I Spit on your Grave
(aka: Day of the Woman)
(Screen Entertainment/Hard Gore PAL Region 0 
U.K. Special Edition  DVD)
 (1978)
  review by Blackgloves

I must have been about fourteen when the whole "Video Nasty" hysteria kicked off in the UK. Everything, from the low-budget Italian splatter-fest of "Zombie 2", to the slightly more mainstream fare of "Texas Chain Saw Massacre" and "The Exorcist", was eventually swept from the video-store shelves as a direct result of a fit of media-driven moral panic in the early eighties that eventually resulted in the UK becoming one of the most censorious democracies in the world. I never actually saw any of these "awful" films at the time; I do remember the fascination I and my peers had with the whole subject though. The irony is, of course, that had it not been for the reams of newspaper print and hours of TV time devoted to these films, we would probably never have ever heard of most of them! Instead, you could earn a vast amount of playground kudos from claiming to have seen any of these "evil", celluloid atrocities! One of my school friends at the time went to live in Spain for a few years where he got to see all of the nasties—which were freely available there apparently—that got the British media into a lather: "The Exorcist", TCM, "The Evil Dead", "Last House On The Left", "Zombie 2", "Cannibal Holocaust", all of these earned him a huge amount of brownie-points when he finally got back and regaled us with all the sordid details. He seemed to survive the experience, and still seemed relatively sane too! Out of all this unwholesome material though, the one title that he'd seen that impressed us the most was Meir Zarchi's notorious "I Spit On Your Grave".

This film had gained a reputation for being the nastiest of all the nasties. First of all, it has surely one of the sleaziest sounding titles ever invented! "The Evil Dead" and "Last House On The Left" sound foreboding enough, but "I Spit On Your Grave"?!
As Joe Bob Briggs mentions in his excellent audio commentary (probably one of the most entertaining commentaries ever recorded) it's impossible to hear that title and believe that it could ever apply to anything of the least artistic merit! A glance at the infamous cover art, with it's curvaceous model in her ripped clothes and skimpy underwear, doesn't do much to challenge those initial impressions. The extra level of hysteria surrounding the media's depiction of the film at the time is, these days, only reserved for web-sites aimed at pedophiles! Really, this movie surely had to be the product of a diseased mind! But it turns out that both the cover art and the title do not give a very accurate impression of the film they represent. They were all part of a clever campaign by the film's distributor (a man named, rather appropriately, Jerry Gross). The film originally went under the much less histrionic title of "Day of the Woman" and the cover art has nothing to do with the film at all! Now, when I finally get to see it all these years later (all be it in it's slightly trimmed and re-edited UK version) -- I find it to be a very different viewing experience from the unrelenting, corrupting, sleaze-fest I had imagined it to be all this time!

It's obvious from reading the huge body of radically differing reactions that the film has provoked in viewers ever since it was released, that many people do indeed see it as nothing but trash; but in my eyes, rather than a straightforward exercise in exploitation, ISOYG (or rather "Day of the Woman") seems to be a film of serious intent that is prepared to risk crossing a line that leads it into areas of potential exploitation in order to confront some explosive and difficult issues in a direct and unsentimental way. It doesn't always succeed in every area it tackles, but it's one of those thought provoking films that seems to harbour so many more layers of ambiguous subtext behind it's surface events, that you can never quite commit to a definitive interpretation of it. I believe Meir Zarchi had honourable intentions in making the film; this never seemed to be the case with Wes Craven's "The last House on the Left" for instance, which doesn't contain anywhere near the depth of Zarchi's film, and betrays it's exploitative intentions throughout, despite it's director's ingenious attempts at revisionism many years later!

As Meir Zarchi explains on his commentary track (that's two exemplary commentary tracks this disc contains!), the film was inspired by a real incident. Zarchi witnessed the aftermath of a rape when he stumbled upon a rape victim in a public park. This incident must have percolated away in Zarchi's subconscious until he eventually wrote the screenplay for "Day of the Woman". The film is perhaps the ultimate rape & revenge drama. Although it was not the first of it's kind, Zarchi claims to have been uninfluenced by other films in the genre; he still hasn't seen LHOTL to this day and only saw "Deliverance" while in the middle of editing his own film. The story is simple: a young magazine writer, Jennifer Hills (Camille Keaton) leaves behind her busy life in the City to work on her first novel in an idyllic, but isolated country retreat. She excites the attention of four local men who appear to have little to do with their time but ruminate on their inadequacies in relation to the opposite sex. Jennifer's arrival somehow sparks a chain of events which eventually lead them to subject her to a horrific series of violent rapes over the course of a day before leaving her for dead. But Jennifer survives, and sets about exacting her bloody revenge on each of the men using their own misogynistic fantasies to seduce and lead them into her deadly traps.

