Nasty Video - Part 2

I Spit On Your Grave was made towards the end of the 1970s, but was more widely released in the early 80s at a time when home video was becoming more and more popular. People were able to watch films they had seen in the cinema, now in their own homes, but because of this household technology, some films were more popular on VHS than they were in the cinema. In the case of such films as ISOYG, this period would adopt the name of the ‘Video Nasty’ era, where an abundance of exploitation films, mainly of the horror genre, would flourish in the medium.

Since Last House On The Left, big political and sociological shifts had occurred in America and the effect it had on cinema would become clear: pornography was being accepted more widely in mainstream cinemas; more violence in cinema was being showcased; and horror was at its height of success, with more daring content than ever. In short, media had become more liberal and if a film like LHOTL had done anything, it kick started an inevitable craze.

ISOYG, though just as controversial as LHOTL, has less of a following and much less detail about how it was made (though a documentary was released just a few years ago made by the director’s own son). Unlike Wes Craven, the director of ISOYG, Meir Zarchi, would not find similar success after the film. Nonetheless, the film serves similar merit. Whereas Craven wanted to tell a story that was a personal protest to the Vietnam War and real life violence, and like most of his films one about parental failures, Zarchi based his film on a real life incident. According to Zarchi, when driving through town one day, a young woman came running up to his car following a brutal attack by two men. Zarchi let her in his car and proceeded to take her to the police station. Once there, Zarchi was stunned to realise how little interest the police were giving the woman and unwilling they were to find her attackers. Zarchi claims he was inspired by this lack of justice for the woman to make a film about what would have happened if she had taken the situation into her own hands. The film’s tagline would accommodate this: “This woman has just cut, chopped, broken and burned five men beyond recognition… but no jury in America would ever convict her!” So, he set about making I Spit On Your Grave. The title of this film is particularly interesting, taking its name from a novel published years before by Boris Vian, but by no means would both stories be connected. Promoters would even go as far to give the film some feministic credit with the alternative title ‘Day of the Woman’. This idea troubled many of those who viewed the film, as they suggested it in no way empowered women, but rather exploited them. They were particularly incensed about the amount of time spent showcasing Jennifer’s rape, as well as insisting that Zarchi’s picture of a woman painted as Jennifer, was one of being overly flirtatious and was supposedly suggesting that she was ‘asking for it’ in the first place. However, it does take actual viewing of the film to truly understand it and realise that in the case of the former criticism, Jennifer’s rape, although difficult to watch and upsetting, only fuels her need and reason for the equally disturbing nature of revenge that will follow; and in the case of the latter criticism, Jennifer’s only “problem” when it comes to being a woman, is that she is a woman from the city moving to the country. With comparisons to that of the ‘country’ woman – in this case the character Johnny’s wife – we can see that Jennifer likes to wear summer dresses, or denim shorts instead of t-shirts and jeans. These pieces of clothing are by no means unnecessary in hot weather and if ever she likes to perhaps bathe in a bikini, or go skinny dipping, it is in secluded areas and with the confidence that no one else is around. Perhaps Jennifer’s only pitfall is that she is a little naïve to the ilk she will be living among.

The plot is as follows: Jennifer Hills is a woman’s magazine writer from New York City, who decides to take a sabbatical in the country to finish writing her first novel. She arrives in town in her car and stops for some petrol. Two men are hanging around and soon the station attendant emerges to assist. Jennifer then makes her way to a secluded cabin where she will be staying for the summer. Once settled in Jennifer finds a gun in her bedroom drawer. Seeming concerned about this, she is suddenly interrupted by a knock at the door. She opens the door and greets a local grocery store assistant who has delivered her order. The man is Matthew, a simple seeming man who takes an instant liking to Jennifer.

At night time, the men are fishing and sitting around talking about women. They tell Matthew they are going to set him up with ‘a broad’ so that he can finally lose his virginity, but Matthew explains that there is only one woman he is interested in – Jennifer.

The next day and Jennifer is relaxing and writing on a hammock by the riverside. Her concentration is soon disturbed by the sound of a small engine boat that holds Stanley and Andy, who eventually proceed to harass her.

The next day, Jennifer is relaxing on the river in her bikini in a boat. Once again, out of nowhere, Stanley and Andy appear to torment Jennifer. They run rings around Jennifer’s boat as she tries desperately to fend them off attacking them with her boat oar. However, the men have a rope and are able to attach it to Jennifer’s boat and proceed to drag her down the river. Once at the bank, Jennifer rushes to get out of her boat eventually managing to escape and run into the woods. Scared and desperate Jennifer keeps turning back to make sure she has lost her followers, when Johnny jumps out at her and pushes her to the ground. Stanley and Andy catch up and Matthew appears from the trees. All the men, bar Matthew, grab Jennifer and pin her to the ground. Johnny tells Matthew to hurry up and come over to Jennifer to have sex with her. He tells Johnny he can’t do it and cowers away, as Johnny then rapes Jennifer. Once the ordeal is over, a dazed and shocked Jennifer walks away in tears.

Stanley eventually grabs hold of Jennifer and the other men help hold her down over a large rock. Andy anally rapes Jennifer. She again is left to walk away, alone and naked back to her house. Once in the house she slowly makes her way to the telephone to ring for help, but once again the men have followed Jennifer and they kick the phone from her hands. Matthew is goaded again to have sex with Jennifer and this time he is more successful, but still cannot go through with it fully. Andy finds Jennifer’s manuscript and reads it aloud in a mocking way. Stanley then taunts and sodomises Jennifer, and eventually the men leave, Andy ripping the manuscript and throwing it on Jennifer’s motionless body. Johnny hands Matthew a knife and tells him to go back into the house and kill Jennifer. Matthew hesitates, but goes inside and attempts to kill her, but he can’t. He instead dips the knife in Jennifer’s bloody wounds and returns to Johnny insisting he killed her. The men leave the scene in their boat believing Jennifer is dead.

