I Spit On Your Grave

I Spit On Your Grave (1978)

So with The Remake creeping around the corner hitting theaters any day now. I decided to revisit the original Rape/Revenge Classic I Spit on your Grave. The original film follows Jennifer Hills a New York City womans literature writer who is vacationing in the woods at a friends cabin to get away from the noise of the city and take time to focus on writing her first full length novel. While there she comes across a group of four local good ol' boys who take a instant interest in Jennifer and decide to make their presence known.Frequently disrupting her quiet time with forward advances and childish come on's.  Once they notice that Jenny is not giving into their attempts at charm, they decide to go about achieving their goal in a more aggressive and downright violent manner. the first half of this movie is a brutal depiction of several gang rapes. Three of the guys are downright brutal beating jenny and having their way with her in graphic fashion including one scene where she is sodomized while they force Matthew the lowly grocery store delivery boy painfully watches but is to afraid to do anything to stop the events from happening. The other boys try and coheres Matt into joining their party and when he finally gives in he cannot achieve a erection so he is looked upon by the other guys as a failure.After several separate  rape scenes the guys decide they have had enough and that they need to kill Jenny to make sure the news does not get out so they send in Matthew to do the job, Of course he chickens out so he just covers a knife in blood and says that he went through with it. After a few weeks of  Jenny licking her wounds she is hiding out and begins to return to her writing, when the guys decide to revisit the cabin she was at to make sure to dispose of her remains before they are found. This is when the movie gets good, From this point on Jenny has her revenge seducing then killing all of her assailants in grim and gruesome fashion. Including a castration scene that is downright disturbing. The movie achieves a real sense of redemption by building the characters just right and you really are rooting for Jenny to get her revenge by the third act of the film and you want to see the guys get what they deserve in brutal fashion.The way Jenny disposes of each man is unique in it's own way and it is fun too watch her play with her victims before she goes in for the kill.There is no music in this film and that kinda works to it's advantage as the only build up you get is what you see and there are no musical cues to jump scares and to tell you what is supposed to be intense and whats not. This is one film along with The Last House on The Left and The Crazies that I felt did not need the remaking treatment, I mean I feel that way about most movies but this one and Last house especially were so brutal and atmospheric that they were perfect to begin with and all a remake can do to it is tarnish it's place in history.I highly doubt that the upcoming remake will even come close to achieving the feeling this film  leaves you with and there is no way the film will be cast as good. I can already see the ambercrombie models with mud on their faces they pick to play the rapists in this one just like they did in The Last House remake and I for one am not looking forward to seeing how they screw another one of my old school favorites up...But with that said I will be a hypocrite and eventually watch the remake because although 98 percent of the time I walk out hating the films I still fork over the dough to be disappointed. So until the remake comes out and shits on this films legacy at least I have this one to watch in the meantime.
4 out of 5