The rape scenes in the movie are long and harrowing, but there is nothing titillating about the way they are portrayed at all. Zarchi's use of long takes, with the assaults shot in real time from several static camera set-ups, gives these scenes a curiously detached documentary feel—it's as if we are viewing things from the perspective of an impartial observer who has no interest in intervening; the camera seems to adopt a stoic facade as it calmly records the atrocious events. But this doesn't mean that we are encouraged not to emphasise with the victim, it's just that the horrors of the events are conveyed completely naturally by the committed performances of those taking part in acting out the scenes. No cinematic tricks need to be used to draw us in; just by confronting us with these brutal sequences, unadorned with incidental music or any other artificial attempts to manipulate our emotions, Zarchi manages to create one of the most uncompromising and uncomfortable representations of the violence of rape in screen history.

The general lack of music throughout the film is one of the most striking things about it; the rape scenes may play out with no authorial emphasis in the form of mannered musical cues, but so does the rest of the movie. The ambient sounds of the characters' environment begin to take on a momentous significance, and often help to indicate their state of mind or their intentions. The brilliant sound design by Alex Pfau (a veteran of the prestigious Lodz film school in Poland where he was a friend of Roman Polanski, who also studied there) creates mood by various methods: the title sequence is accompanied by traffic noise and the sound of a car motor as Jennifer drives out of the City; this is immediately followed, and effectively contrasted, by the calming chirrup of birds as she leaves her old life for one of solitude and contemplation in the countryside. However, the sense of tranquility is invaded when the four local men who will go on to tear her life apart show up in a noisy motorboat—reintroducing those harsh sounds into the peaceful calm and creating a terrible sense of foreboding. Later on, these same tranquil sounds of the countryside reassert themselves, but this time they serve as a contrasting backdrop for the disturbing on-screen imagery we witness. They are used to subtly suggest an awful sense of nature's imperviousness to suffering and reinforce the film's documentary-style detachment. There are actually several occasions when music *is* used to convey emotion; but each time, the music turns out to be a part of the on-screen environment. A scene where, after her ordeal, Jennifer visits a church to ask for forgiveness in advance of the revenge she is about to take (a scene that sounds faintly ridiculous but that somehow works!) is accompanied by mournful organ music that gradually gets louder as Jennifer drives up to the church, and fills the soundtrack when she eventually enters, where we now learn that the music is being played by an organist inside the building (actually Meir Zarchi himself). An earlier scene makes disturbing use of on-screen music when, just before the second rape, one of the rapist's harmonica playing gives us an uncomfortable insight into the excitement these men feel as they prepare to subject their victim to yet another horrific ordeal with the music increasing in tempo as they approach their victim.

Despite these clever touches, the film stands or falls on the performances of it's small cast of actors. There are only really five characters in the whole film: Jennifer and the four men who attack her (who are the only people we see who live in the area, apart from a few extras dotted about here and there). The film's most important performance, and the most difficult for a number of reasons, is that of Jennifer -- and Camille Keaton does an amazing job with a role that would have won her plaudits for years to come if she hadn't been acting in one of the most notorious movies ever made! She's required to put herself on the line in the first half of the film in a way that few people would be willing to, and in the second half she has to make her character's actions seem believable as the film departs from reality and becomes a revenge fantasy. She is the only reason the film has any chance of working at all.
Keaton also seems to have invested a lot of herself in the role; with only twenty minutes of screen-time with which to establish her character before the main events of the film take precedence, she creates a believable persona for Jennifer by using her own wardrobe for the character's clothes, something she continues to do throughout the film. She even utilises a facial scar she received in a car-crash (which is usually covered up on screen with make-up) so that the injuries left after her ordeal look realistic.

The performances of the male characters are more of a mixed bag with some positive and negative elements. Eron Tabor is unnerving as the woman hating Johnny, and seems to be the "leader" out of the four rapists. He is also the only one who offers us a glimpse into their twisted psychology with his "I don't like taking orders from women" speech. Interestingly, he is also the only male character who is fleshed out with any back story. We learn in the second part of the movie that he is actually married and has two kids! Out of all the rapists, Johnny is the one who stands for the institutions that maintain patriarchy—which is why he has to be the one who gets the most winch inducing death scene! But there is also a hint that he might be rather "hen-pecked" when we see his wife bullying the last two surviving rapists in the one scene in the film that is appropriately humorous.

The character of Matthew (Richard Pace) is the main cause of the film's failings though. The character is a retarded adult—a man with the mind of a child. I imagine the intention behind this had something to do with depicting a male child's induction into the twisted world of the other three adult misogynists. Matthew goes from reluctantly helping to hold Jennifer down through peer pressure during the first rape (and half-heartedly trying to help her afterwards) to excitedly taking part in the abuse in the third attack, cheered on by his "friends". Indeed, the whole reason the men come into contact with Jennifer in the first place has to do with them helping Matthew lose his virginity—which suggests there may have been some parody on teen sex-comedies here (although the film predates "Porkies"). Perhaps it would have worked better if one of the males had been a teenager rather than a retarded adult, although that wouldn't have been quite so extreme a condemnation of masculine attitudes as having a male child trained to take part in a sexual assault, which is what effectively happens in the film! The reason the whole idea falls a little flat is mainly down to an overstated, sometimes comedic performance by Richard Pace who invests the character with unnecessary Jerry Lewis or Frank Spencer style mannerisms which hit the wrong note and dissipate some of the power of the film. The only other real failing the film has is that a few scenes are unnecessarily long. Jennifer's character is detailed with such economy while the male characters have several pointless scenes of dialogue that seem to drift on boringly for ages.

