I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE – Thought I'd check in with this ever-dubious blast from the past, if only to find out what I actually think about it these days. It still seemed as obnoxious and ambiguous as ever. I suppose those very qualities will always ensure its status as a kind of 'forbidden fruit', despite it having been long surpassed in the gratuity stakes by less socially concerned filmmakers (note the potential use of heavy sarcasm somewhere in this sentence, I for one have never bought the attempts to rehabilitate it as a pro-feminist piece). For the unacquainted, New Yorker Camille Keaton endures a triple rape at the hands of some vicious bumpkins out in the sticks – bloody revenge beckons. 'I Spit On Your Grave' is an ugly film about (generally quite) ugly people doing ugly things, and the whole threadbare ambience of shoestring fleapit grindhouse is ramped right up and shoved in yer face. One thing you can say about it is, it doesn't attempt to window dress or Hollywoodise in its depiction of vicious sexual abuse, although it does sell it as car crash theatre. It's stark, unsentimental and somewhat leering, not only in its attitude to Keaton - it also finds room within its rather meagre heart to play up the manipulation, humiliation and destruction of an arguably vulnerable learning disabled man – gosh, the seventies, eh? Whatever it's trying to say, whatever it's showing, I've always found it to be quite aesthetically flat, although again there is the flyblown feel of mean, cheap trash movie making about it, and it does quite benefit from the absence of music – this amplifies the film's rawness and bolsters its claim to a kind of 'realism', I guess. These concerns are ultimately superseded by the harsh subject matter and depiction thereof, which still seem pretty grim even now. Though, speaking of 'grim', it's not a patch on another film that's been mentioned recently, 'Last House on Dead End Street', in terms of subject matter, impact or overall 'quality'. A heart warming treat for the festive season!
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