DVDs in Review

I Spit On Your Grave (Meir Zarchi, 1978)

Title: I Spit On Your Grave (aka Day of the Woman) (Meir Zarchi, 1978)

Release date: September 20 2010

Certificate: 18

Format: DVD, Blu-ray

RRP: £19.99 (Dualformat)

Rating: 1/5

Reviewed by Dave Lancaster

‘I Spit On Your Grave’ was infamously banned or drastically edited just about everywhere on its original release in 1978. With a plot whose sole events concern a lengthy gang rape followed by a series of bloody revenge attacks from the abused, it’s hardly surprising, but just because a film is controversial doesn’t mean it’s any good.

‘Deliverance’ has a somewhat similar plot and it’s a masterpiece of strained character development. ‘I Spit on Your Grave’ is just one woman (we know she’s a writer) and four men who attack her, one of whom is retarded. Almost all of the action is either rape or revenge.

The only scene that offers any degree of thought is when the woman goes to a church and begs for forgiveness for the killings she’s about to undertake, but even this lacks subtlety. The rest of the film is poorly constructed. It’s true that the cheap feel of the film stock and the amateur use of the camera and dodgy sound quality do add a brutal authenticity but what this film needed was a wider reach. It’s too contained and always on – there’s no distraction, which is fine for a time but not for a whole movie as thin as this.

Another point of contention is that the girl can easily find her attackers again and then proceed to seduce them, without the rapists suspecting that she could have an ulterior motive. This kind of movie logic treats both the characters and the audience like idiots. Characters who have been through such intense trauma or have given it are likely to be much more complex than this slasher suggests or even touches on.

Wes Craven’s ‘Last House on the Left’ is another banned rape/revenge ‘video nasty’ from the exploitative 1970s but it added a twist – a group of men rape and kill a woman and then decide to get off the road and take refuge in someone’s house for a while. The family in the house turn out to be the parents of the dead girl and they piece together what’s happened before extracting their revenge.

That worked because of the distance between the victim (absent), the guilty (thinking they’ve got away with it) and the family (suddenly forced into a moral dilemma spawned from grief and what’s expected of them in society). Every character had lost their power and is forced to adapt to a new way of life. Swedish auteur Ingmar Bergman also did a brilliant version of the fable in 1960, called ‘The Virgin Spring’.

Camille Keaton (the granddaughter of Buster Keaton) gives a fearless performance as the vengeful woman, but the film doesn’t match her commitment. ‘I Spit On Your Grave’ is a effortless cause and effect thriller that paints moral consequences onto a simple structure and then proceeds to smash its audience through it. The trouble is that there’s nothing on the other side.

Newly released as “the most complete version” ever seen in the UK, the DVD/Blu-ray comes with a 24-page booklet and a fold out poster.