Much has been said about this rape/revenge classick in the last two decades. Usually at a fevered pitch. It’s been dismissed. Championed. Banned. Praised. Vilified. One thing’s for certain, writer/director Meir Zarchi knew how to sneak up and grab an audience by the privates. You don’t merely WATCH this movie. It’s EXPERIENCED. Physically. Emotionally. And for a stretch of about 30 agonizing minutes it’s dang hard to endure! What’s on the screen is revolting and it’s SUPPOSED to be.
It’s the story of Jennifer Hill (Camille Keaton). She’s a bright, sophisticated young woman who escapes the bustle of New York City to spend a country summer writing her first novel and lazing along the Housatonic River — only to be brutally and repeatedly gang raped by rednecks! During these successive attacks, Zarchi’s camera is unflinching. Like a point-blank bullet to the head — again and again — his audience is forced to endure every excruciating moment of Jennifer’s hell. Then after she’s left for dead, Jennifer picks herself up, tends her wounds, and begins, in silence, to plot her equally brutal vengeance. Luring them with their animal lust, she coldly executes each of her attackers one-by-one.
Both the most fitting and famous act of revenge is when she coaxes one of the rapists into a bubble bath, emasculates him with a carving knife and then locks the bastard in the bathroom to bleed to death. It’s Old Testament "eye for an eye" stuff, making it nearly impossible not to CHEER every time one of these inbred sleazeballs gets theirs.
Why? Because Zarchi, and to an extraordinary extent Ms. Keaton, make the audience identify and suffer right along with Jennifer. Her justice becomes OURS in a genuinely powerful way.
CineSchlockers might be shocked to learn Mr. Zarchi absolutely HATES the "sleazy, exploitive" title I Spit On Your Grave. That and the famously salacious poster were brainstorms of schlockmeister Jerry Gross who stripped Zarchi’s flick of its original title — Day of the Woman. Dunno if he’s kin, but Jerry sounds like my kind of people.
Notables: Two breasts. Four corpses. Knife pitching. Biting. Wangdoodle whittling. Gratuitous shower scene. Harmonica playing. Wild-ass boat maneuvering. Loitering. Skinny dipping. Gratuitous Robert Redford reference.
Quotables: Jennifer as murder-minded seductress, "I could have given you a summer to remember the rest of your life!" Johnny’s redneck rapist logic, "This thing with you is a thing that any man would have done! You coax a man into doing it to you. A man gets the message fast. Whether he’s married or not, a man is just a man!" Jenny offers Stanley a gut full of Evinrude, "SUCK IT, BITCH!!!"