14 Apr 2012

I Spit on Your Grave - Will's Review

This is one on the more famous Video nasties, so you probably already know the plot, if you don't allow me to fill you in using only information found on the films posters.

Its origional title was "The Rape and Revenge of Jennifer Hill" and the tagline is "This woman has just cut, chopped, broken, and burned five men beyond recognition…but no jury in American would ever convict her!"

Up to speed? Good.

***Spoilers (such as you can have for such a simple plot) follow****

First of all; The poster lies - Jenifer is attacked by (and takes her deadly revenge on) only 4 men.

After moving into a rented lakeside house for the summer to write her first full length novel, author Jenifer Hill orders a grocery delivery from the local store. They are delivered by a walking cartoon character (and  town simpleton) Mathew:

Mathew

So, what with him being a half-wit, and her being nice to him, he gets a crush on her, the fact she had a thin shirt on and no bra helped too...

Mathew immediately tells his only 3 friends, Johnny, Stanley and Andy (who Own the local fueling station, hang out at the local fueling station and hang around at the local fueling station, respectively) about the new girl.

One sunny day, when Jennifer is out sunbathing in a drifting rowboat in the lake, Stanley and Andy start harassing her from her speedboat and drag her to shore.

What follows is one of the most unpleasant hours of cinema I have ever seen.

It becomes quickly apparent that Johnny has orchestrated Jenifer's capture, so that Mathew can lose his virginity, she is stripped and held down, but when Mathew is reluctant, he is demoted to leg holding duty while Johnny rapes her.

The rape is, an I'm sure I won't find much opposition this time, horrific, we see most of it while the camera is trained on Jennifer's face, and I have to offer kudos to Camille Keaton at this point, who does look genuinely humiliated, terrified and pained.

That said, when she is allowed to go free, I found myself thinking "is that it" - not because here ordeal wasn't horrific, but because it wasn't as horrific by movie standards as I had expected.

Unfortunately , for the next half hour or so, we see her tracked recaptured, raped and beaten again and again - even once she reaches the "safty" of her rented home from home; Mathew is eventually coerced into taking his "turn" (although can't preform under the conditions) and things get so bad that she offers to give the last guy a hand job, just to avoid being raped again.

When they are quite finished, Mathew is sent back into the house, to kill her - which, again, he cannot bring himself to do, and so he lies.

You may have noticed that up until this point my review has been lacking its usual sarcastic edge, usually only absent when the movie was good; make no mistake, this movie was not "good" - it's just that the subject matter does not lend itself to snark. 

Rest assured that the following half hour of the movie is outright stupid, Jenifer's revenge involves (separately) seducing the members of the gang and killing them. 

When this works with Mathew (Who she actually sleeps with again - not sure I buy that) I can accept it; he's a retard; However I'm not entirely convinced that Johnny would be so easily fooled. I get that you have to be at least a bit lacking in the head department to think that raping someone is a good plan. however that same person came onto me, ran be a bath, got in it with me and started masturbating me, I'd like to think alarm bells would go off - I'd also like to think that when she (quite rightly) chopped my dick off, I'd notice before I saw the blood, not just think that the hand-job was "so good it hurts" . Further, one of the guys only dies because he after realizing that Jennifer is out for revenge, he literally grabs onto the outboard motor of a speedboat she is driving!!!

Another problem with the kills is the order of them. The castration of the leader should by rights have been the dramatic climax of the movie; both for the fact that he was the leader, and the obvious 'symbolism' (if you can call it that) of castrating a rapist  - instead he's the second kill, which then gives the feeling that the other 2 are more or less "clean up" and that the peak has passed.

All in all though, killing order and extreme stupidity aside, it's fairly competently made, and (With the exception of the characiture that is Mathew) reasonably acted, so if you think you might enjoy 20 mins of setup, 40 mins of a woman being raped and half an hour of stupid people dying in stupid ways, knock yourself out.

No really... do!


Body Count: 4
Boob Count: 1 pair
Animal Body Count: 0
Most memorable Death: Turns out an outboard motor isn't a great ladder...

Please use the comments bellow only to comment on this post - to write your own review, please comment on the main post for this movie.

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