Product: Day of the Woman (1978)
Rating: 1.0
Very Over-rated Rape and Slash.
Yes, there is realism in this flick -- the brutal gang-rape of the main character, which goes on and on until your stomach is ready to leap up and throttle your brain. I'll give it that, hence its one and only star. But that's where the realism ends. After that, it is one of the most poorly acted, far-fetched pieces of tripe you'll ever see. The reactions to the rape are completely unrealistic, and the revenge killings are so stupid and ham-fisted you'll wonder if Zarchi even bothered to think them through before rolling the camera. One victim actually walks into a noose and is hanged while being seduced by the woman he just raped. Give me a break, people. It's just too stupid to even be funny.Attempts to justify this movie as a feminist commentary on society (somehow empowering rape victims by turning them into murderers) all fall flat. Zarchi fails where Wes Craven succeeds in "Last House on the Left" -- mostly because Zarchi missed the point in favor of shock value. His characters are flat, emotionless, and unmotivated. Therefore, we don't care if any of them live or die, which is a real shame considering the subject matter.Watch Ingmar Bergman's "The Virgin Spring." That film shows how otherwise "good" people can be driven to acts of extreme brutality. Bergman shows us terror, desire, grief, rage, ambiguity, and transformation -- all the things that make us human. Zarchi and his lot show us a lengthy rape scene, and some lame movie blood. After seeing the subject handled so much better by others (Bergman in particular, but Craven's no slouch), Zarchi can only be taken as a cheap, exploitational insult to the intelligence of even the lowest of brows.