Product: Day of the Woman (1978)
Rating: 3.0
Belongs on Your Female Revenge Movie Shelf
I confess I have a warm, soft spot in my heart for violent female revenge movies. At the top of the list are LA FEMME NIKITA and THE LAST SEDUCTION. MS. 45 is a very stylish core collection here. And so we come to I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE. In a way the most realistic of the bunch (the hillbilly rapists are incredibly believable, much more than the hillbillies in DELIVERANCE though not as menacing). But also the simplest plot. And yet, not quite so simple. We know what our heroine is going to do. But she diesn't do it by brute force, she does it by trickery and guile, making the revenge ever-so-sweeter. Be prepared for a cheaply produced movie--stitches appear on our heroine's face even though she didn't see a doctor, but a couple of days later they are all gone as if they never were there at all, even though she didn't take time out to go to New York to see a top plastic surgeon. All right, so the makeup department was underbudgeted. And the pace of the movie is a bit slow, perhaps because it was done way back in 1978, when it was probably fast for those days. Three stars coming from this cheapskate reviewer is high praise, and I believe you'll thoroughly enjoy this movie if you don't go in expecting DELIVERANCE. It definitely belongs on the Female Revenge Movie shelf, which is saying a lot because it's a short shelf of real goodies.