When, in the second part of the film, Jennifer transforms herself into a series of sexy seductress' in order to trap her attackers, the film could have descended into complete farce. This part is probably the reason why the film is so controversial, because after such a gritty and realistic portrayal of Jennifer's ordeal, the way she takes revenge by re-establishing and taking advantage of her sexuality propels the film into areas of dramatic fantasy that feels exploitative to many. But it is only because Keaton makes the transition so believable that some people are able to take it seriously enough to get offended by it! It's obviously not normal for a rape victim to react as Jennifer does in the film—even letting one of her attackers have sex with her again before she kills him—but, as well as letting the heroine get her own back on some of the most repulsive male characters ever created, this second part of the film is about Jennifer reconstructing her identity and self-esteem after having it completely smashed by her attackers (they rip up the manuscript of her novel after the final attack, although, to be fair -- it isn't very good!). It is also about ridiculing male constuctions of fantasy female figures—figures that the rapists turn out to be so completely in the thrall of that they don't even consider it strange when Jennifer, while acting out these fantasies, seems to come on to them! When she becomes that proud-looking, bikini-wearing, axe wielding warrior in a speedboat at the end of the film, there is a note of ambiguity though. Since, on the one hand you can't help cheering her on, while at the same time you wonder whether she may have become a bit of a monster because of the whole ordeal. What will become of her after the credits roll?

This new Special Edition DVD version presents the film in a re-mastered version supervised by the director—the image quality and clarity is simply stunning! You get three audio options: the original mono soundtrack (a rare treat and a chance to hear the subtle sound design of the film in it's original form), plus Dolby 5.1 and 2.0 options which clean up the sound and separate the channels nicely.
"I Spit On Your Grave" has always been the thorn in the side of the BBFC, who still cling to the notion that you and I will be irredeemably corrupted if we ever clap eyes on any of the stuff they view every day. After being banned for nearly twenty years, the film was finally granted a certificate a few years ago -- but with roughly six minutes of cuts! Now, with their release of this extra-special edition, the good people at Screen Entertainment have taken the opportunity to get the film re-released in a more presentable version that retains the spirit of the director's original cut while still staying within the law regarding the BBFC's ultra-strict rules on the depiction of sexual violence. To achieve this they've spent a year trying to create a reworked version that would meet with the approval of both the director and the BBFC -- no small order! But with the help of some digital re-framing here, a few crafty cuts there, and a spot of slow mo to retain the integrity of the soundtrack, they've managed to achieve both these goals, although the BBFC still demanded another forty-one seconds of cuts.

It's a shame that these hoops have to be jumped through just to get the film released in an anywhere decent version -- but Screen Entertainment have pulled out the stops to make up for it with a Special Edition that contains the most comprehensive set of extras of any DVD release so far!
These are: Director's Commentary - Meir Zarchi's carefully researched examination of the responses to his film and his own take on it all these years later. It contains loads of information and trivia and is as riveting to listen to as the film is to watch.
Commentary by Genre critic Joe Bob Briggs - quite simply one of the most entertaining commentary tracks ever recorded! Briggs ruthlessly mocks the film's faults but always with affection. He also brings some genuine insight to his interpretation of the film as he tries to decide whether the movie is the worst piece of exploitation ever made or a feminist masterpiece!

Next up we have a collection of text pieces from the time of the film's original American release. These include Siskel and Ebert's original reviews—trashings which lead to the film being removed from the screens up and down the country!

All this, along with the large collection of trailers, TV spots and an extensive gallery of foreign and domestic artwork which are also included here, was also featured on the Region 1 release, but Screen Entertainment have added their own, brand new, exclusive extras to the set!

These are: an all new, 80 minute audio interview with Meir Zarchi! The editor of DVD Monthly follows up on some lose ends from Zarchi's commentary track, and even gleans some details on Zarchi's screenplay for the sequel! A fascinating listen and the perfect compliment to the director's commentary track.

Probably the most interesting, and most relevant extra for UK viewers, is the new section of text pieces pertaining to the film's reception in the UK. This is an intelligently organised set of reviews, TV transcripts and Newspaper clippings relating to the film -- that will enable anyone who never lived through the whole "Video Nasty" hysteria to gain some insight into just how it felt at the time. Particularly interesting are the newspaper stories concerning an alleged series of copycat rapes by a young man, and his mother's campaign to have ISOYG and other films like it (which she said caused him to commit the crimes) banned. This section is topped off with Zarchi's own account of what happened when he finally came face to face with this woman on a Newcastle based television show. It's not what you might expect!

Finally there is also, allegedly, an "easter egg" contained on this disc ... which I couldn't find!

This is the best edition of the movie ever presented in the UK and is well worth checking out despite the need for director approved re-editing. Hopefully, one day, we will see this film completely uncut in the UK. Until then, get this excellent version and if you insist on seeing it uncut -- get both versions!