I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE (1978)

The latest horror movie I watched was the 1978 film I Spit On Your Grave. I watched it via the Bluray released by Kaleidoscope, as part of the I Spit On Your Grave 6 disc boxset containing all five films.

It stars Camille Keaton, Eron Tabor, Richard Pace, Anthony Nichols, Gunter Kleemann, plus others in support.

It was written and directed by Meir Zarchi. Meir Zarchi has also directed the 1985 movie, Don’t Mess With My Sister, and the 2019 sequel to I Spit On Your Grave, called I Spit On Your Grave: Deja Vu. Even though he didn’t direct or write the remake and its two sequels, he did produce them.

The film follows Jennifer, a writer who is working on her first novel and needs to get out of the city to finish it. She rents a riverside cabin in upstate New York to work on her novel, attracting the attention of a number of rowdy male locals. They catch Jennifer one day and strip her naked for the village idiot (Matthew) and one of them rapes her. Jennifer is left to walk back to the cabin, naked, covered in blood and mud, but then is attacked again by the four degenerates, they beat her up some more and then another one the men rapes her.

They leave her again, and leave her canoe drifting in the middle of the lake. She finally makes it back to the cabin, and she attempts to ring the police. However they are waiting for her inside the cabin, Matthew this time rapes her, and the fourth beats her unconscious. Her novel is also destroyed. But Jennifer recovers, and in her now-twisted, psychotic state, she begins to seek revenge on the men, killing them off one by one, in a twisted gory fashion.

The Bluray of this film in the boxset was the 2 disc special edition. As well as the film, the first disc also contained the following extras; audio commentary by director Meir Zarchi, audio commentary by film critic Joe Bob Briggs, 3 original radio spots, 3 original TV spots, the original trailer, and a remastered trailer for the film. Disc two contains the following extras; the 1 hour and 41 minute documentary, Growing Up With I Spit On Your Grave, Why Zarchi made I Spit On Your Grave featurette, and the Terry Zarchi 8mm film with Camille Keaton, plus a trailer for Growing Up With I Spit On Your Grave. The picture and sound quality is beautiful on this remaster. The extras are very interesting and informative, especially the feature length documentary.

The movie was actually inspired by an actual true event that the director and his family witnessed. Not the revenge part obviously, unfortunately the real criminals got away with it, but they came across a young 18 or 19 year old girl, naked, covered in blood and mud, and having been raped. She was walking like a zombie and barely could speak. The acting in the movie is bad from some of the cast, obviously the subject matter is a tough watch, but it’s actually not a bad little movie, some of the cinematic choices, like there being no music score to make it more real was good, and the new remaster is beautiful. The gore is quite tame in comparison to modern cinema, and I can imagine that the 2010 movie will be an even harder watch and being even more full on with the rape scenes and the gore, but I will get to watch and review that soon. It contains strong violence, strong sexual violence and rape, bad language, and lots of nudity. 4 out of 5.