La vengeance de Jennifer

I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE is a straightforward rape/revenge drama with the tone of a documentary.

The coverage is plain, there is no music, there are no "stars", there are no concessions to a mainstream audience.

The exploitation film audience may be served, although the rape sequences are neither dynamic nor stylish.

Camille Keaton (Buster's granddaughter), a writer, drives to the country to stay at her house on the river. Local losers stalk her and rape her and rape her again.

The rest of the film details the victim's bloody revenge.

Labeled rubbish by the ignorant, this is very restrained exploitation that is often perversely effective and confronting.

The rape sequences are nasty and ugly, not enhanced by camera moves, rich sound effects or lurid angles.

On the other hand, the revenge sequences are more cinematically manipulative and poorly executed.

An intriguing document of merit.

I tried to watch this film once before and made it up to the second rape scene before leaving the room, believing I was seriously about to throw up. I finally forced myself to watch it all the way through recently, and I'm glad I did.

Jennifer Hill is a young, hip, free-spirited woman of the 70s, who leaves her home in New York City for a long vacation in Connecticut, where she plans to write her first novel. Jennifer soon attracts the attention of four lowlife scumbags as she sunbathes in her bikini. The semi-evolved thugs kidnap Jennifer, drag her into the woods, rape her, beat her, sodomize her, beat her some more, follow her home, rape her again, kick her when she's down, make fun of her manuscript, rip it to shreds, rape her with a bottle, beat her up one last time and leave her, bleeding and unconscious on the floor of her vacation home. Damn. They send the retarded Matthew back into the house with a knife and instructions to kill her, but Matthew can't bring himself to do it. He tells the guys that he has killed her, and they stupidly believe him and leave. But Jennifer is alive, and as she heals from her hideous wounds and recovers her strength, she plots revenge against her rapists.

Roger Ebert called this the worst film ever made and feminists damned it to hell for all eternity, but you know what? I'm a woman and I liked it. Jennifer is no weak, whimpering, helpless little victim. She tries her best to fight back. When threats and violence fail to work in her favor, she uses the only other weapon she has: sex. The men are all stereotypical slobs, disgusting pigs who are clearly already emasculated and use Jennifer as an outlet for their frustration and rage. The rapes have nothing to do with sex and are portrayed most realistically - they are ugly, brutal, violent, nasty and completely devoid of eroticism. The sodomy scene was the one scene that horrified me the most, as Jennifer emits the most bloodcurdling scream of pain ever heard. It is very difficult not to flinch from that sound. Jennifer's revenge is every bit as bloody and painful, and nowhere is it more sadistic than in the infamous "bloodbath" scene. These guys all get what's coming to them, and Jennifer makes sure that the punishment fits the crime, turning the men into the helpless, pleading victims and feeding their own sadism right back to them.

Okay, so not all of the plot points make sense, and not everyone is going to agree with Jennifer's decision to kill the men, but it's still a powerful film. It's told primarily from Jennifer's point of view but it never takes sides. It simply tells the story and lets you decide - is Jennifer an insane psycho-killer who ought to go to jail for her crimes, or is she an angel of vengeance delivering poetic justice?

Scaredy cats like me might prefer to watch this film with the audio commentary by Joe Bob Briggs turned on. Joe Bob provides a lot of interesting information about the making of this film, and also supplies some much needed comic relief throughout.

I Spit on Your Grave is a film that will never be accepted as a serious piece of film-making. This is thanks in part to the gratuitous rape and murder scenes, which don't exactly hold back the shocks; and it's also due to the time in which it was made. These days, as proved by the likes of 'Irreversible', films tackling rape in a shocking and disgusting way are more readily accepted, and even gain a strong reaction from many critics. This film was unfortunately (albeit for good reason) caught up in the 'video nasty debate' in the early eighties, and as such it's reputation has been diminished to such an extent that the likes of Roger Ebert have labelled it 'the worst film ever made' (even though The Blair Witch Project is the worst film ever made) and it's reaction in general tends to be of the bad variety. For some reason, we have found ourselves in a world where it's more than acceptable to give praise to 'A class' rape themed dramas such as Irreversible, but woe betide thee who labels this as a good film. Well, woe betides me then.

For a 'video nasty', I Spit on Your Grave has surprisingly good production values. While the acting often lets it down, the cinematography and even the script are more than decent and this helps the film in it's bid to get the praise it deserves. The story, which follows a New York writer who moves to a backwater part of the USA to work on her new novel, shortly before being horribly raped and beaten, is just a plot device for the more important elements of the plot. The main theme on display seems to be a comment on the male sexual ego and the way that women can have power over them. The film plays out like a revenge thriller, with the protagonist getting her own back on the men who raped her. This disrupts the main argument against this film; namely, that it's misogynistic, as much of the violence in the movie is actually directed against men. Of course, the rape scenes are the main crux of the film; but most of the gore comes later. Don't get me wrong, this is hardly an uplifting feminist drama; but it's not the worst film ever made either. Content caution though; it gets a bit extreme. A certain scene in a bathroom takes the prize for being one of the sickest sequences ever to grace the silver screen.

You plan to spend the summer locked away, in a cabin in the woods is where you'll stay, start to write a piece of fiction, enjoy your time without restriction, what could possibly go wrong, get in the way? It's not too long before you're woken from your dream, as four assailants hunt you down and make you scream, raped and beaten left for dead, terror, fear, alarm and dread, but you will get recompense, and start to scheme.

A vicious and brutal piece of filmmaking that has the remarkable Camille Keaton excising a violent attack from her mind by replacing those memories with ones that are far more rewarding.

Shocking and disturbing, if you are not repulsed by this movie then you may need to see a psychiatrist.

It's one of those films that was hyped up as a slasher movie when it was released in the US in 1978 (and subsequently banned in the UK until 2001) alongside the Halloween's and Friday the 13th's, but it is anything but.

A lone writer is mentally and physically raped and seeks revenge, there is no hero, there is only despair and pain, there is no happy ending, just hurt and repulsion.

The violence is never glorified it just shows the depths of human pain and despair.