Product: Day of the Woman (1978)
Rating: 4.0
No Jury In America Could Ever Convict Her
To date, Zarchi's exploitation classic is the film that all other revenge flicks aspire to be or continue to steal pages from. Even after all these years, people still have great memories of ISOYG and time has truly been more than kind to this brutal cult film. While many other films in the same genre have seemingly fallen off the face of the earth or the cult cinema map, Meir Zarchi's film will never suffer such a fate.According to the faithful wiki, The film's original title was Day of the Woman. It was also shown under the title I Hate Your Guts and The Rape and Revenge of Jennifer Hill. The title was changed to I Spit on Your Grave for the 1980 re-release. Meir Zarchi dislikes this title.While I've never been quite sure whether ISOYG is merely a starchy exploitation flick or a trashy female empowerment story, it's compelling to say the very least and I do still find myself wanting to revisit Zarchi's cruel world from time to time. How about now?Jennifer Hills (played by the truly beautiful Camille Keaton) wants nothing more than to get away from the hustle and bustle of New York. In order to work on her novel and remain focused, she rents an isolated cottage by the lake in a relatively small town. Naturally, every man in town is attracted to this young woman including a semi-retarded Matthew, a gas station manager (and married to boot) Johnny, and two slackers who spend their afternoons just moping around town when not hanging out at the gas station.As one can probably guess, trouble is brewing and nothing good will come out of Jennifer's friendship with Matthew nor her initial introduction to Johnny, the gas station manager. Jennifer is captured by our motley crew of unscrupulous men while relaxing in her canoe. Over the next half hour, Jennifer is raped repeatedly in various locations by the four men and left for dead. Realizing that she can testify against each one of them, Johnny sends Matthew back to the cottage to kill Jennifer. Mathew, however, cannot bring himself to kill Jennifer but wipes her blood on his knife and then advises the other men that she is now dead.Over the course of a few days, Jennifer grieves and tries to pull herself back together while she works on the manuscript once again that had been previously shredded by the four rapists in her cottage. After attending church and asking for forgiveness, she plots to kill them off one by one beginning with Matthew.Although slightly less controversial with time, ISOYG is still not an easy watch by any means. Considered by many to be one of the essential cult classics loved by horror & cult film enthusiasts alike, there are scenes which will stick with you for the rest of your life. I still flinch each time I view the bathtub scene where Johnny's genitals are severed by Jennifer. While the scene isn't as graphic as my description might have you believe, it's nevertheless a scene which makes me extremely uncomfortable. Nevertheless, the viewer will still root for Jennifer all the way after witnessing her ugly sexual assaults.So whatever happened to Camille Keaton? Well, that's another story entirely but I will go ahead and tell you that she's made one hell of a comeback with Fred Vogel's Sella Turcica and she has two other films which are in the works. Fingers crossed. I'm hoping that they will soon see the light of day. One of which is entitled The Butterfly Room that boasts performances by Heather Langenkamp, Barbara Steele, and many other great veteran horror actresses. It's sad that Camille Keaton wasn't given a great deal of work in the movie industry for some 30 years but I'm glad to report she's alive and well. Perhaps the new millennium will continue to show moviegoers that Keaton is indeed a talent to be reckoned with.I can also report that the much anticipated remake of the unrated ISOYG was released on DVD 02/08/11. Meir Zarchi serves as executive producer this time around. For those of you who still haven't seen the original, Anchor Bay has also re-released the cult classic on the same day for under $20. Grab it!