I Spit on Your Grave



""Suck it, bitch!""

- Jennifer Hills

Also known as Day of the Woman, I Spit on Your Grave is an infamous 1978 grindhouse Rape and Revenge Exploitation Film about a young, attractive aspiring writer from New York named Jennifer Hills who rents a riverside cabin out in the woods so she can work on her first novel in peace only to catch the eye of four local rednecks - Johnny, Andy, Stanley and Matthew, who appears to be mentally handicapped - who the next day harass Jennifer while she is out sunbathing and then at night when she is in bed, and the day after that pull her ashore while she is in her boat and then proceed to rape her. Repeatedly. In a number of different ways. These scenes constitute some of the lengthiest, most brutal, and most realistic and hard-to-watch rape scenes in cinematic history. They also mock and rip up her novel.

The four then depart, but in a mind-numbing lapse of judgment (they are ignorant hicks), they order Matthew, the mentally-handicapped one who previously had shown some affection for Jennifer and been reluctant to participate in the rapes, to go back and finish her off. Matthew cannot bring himself to do it, so he instead just smears some blood on the knife to make it look like he did. Consequently, Jennifer recovers, and over the next few days, collects her dues. First, she seduces Matthew and hangs him from a tree. Then, she holds Johnny at gunpoint, but then decides to invite him back to her house where she takes a bath with him, castrates him with a kitchen knife and leaves him to bleed to death. Finally, she swims out to Andy and Stanley's boat and pushes them overboard, and then axes one in the back and disembowels the other with the propeller, telling him as he pleads for mercy beforehand what he had told her whilst he was raping her earlier; "Suck it, bitch!", at which point the credits roll and the movie ends.

The movie was directed by Meir Zarchi, who reportedly got the idea for it after assisting a rape victim in Central Park. The role of Jennifer was played by Camille Keaton, grand-niece of Buster Keaton and Meir Zarchi's wife at the time. Is one of the films classified as a "video nasty."

Roger Ebert hates this film.

A R Emake was made in 2010, which adds a new character, Sheriff Storch. Roger Ebert is not too fond of that film, either. Aside from the character of Sheriff Storch, the most notable stylistic difference to the original is that the middle act of the film follows the gang of rapists rather than Jennifer. The film has a montage of them going on with their lives before strange little creepy things start happening, I Know What You Did Last Summer style, making them all edgy and paranoid and worried that either someone knows what they did or somebody within the gang has turned on the others.

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I Spit on Your Grave provides examples of:

 * All Men Are Perverts / I'm a Man, I Can't Help It: When Jennifer holds Johnny at gunpoint he tries to justify his raping of her with these arguments. At first it appears to dissuade her... as he finds out, it doesn't...
 * Blood From the Mouth: Averted, she's badly injured but not dying.
 * Break the Cutie: Done to the utter brutal extreme.
 * Chick Lit: Jennifer is an author of this.
 * Covers Always Lie: The poster says she murders five guys. But in the synopsis, she kills four. What?
 * At least in the remake, they added a fifth character.
 * Dirty Cop: Sheriff Storch in the remake.
 * The Ditz: Matthew (He's supposed to be mentally retarded, but still...). Not that the other rapists turn out to be a great deal smarter; first ordering the one person who had shown some reluctance to do these things to Jennifer to go and kill her and then one of them accepting an invitation to hop in her car and take a bath with her DESPITE the things he had formerly done to her and DESPITE that seconds earlier she had held him at gunpoint. Ah well, anyone who's seen the movie or read this article knows what happens to him.
 * Exploitation Film: And HOW.
 * Eye Scream: In the remake one of Jennifer's rapists films the attack and has a very distinct voyeuristic bent. In her revenge kill, Jennifer goes for the eyes.
 * Fan Disservice: Both the original and the remake. If the rape scenes arouse you, or you find the following full body shots of the naked, battered, bleeding, dirt-covered Jennifer remotely erotic, then you may be a potential threat to society.
 * Fan Service: The posters and the DVD cases depicting the lead girl walking around in a torn up shirt and panties. The poster design for the remake is arguably even more sexualised.
 * Femme Fatale: Jennifer pulls this on Matthew and Johnny.
 * Groin Attack: Have you not discerned what happens to Johnny yet?
 * He Who Fights Monsters: It's hard to argue that Jennifer doesn't become a Complete Monster in order to get revenge. In the remake, her whole demeanor changes, showing that she's become dead inside.
 * I Have Your Wife: In the 2010 remake, Jennifer captures Sheriff Storch's daughter to flush him out.
 * Ironic Echo: "Suck it, bitch!" The remake raises the number of lines that get an ironic echo to about a dozen.
 * Karmic Death: In the remake, Jennifer's revenge upon each of her rapists very specifically reflects the exact manners in which they tormented, degraded and violated her.
 * Kick the Dog: While it very much pales in comparison to what else they did to her, the rapists mock and rip up the novel that Jennifer was writing.
 * Most Writers Are Writers: Jennifer.
 * Not Quite Dead: Played with more overtly in the remake, but in the original also the rapists hope if not completely believe that Jennifer didn't survive the attack.
 * One-Liner: The twice aforementioned closing line.
 * Peer Pressure Makes You Evil: Poor, misguided, overeager Matthew.
 * Punch Clock Villain: Sheriff Storch in the remake, who has a loving wife and daughter, with another baby on the way.
 * Rape and Revenge: One of the classics of the genre.
 * Rape as Drama: The whole point of the movie.
 * Roaring Rampage of Revenge: In spades.
 * The Tooth Hurts: In a torture scene.
 * Torture Porn
 * Trailers Always Spoil: The trailer virtually gives away the entire plot. And repeats I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE about five times, presumably because they don't have anything more to show.
 * Video Nasties