I Spit On Your Grave

Director: Meir Zarchi
Writer: Meir Zarchi
USA 1978

I Spit On Your Grave is one of the most divisive and controversial Video Nasties, accused of exploitative misogyny by some but praised as a feminist masterpiece by others. The premise is simple and effective - a young woman taking a break in the countryside to write her first novel is gang raped by a group of local men, and goes on to exact her revenge by murdering them one by one.

It is shot in the summer in a wooded, rural area of Connecticut, luscious but empty and eerie. The film style is spacious and restrained, with no music and only minimal, functional dialogue. This pared down approach is possibly due to budgetary constraints but works, giving the film an uncanny, dreamlike feel that compliments the slow build up to the first scenes of violence.

The violence takes the form of the prolonged gang rape of the central character, Jennifer Hills, in what is by far the most disturbing part of the film, the later revenge killings cartoonish in comparison. In the British version, cut by seven minutes, these scenes are abstracted somewhat, and though difficult are just about watchable. The same can't be said of the uncut version, which is very tough going indeed. The differences are interesting and reveal a little about how we cope with the way violence is portrayed - in the British version most of the violence is in close-up. Watching the original US version, it seems that a lot of the scenes that have been removed show the victim and attackers from enough distance to fit everything in the frame, a graphic approach that allows no escape.

The subject matter is of course controversial and a minefield to portray, its treatment in other films ranging from infallible in The Accused to repulsive in Death Wish 2. I Spit on Your Grave's treatment resides with the former, its unflinching directness humanised by Camille Keaton's portrayal of a woman whose independence offends her attackers, a group of losers who go on to rip all the dignity and strength from her in an act of mindless violence. The reassertion of her power in the revenge scenes isn't as nuanced but does spell out a strong moral stance for the film, one some commentators have gone so far as to call feminist.

It isn't clear whether this is really the case. Director Meir Zarchi said he was inspired to make the film after helping a real-life rape victim and experiencing the frustration of her dealings with the police first hand, which could be seen as a vigilante rather than feminist approach. Jennifer Hills' revenge is also just a logical path for a thriller to take, and a premise this simple hardly needs political roots. Against this is Keaton's intelligent performance and the film's willingness to tackle such a difficult subject head-on.

I'm not sure how much intention matters though when the result is this good. The clear, simple style paradoxically makes an enigmatic and complex film that has been debated over since its release. It's an example of a horror film doing an important job, presenting a controversial situation in all its terrible detail and leaving the viewer to untangle the moral ambiguities it raises. I Spit On Your Grave isn't as technically accomplished as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or as groundbreaking as Cannibal Holocaust, but its content makes it every bit as important.

The Killer Inside Me

Michael Winterbottom's new thriller The Killer Inside Me has generated a fair bit of controversy due to its graphic depiction of violence against women, seeing it accused of misogyny by Charlotte Higgins and distasteful sensationalism by David Cox, while being applauded for its honest potrayal of domestic violence by Hadley Freeman. The film split Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode on their Radio 5 Live show, with Kermode defending its honesty while Mayo rather impressively threw Winterbottom by accusing him of misogyny in a live interview.

It is a problematic film, mainly because it seems to miss the point. While its main subject matter appears to be violence against women, apart from two brutal scenes and a bit of psychopath childhood background stuff the film concentrates on how the central character evades capture. This sort of thriller plotting makes the film work as a viewing experience but has absolutely nothing to do with the violence at its core, and indeed belittles it.

It is difficult to work out whether Winterbottom is trying to say something about violence against women and failing, or filming a straight thriller story with a nod towards it for controversy's sake. That there is some ambiguity should preclude any moralising, but the violence depicted is so appalling and the masochistic attitude of the victims so odd you feel Winterbottom has an obligation to at least provide some reasoning. This isn't forthcoming in either the film or his rather evasive interviews.

I Spit On Your Grave to be remade

I wondered what would be next after The Last House on the Left was remade but never thought it would be controversial rape revenge movie I Spit On Your Grave.

I've made no secret of I Spit On Your Grave being one of my favourite Video Nasties, with its powerfully presented but ambiguous message sparking much-needed discussion of a difficult subject, so am a bit sensitive to a mess being made of it in pursuit of easy profit. It's hard to see the reasoning behind a remake until you consider the revenge murders of the second half and how the film could be changed considerably to concentrate on them - as seems to be hinted at by director Steven Monroe in an interview on Moviehole.net - while the harrowing and unflinching rape scene of the first half could probably be dropped from the film altogether. While arguably missing the point this would at least be a different film, and one I'd be interested in seeing.

But I'm jumping ahead. Who knows what kind of remake Monroe will eventually come up with. In the meantime I'll get a review of the original, in both its cut and uncut incarnations, up on the site.

Feminist Exploitation

Kira Cochrane - who is called on so often by the Guardian to give a feminist perspective on horror films I'm hoping she'll be converted to the genre one day - writes about "feminist slasher" Jennifer's Body in today's edition. Unfortunately it sounds pretty unremarkable and not particularly feminist, despite the credentials of writer Diablo Cody, director Karyn Kusama, and indeed lead actress Megan Fox. I agree with Cochrane that a film really needs some sort of political subtext to become feminist, not just a few ballsy female parts, which often counter-productively reduce characters to femme fatale stereotypes anyway.

Cochrane lists a few interesting-sounding exploitation films she considers feminist, but I was disappointed to see no mention of The Witch Who Came From the Sea. Shall I send her a copy, or do you think that would look a bit weird?

