Oeil pour oeil

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.

In summertime, the aspirant New Yorker writer Jennifer Hills (Camille Keaton) rents a lakeside cottage in the woods of the peaceful Park Hell Lane, Connecticut, to write her first novel during the vacation. A couple of days later, she is successively and brutally gang raped by three local bigoted rednecks and one retarded delivery boy from the supermarket. The humiliated and abused Jennifer does not report the sexual assault to the police and a couple of weeks later, she is physically recovered and has just plotted revenge against the rapists.

"Day of the Woman" is extremely realistic and violent; therefore the simple and scary story is absolutely credible. The unknown Camille Keaton has an amazing performance, especially in the impressive long sequence when she is repeatedly beaten and raped. However, this gore movie is only recommended for very specific audiences and prohibited to sensitive persons due to the savagery of most of the scenes. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "A Vingança de Jennifer" ("The Revenge of 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.

This is a hard flick to watch. When it was shown in theaters, people walked out after seeing certain scenes. Rape and castration are not everyone's cup of tea.

Revenge flicks are hot right now with The Brave One and Death Sentence. Of course, there is the Death Wish series that defined the genre. I originally saw this film after it came out on VHS. I've seen it many times, but that is a long story. I decided to revisit it after not seeing it for 17 years.

The rape scenes are brutal, especially the one on the rock. The revenge scenes are also harsh, but satisfying in a vengeance sort of way.

Arkansas native Camille Keaton, who is a grand-niece of Buster Keaton, gives a stirring performance as the victim. She even won a Best Actress award at the Catalonian International Film Festival. The rest of the cast only have this one film in their resume.

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.