10 Films More Controversial Than Charlie Sheen's 9/11 Movie

Violence against women is a staple of exploitation cinema, but using the fear of rape as a device to sell movie tickets is both tacky and offensive. Director Meir Zarchi claimed his film was feminist, despite the fact that its release was picketed by actual feminists who chanted, “Rape is not entertainment.”

In I Spit On Your Grave, which Roger Ebert famously called a “vile bag of garbage”, rape isn’t just entertainment, it’s the centrepiece of the entire film. For the first act, nothing much happens, but then Zarchi has Jennifer Hills (Camille Keaton) attacked not once, not twice, but three times by the same group of abusers, a sequence that (in the uncut version) runs 25 minutes.

The rest of the film concerns itself with Jennifer’s revenge against her attackers, but compared to the stark savagery of what we’ve already witnessed, the scenes are perfunctorily directed and stretch credibility to breaking point. Having left Jennifer for dead, the first two attackers still allow themselves to be seduced by her, and if you can imagine where this leads, you’re way ahead of these hillbillies.