grocery boy. They decide to rape her. Very simple, and very disgusting, to think that there might actually be men in the world who think this way. And even more frightening yet to see the consequences of this way of thinking executed on screen in a series of vicious rapes and beatings that make the rape scene in "The Accused" look like passionate, consentual sex. Just when you think all the turmoil for this young woman is over, after she's forced to walk back home, naked, through the woods, stepping through mud and grit and trees with sharp branches, there's more to come. It seems like it never ends. Even the one man we have hope for betrays our trust, and hers. I was sick to my stomach by the time this was finally done. I know this was the reaction Zarchi was going for, but he could've done it with more style and less grit. Yes, this is disturbing, and most people might think it'd be disservicing the material to stylize it in anyway, but there really is a question of going too far here. As I've previously stated, when it's left up to our imagination, it's infinitely more terrifying. Nonetheless, the rape scenes, because they are so brutal and straightforward in their heinous nature, what ensues afterward seems justified. By the time the woman heals, we are already rooting for her, and we are one hundred percent with her when her plan to launch deadly revenge against the four men who attacked her goes into action.On that level, I recommend this movie. It's hardcore, stomach-churning, and all-out girl-powered. The four guys in the movie are the reasons why some women hate men. ... The men in this movie are pigs. And we rejoice in the revenge of this young woman after she was sodomized again and again by the absolute bottom of the male gene pool. "I Spit on Your Grave" is a dish best served cold.