I Spit On Your Grave (1978/2010)

I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE (aka DAY OF THE WOMAN) (18)

D: Meir Zarchi

Cinemagic (Meir Zarchi & Joseph Zbeda)

US 1978

101 mins

Horror

W: Meir Zarchi

DP: Nouri Haviv

Ed: Meir Zarchi

Camille Keaton (Jennifer Hills), Eron Tabor (Johnny), Richard Pace (Matthew Lucas), Anthony Nichols (Stanley), Gunter Kleeman (Andy)

Unpleasant exploitation film from the 1970's which only seemed to have been made for sheer shock value, for which it gained much notoriety and was subsequently banned in several countries.

The story could easily have been written on the back of a napkin: a young journalist is viciously gang-raped by four men in the remote woods and systematically gets her revenge on those responsible in equally gruesome ways.

Despite the film looking as though it were filmed on a cheap home video camcorder, Camille Keaton's performance is actually rather good. Both the character and the actress are subjected to rather awful conditions and though the screenplay has her do some very unconvincing things, it's easily the best performance in this film (although the rest can only really be described as awful).

4/10

I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE (18)

D: Steven R. Monroe

Anchor Bay/CineTel (Lisa M. Hansen & Paul Hertzberg)

US 🇺🇸 2010

108 mins

Horror/Thriller

W: Stuart Morse [based on the 1978 screenplay by Meir Zarchi]

DP: Neil Lisk

Ed: Daniel Duncan

Mus: Corey Allen Jackson

Sarah Butler (Jennifer), Jeff Branson (Johnny), Daniel Franzese (Stanley), Rodney Eastman (Andy), Chad Lindberg (Matthew), Andrew Howard (Storch)

An incredibly unpleasant remake of the 1978 exploitation film which was surely disgusting enough, but alas, following the Saw films and other gore-porn horror movies, you can never have too much rape and violence it seems.

The plot is practically the same. A young female writer is alone at a cabin in the woods to work in solitude when she is brutally gang raped by a group of locals only to serve her revenge in an equally vehement way.

Performances aside, this really is a revolting film to watch and doesn't really add anything that wasn't in the original film, aside from being far more in-your-face with the violent scenes of rape & revenge and even longer scenes of the lead actress driving her car throughout the first ten minutes of the film.

You could say that it could do with losing 10-15 minutes off the running time, but I think it's a remake that shouldn't have been made at all.

3/10