Movie Review: The Original 'I Spit on Your Grave' Is Still Terrible

In the early 2000s, it became briefly hip amongst film cultists to defend Meir Zarchi's 1978 exploitation flick, I Spit on Your Grave. Cult film critic, Joe Bob Briggs, is on the record calling the film a "masterpiece of cinema.” So many stepped forward to defend the film, that it earned a special edition dvd release from Elite Entertainment to celebrate the film’s 25 year anniversary back in 2003. The dvd came complete with THX sound, tv spots, critic reviews, and two commentary tracks—one by the film’s director Meir Zarchi and the other by the aforementioned Joe Bob Briggs.

It's also a film Roger Ebert called a vile bag of garbage and never stopped dunking on throughout his career. Ebert's colleague, Gene Siskel, said that watching I Spit on Your Grave was the single most depressing moment of his career. Because Siskel and Ebert hated I Spit on Your Grave so much, I had to see it for myself. Curiosity is not always a good thing.

I Spit on Your Grave is the story of a young writer named Jennifer (Camille Keaton), who rents a summer home in upstate New York so she can work on a book. Once there, she encounters four small town rednecks, one of them mentally handicapped, who go on to make her short time in the cabin a living hell.

One day, as Jennifer is sunning herself on the lake behind the cabin, the rednecks arrived at her place and chased her into the woods. They cornered her and what begins is a brutal series of graphic sexual assaults so deplorable as to defy description. Jennifer is raped four times—even once by the mentally handicapped guy, to the cheers of his cohorts. The mentally challenged guy is then supposed to kill Jennifer, but he can't do it and Jennifer survives.

This kicks off the plot in earnest, a far-fetched revenge plot in which Jennifer exacts some girl-power style vengeance on her attackers. Not in that sexy J-Lo in Enough kind of way, but more of a Lorena Bobbitt crossed with Jason Voorhees style that is as disconcerting as anything that precedes it.

I honestly did not believe the film could be this awful. I assumed Roger Ebert was overreacting and that I Spit on Your Grave was simply an un-ironic, poorly shot, poorly performed little movie that could provide some kitschy laughs. I was, however, as profoundly disturbed as Mr. Ebert was. I Spit on Your Grave is indeed a vile bag of garbage. This is a masochistic, hateful film that I am shocked anyone with a conscience could defend.

Oh, but defend they do in two separate commentary tracks. One, by director Meir Zarchi, that is so ridiculous that if you weren't so horrified by the images on the screen you would laugh hysterically at Zarchi's off the charts delusion. What is most shocking from Zarchi's commentary is the fact that the film’s star Camille Keaton was Zarchi's wife at the time. I thought what Guy Ritchie put his wife Madonna through on Swept Away was brutal. Swept Away is a love letter compared to this.

The other commentary, by cult critic Joe Bob Briggs, is far more down to Earth, but is still a strong defense of the film. Briggs has some strong arguments for moments of the film in which Zarchi shows some minor artistic flair, but Briggs can't defend the film’s brutality. Even his numerous comparisons to films he claims are far more brutal than I Spit on Your Grave can't justify or defend this trash. Briggs does rightly rip each of the actors playing the rednecks, who's acting is nearly as brutal as their character’s crimes.

I Spit on Your Grave is filmed excrement. Pure exploitative trash that appeals to the darkest portion of human nature. It's not that rape can't be dramatically portrayed in film—see The Accused for that—but the way it is portrayed in I Spit on Your Grave is simply pornographic. Just the thought that someone could enjoy I Spit on Your Grave that way turns my stomach.