Rape, Torture and Murder — Oh My!

There are a handful of scary movies I have avoided most of my life despite horror being my favorite genre. These include; the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Last House on the Left and I Spit on Your Grave. I have since watched Texas Chainsaw. I guess I believed all the hype about these movies being so brutal as to be unwatchable. Unless you enjoy inflicting psychological damage on yourself. Even though I was afraid to watch these movies, I was still curious.

Today, I scratched another of these movies (and it’s remake) off the list. . Welcome to a Double Feature of I Spit on Your Grave (1978) and the 2010 remak! Nothing like being disgusted on a lazy Sunday afternoon . Meir Zarchi, an Israeli filmmaker, produced and wrote both films but only directed the original.

In both the original and remake, the story revolves around Jennifer Hills, played by Camille Keaton in 1978 and Sarah Butler in 2010, a writer from New York City who rents a cabin in the woods to write her first novel in solitude. Unfortunately, the local boys have other ideas and with no warning descend on Jennifer and attack her. In both movies, there are four young guys who are involved in the rape — one of whom is mentally disabled. The other men basically taunt this pathetic guy until he joins in the action. After Jennifer has been repeatedly raped, beaten and sodomized, she is left for dead. We all know where this is going whether we have seen these movies or not.

I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting (particularly from the original 1978 film). I suppose I thought it would be so brutal I would be unable to watch it. The original and remake were both brutal, disturbing, and disgusting for different reasons.  The original film had a very different tone than modern films of the same variety. In fact, the movie starts out with an almost cheerful tone so that if you did not know what you were watching you would have no idea what was coming. The victim screamed plenty during the attack, but it was not excessive. Once the revenge portion of the movie got going she had become eerily calm and actually used her body to lure the rapists to their death. In some ways, I was more disturbed by the way in which she gained their trust so that she could murder them than I was by the attack against her. Society is conditioned to accept, or at least not be shocked by, violent behavior from men but when a woman is violent people are totally thrown off.

The remake followed the original story line pretty closely but the tone was totally different. From the moment the movie begins the tone is foreboding. In this case, whether you knew what you were watching or not you had a sense things would be going terribly wrong. There were a few changes made to the story, one of which was just not believable. I felt the rape in the original was far more graphic and raw the revenge portion of the remake was totally over the top but that could be chalked up as just a product of the current times. Jennifer is far more visably angry during the revenge scenes in the remake. In a way, these ladies seem to have two different emotional reactions to being attacked.

Although written by a man, the original is truly a feminist film.  I have never been attacked in this manner but can imagine a woman who had having the thoughts and feelings Jennifer had and even fantasizing about taking revenge on her rapist. The crazy scenes of her torturing her attackers in the remake just take away from the power of the story. Sometimes less is more. Overall, I liked both movies but prefer the original.

Now for some trivia:

– The original film had no musical score. Meir Zarchi said he spent 3 weeks testing music for the film and was unable to find anything that fit.

– Jennifer Hills played by Camille Keaton was Meir’s wife-to-be at the time of filming (they have since divorced).

– His inspiration for the film came following an incident where he helped a woman to the police who had been raped.

– The movie’s original title was Day of the Woman but when it was picked up for distribution by the Jerry Gross Organization the title was changed to spur on ticket sales.

For the remake:

– One of the attackers is played by Rodney Eastman who played Joey in Nightmare on Elm Street 3 and 4. Boy, did he have a gruesome death!

I also want to make clear that while the rape scenes in both of these films were tough to watch I found myself infinitely more horrified by the rape scenes in The Accused and Boys Don’t Cry perhaps because I knew these were true stories and neither of these victims got much in the way of justice.

LITTLE MISS HORROR NERD’S RATING: 4/5 (1978) and 3/5 (2010)

 

You can purchase both movies as a double feature here.