Product: Day of the Woman (1978)
Rating: 4.0
Sometimes complete garbage can be art
"I Spit On Your Grave" is one of the most notorious films to play so-called "Grindhouse" movie houses during the 70's, and most critics that bothered to see it dismissed it as reprehensible garbage. Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert in particular hated it, and even the audience the film supposedly attracted. Considering it boasts the dubious honor of containing the longest--and most graphic--rape scene in film history (not counting porn) seems to justify their reaction. But wait! ISOYG is also the tale of one woman's bloody revenge against her attackers, and its supporters even maintain that it's actually a pro-feminist movie. Watching it, one can easily imagine that director Meir Zarchi honestly thought that was what he was doing. I kinda think he was trying to have it both ways: to make a bottom feeding exploitation film that was also a feminist statement (The original title was "Day of the Woman," but the more, um, declarative replacement doesn't seem designed to attract serious cineastes).The film's heroine, Jenny Hill (Camille Keaton) is a writer who leaves her ritzy New York digs to complete her novel in the peace and quiet of rural Connecticut. There she is accosted by a gang of lowlifes who rape her and leave her for dead. From then on Jenny becomes a heartless killing machine, concocting a plot to seduce the men and brutally kill them. I don't think it would giving anything away to say that a gun, a noose and an outboard motor are involved, or that the most vivid scene involves one of the perps naked in a bathtub when a knife...well, you can probably guess what happens.Even though Keaton spends most of the movie completely naked, it's clearly told from her point of view, and even though the rape is graphic and protracted, it's anything but a turn-on. It's as brutal, ugly and even realistic as what you can imagine an actual rape to be like, so the audience is rooting for these scumbags to get what's coming to them. Then again, the movie can also be seen as a male assault on feminism: the heroine is a free-spirited writer (read: intellectual) from "evil" New York City who doesn't even wear a bra! Certain kinds of men (like the ones who presumably go to grindhouse movies) are threatened by women like this, and ISOYG could be seen as their fantasy (or nightmare). I myself like to think of it as pro-woman, but Zarchi, it would seem, was at least canny enough to provide enough ambiguity to maximize its chances for success.In any event, ISOYG is definitely not devoid of artistic merit or craft, as some of its critics contend. It's deliberately paced, with documentary-style footage and no soundtrack music (it even has some stunning photography of the lake and forest it was shot at). Watched from today's point of view, this could almost be a kind of gory Dogma 95 production! Heck, it's as provocative as Lars Von Trier likes to think he is. The disc features a small archive of articles (both pro and con) about the movie, and a commentary track from Zarchi himself. A bonus commentary, by exploitation film critic Joe Bob Briggs, is both entertaining and surprisingly astute. So if you're a fan of such "modern" fare as "Saw," "Hostel" or most especially Rob Zombie's "The Devil's Rejects," this is the movie you should check out. It's disturbing enough to wipe that silly smirk off your face for good.