3. The Assault On Jennifer - I Spit On Your Grave (1978)
Violence against women is of course 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 in fact 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 isnt just entertainment, its 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 Jennifers revenge against her attackers, but compared to the stark savagery of what weve 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, youre way ahead of these hillbillies.
Ian Watson is the author of 'Midnight Movie Madness', a 600+ page guide to "bad" movies from 'Reefer Madness' to 'Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.'