In the days following, Jennifer is slowly recovering and is sat by the riverside again when Stanley and Andy come along to check out the area in their boat. All of them lock eyes with each other, Stanley and Andy in shock that Jennifer is still indeed alive. Next, Stanley, Andy and Johnny are shown beating Matthew up for lying.

Jennifer decides she must take revenge on her attackers for what they did and stalks Matthew and Johnny to plan her attack. First, she calls for the local grocery store to send her some items, knowing full well that Matthew will deliver them. He journeys to Jennifer’s place and she appears, coaxing him into having sex with her, only to lure him into an elaborate trap where she kills him.

Next, Jennifer is in pursuit of Johnny. She approaches the petrol station in her car and tempts him with the intention of having sex and he gets in. Once back at her place, Jennifer and Johnny are in the bath together. Having asked Johnny about Matthew, she then tells him how she had sex with Matthew and then killed him. Johnny laughs it off assuming she is telling an absurd joke and relaxes in the bath. Jennifer starts performing a sexual act on Johnny and he closes his eyes as he enjoys it. Whilst holding his penis in one hand, Jennifer reaches out of bath to the floor and picks up a hidden knife. She continues to hold Johnny’s penis in the bath water, then pulls the knife underneath and Johnny jerks in pain. Jennifer gets out of the bath as Johnny just sits still with his eyes closed. After a few seconds, blood spurts out from his crotch and he opens his eyes confused. He looks down and realises Jennifer has cut off his penis. He yells as Jennifer calmly exits the bathroom and locks the door from the outside, leaving Johnny inside screaming and bleeding to death.

Concerned over their friend’s absence, Stanley and Andy are then shown in their boat, taking an axe as they make their way over to Jennifer’s place. Jennifer emerges from the water and knocks the boat. Andy falls out and Jennifer climbs in to confront Stanley, but then pushes him out and drives the boat around the river, circling and taunting Andy who is trying to tread water. Jennifer has the axe and plants it straight into Andy’s head killing him. Jennifer then turns her attention back to Stanley who is still struggling in the water, the propeller of the boat right in front of him as he hangs onto the side, trying to plead with Jennifer for forgiveness. Jennifer turns the boat motor on and the propeller cuts Stanley up killing him, the film ending with Jennifer continuing downstream in the boat.

Phew! Yep, that all happened. Seeing is believing though, and let’s just say that ISOYG is one of a kind viewing.

What this film holds in similarity to LHOTL, is the ability for it to shift its tone in the second half of the film. In the first half, the tone is more serious and creates an almost dialogue free build up to the violent rape scene. This seriousness is kept through the entirety of the rape scene and therefore does not detract from the horror of Jennifer’s ordeal. With Johnny’s menacing looks and Stanley’s complete, yet unexplained hatred towards Jennifer, the true degradation of the act is portrayed. As for the second half, the tone presents a more hyperbolic and tongue in cheek view of revenge. The acts of revenge are very extreme and over the top methods of killing, with Matthew’s death being the biggest talking point. Not only does Jennifer lure him into a pretty absurd trap, but what Matthew’s death conjures up the most is the debate over whether he was as deserving as the others. His death is the more awkward to watch, but it is also the first of all four men’s murders. Why would Zarchi have Matthew killed off first? We know that Matthew has a mind more to that of a child and that he is a virgin. His part in the rape was by no means as involved as the others, yet he did little to stop it and still tried to make two attempts to rape Jennifer. Perhaps it is the fact that Matthew has a lower mental capacity and is considered less responsible than the others that allowed for Zarchi’s film to be all the more shocking. Furthermore, it sends a message that Jennifer is a strong woman, capable of taking care of things herself and her acts only add to Zarchi enhancing his own opinions of the torment of rape being something that should be taken seriously – or else the consequences could be horrific!

Following this, Johnny “convinces” her that the rape was a repercussion of what she bought on herself and you almost believe that Jennifer is going to forgive and forget. When she is next seen in the bath asking Johnny questions about his friends, his wife and his children, you eventually realise that this is all another case of build up to the death – Jennifer, it appears, will show no mercy no matter what.

Whereas LHOTL does not contain revenge taken out by the victims in the film and whereas the ultimate message we are left to ponder over is that revenge might not always be the answer; ISOYG showcases revenge at the hands of the actual victim and it seems to care very little about what purpose revenge serves other than satisfaction to the person scorned.

Mari’s mother and father huddle together at the end of LHOTL and cry over the heinous acts they have just committed and bought into what was their normal, happy and violent free home. In ISOYG, the only specks of possible remorse Jennifer conveys is in an unsettling scene following Johnny’s death, where she sits in a rocking chair listening to an opera record, whilst fixating her stare on Johnny’s clothes burning on the fireplace, as he screams and bleeds to death in the bathroom upstairs. What this might suggest about the timescale between each film is that during the early seventies when LHOTL was released, people’s attitudes to violence may have been at the brink of slowly succumbing to the acceptance of it, understanding and being less able to deny the reality of it based on the images their television sets were delivering from the Vietnam war. Come the late 70s, the time of which ISOYG was released, had people’s attitudes come to the point where violence did not seem to bat as many eyelids anymore? Had people become more desensitised?

Of course, these types of films are by no means to be taken as completely serious pieces of film making. After all, their main purpose was to provide pure schlock and exploitation, and whilst films such as LHOTL and ISOYG are powerful in representation and interpretable analysis, they are also equally graphic and of equal absurdity.

*A recommended book that discusses this film and many others surrounding the representation of women on film and violence, is 'Men, Women and Chainsaws' by Carol Clover.