Mountain of the Cannibal God

Director: Sergio Martino
Writer: Cesare Frugoni
Italy 1978

For the most part Mountain of the Cannibal God is an above average journey through jungle exploitation, using the simple premise of an expedition into deepest Papua New Guinea to give us naked natives, ritual animal slaughter, spliced footage of a monitor lizard regurgitating a snake (footage of a snake eating a live monkey is cut from the UK release) and other interesting mondo together with less convincing but nevertheless entertaining crocodile attacks, spiky jungle traps and spear-chucking indians. The setting is authentically rain forest, and although it fails to convey the vastness, isolation and danger of Papua New Guinea is nevertheless atmospheric and lush. Guido and Maurizio De Angelis superb score of squelching electronics, tribal drums and doomy strings will keep your interest piqued when the action flags, which thankfully doesn't happen as often as in most films of its ilk.

In the last twenty minutes we are introduced to the cannibals up in their mountain cave, in surprisingly well-handled scenes that reminded me of an ultra-low budget Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. A cast of tens swarms round the explorers (who include a very charismatic Ursual Andress, coming into her own in these final scenes) and at last we see a bit of gore, though the worst fate reserved for them - death by schaphism (warning: nasty) - is only alluded to, an unusually restrained approach for the genre.

It's not really much to praise a film for making sense, but compared to its contemporaries Mountain of the Cannibal God, despite a simple plot and premise, is a surprisingly coherent film that uses subtle plot devices to build a colourful, believable whole, especially towards the end when we are introduced to the cleverly drawn god of the title. In this it is a cut above the many Italian jungle exploitation movies of its era, in possession of a certain maturity and class despite being filmed with similar budgetary constraints. A credit to director Sergio Martino, this is a film I'd happily watch again, preferably on the big screen where it belongs - albeit in a dingy, flea pit cinema.

Criminal Literature

The last couple of years have seen a worrying surge in criminal prosecutions involving literature, whether over the offensiveness of the writing itself, or the belief that the fictional ideas expressed amount to planning notes for future real-life action - an approach that gives lie to not only a misunderstanding of art, but an apparent ignorance that art even exists.

The latter was evident in the prosecution of "lyrical terrorist" Samina Malik, who wrote poetry expressing violent Islamic fundamentalism, and more recently of Manchester schoolboys Ross McKnight and Matthew Swift, who wrote fantasies about a Columbine-style attack on their school. Both these cases were presented as planning exercises by the prosecution, despite there being no physical evidence of the means to carry out an operation and a distinct literary bent to the written evidence.

Harder to defend but perhaps more relevant to this blog is Darren Walker's story "Girls (Scream) Aloud" a violent, misogynist piece of pornographic writing about the pop group Girls Aloud posted to a specialist slash fiction website, which saw him prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act. Despite its frankly repulsive content, it actually isn't that far from "Girls (Scream) Aloud" to the violent celebrity fantasies in JG Ballard's "The Atrocity Exhibition" and "Crash". There are obvious differences in execution and content (not to mention quality), but it is difficult to deny Walker's claim that he similarly intended his work to be satire. The ambiguity of intent rears its head time and time again in censorship prosecutions, and gives lie to the difficulty of reducing art to objective legal terms and definitions.

In an intelligent opinion piece in Saturday's Guardian David Edgar asserts that it isn't actually a failure of logic - whether confusing fiction and reality, or attempting to bend artistic ambiguity into a black and white legal framework - that drives these prosecutions, rather an attitude that doesn't attach any importance to art, to the point of it being acceptable to ban or prosecute over a piece of work if there is the mere possibility of it being harmful. It's not an angle I've considered before, but does make sense in a country that has regularly banned art in the past on a seemingly ad-hoc basis for cheap political gain.

We can take hope from the fact that none of the three cases outlined above resulted in a successful conviction; but that the prosecutions went ahead on such spurious evidence reveals not only a disregard of whether it was right or wrong to do so, but an uncaring attitude to the effect it will have on the lives of the defendants, now tarred for life as terrorists, weirdos and perverts. Not surprising that a hostile attitude to art should extend to the artists themselves, but forgive me if I find the mentality behind it much more frightening than anything the defendants themselves produced.

Cannibal Apocalypse

Director: Antonio Margheriti
Writers: Antonio Margheriti and Dardano Sacchetti
USA/Italy 1980

A fun film with above-average production values that nevertheless isn't scared to use stock footage in proper exploitation fashion, Cannibal Apocalypse sees cannibalism brought to America by Vietnam vets in the form of a virus which then spreads, nicely merging the cannibal and zombie genres. Furthermore the sexualised nature of the cannibal attacks, usually carried out Dracula-style as the cannibal goes in for a kiss only to bite off a breast or a chunk of neck, brings in a bit of sexy vampirism as well - so what we have are essentially vampire zombie cannibals, breeds that aren't that far apart anyway when you think about it.

Cannibal Apocalypse's main drawback is the (relative) lack of gore and scares, but despite a bit of a lull in the middle it's a fast-paced, action filled movie with some good location work. The inevitable anti-climax as we move from the exciting "Delta Force"-style opening scenes in Vietnam to boring American suburbia is familiar in Italian exploitation horror, but a later supermarket siege and the film's climax in the city sewers are more imaginative than I've come to expect from the Video Nasties. It's home to some of the best unintended humour I've come across in the genre as well, a psychiatrist telling a woman concerned about her husband: "I always said you should have married me instead. But anyway, speaking professionally..." being one of the gems in a line-up that includes weeing on tear gas cannisters to put them out, a cannibal called Charles Bukowski and a romantic paedophile sub-plot for our main hero, played by B-movie legend John Saxon.

Most importantly the ingenious crossing of cannibals, zombies and vampires remains, as far as I know, unique in horror cinema - though god knows why, given how tired contemporary zombie films are becoming. The present paucity of imagination is underlined by the way this cheap exploitation film casually tosses it in as if coming up with new ideas isn't actually that difficult. The baffling failure of modern identikit zombie films to even copy this suggests that maybe it isn't.