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I Spit on Your Grave
There is no denying that Meir Zarchi's I Spit on Your Grave (1978) deserves its title as one of the most controversial films ever made. While many condemn it as misogynistic, others praise it for raising uncomfortable issues about sexual violence. While its reputation as a cult film has undoubtedly been cemented by its unique position in the 1970s/80s exploitation era and the "video nasties" scandal, it has also become mythologized by its own official and unofficial franchises.
David Maguire examines why the film still continues to provoke fierce debate forty years on, not only investigating the historical, social, and political landscape into which the film was first released--and condemned--but also examining how it is has inadvertently become ground zero for the rape-revenge genre because of its countless imitators. The book explores how academic study has reevaluated the film's importance as a cultural statement on gender, the conflicting readings that it throws up, the timeless appeal of its story as examined through folklore and mythology, and its updating to reflect contemporary issues in a post-9/11 world of vengeance and retaliation.
David Maguire examines why the film still continues to provoke fierce debate forty years on, not only investigating the historical, social, and political landscape into which the film was first released--and condemned--but also examining how it is has inadvertently become ground zero for the rape-revenge genre because of its countless imitators. The book explores how academic study has reevaluated the film's importance as a cultural statement on gender, the conflicting readings that it throws up, the timeless appeal of its story as examined through folklore and mythology, and its updating to reflect contemporary issues in a post-9/11 world of vengeance and retaliation.
140 pages, Paperback
Published March 27, 2018
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About the author
David Maguire
1 book1 followerAmerican/Canadian readers of my book on I Spit On Your Grave can get 30% off when using the code "cup30" at Columbia University Press's website
David Maguire is a programmer with the Leeds International Film Festival, working on the Fanomenon strand, the largest section of the festival catering for fans of fantasy, horror, science fiction and action/adventure.
As an independent scholar he has given the following papers across the UK:
* 'The body politic: the wider issues at play in 21st century rape-revenge films', Exploitation Cinema in the 21st Century conference, Canterbury Christ Church University
* 'Modern rape-revengers as the epitome of monstrous-femininity', Fear 2000 conference, University of Sheffield
* 'Rape, revenge, remake, repeat: why I Spit On Your Grave refuses to be buried', Cine-Excess Cult Genres, Traditions and Bodies: A Decade of Excess conference, University of Birmingham
* 'Wanted undead or alive: George A Romero's zombie films as neo-westerns', Current Thinking on the Western III conference, University of Bradford
David Maguire is a programmer with the Leeds International Film Festival, working on the Fanomenon strand, the largest section of the festival catering for fans of fantasy, horror, science fiction and action/adventure.
As an independent scholar he has given the following papers across the UK:
* 'The body politic: the wider issues at play in 21st century rape-revenge films', Exploitation Cinema in the 21st Century conference, Canterbury Christ Church University
* 'Modern rape-revengers as the epitome of monstrous-femininity', Fear 2000 conference, University of Sheffield
* 'Rape, revenge, remake, repeat: why I Spit On Your Grave refuses to be buried', Cine-Excess Cult Genres, Traditions and Bodies: A Decade of Excess conference, University of Birmingham
* 'Wanted undead or alive: George A Romero's zombie films as neo-westerns', Current Thinking on the Western III conference, University of Bradford
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 24, 2020
The title of the 1978 movie was Day of the Woman but the distributor changed it to I Spit on your Grave. The poster showed an image that wasn’t in the movie at all.
Just as Psycho is often thought to be the first modern horror movie and Halloween the first slasher movie, ISOYG is the first rape-revenge movie. It’s not, of course – there’s Bergman’s The Virgin Spring (1960) for instance. But it’s the first that made a big splash.
Other independent horror films from the 60s and 70s are now re-evaluated and revered by fans and critics – Night of the Living Dead, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre – but not ISOG. Trash it was and trash it remains.
Rape revenge films are intrinsically dodgy – one critic says “there’s no denying that rape fetishists might in fact be the main audience seeking out these types of films”.
Can’t fault this book for being out of date, it’s not – Mr Maguire incorporates Trump’s grab em by the pussy remark and the Harvey Weinstein trial into his discussion. (Also Cee Lo Green who in 2014 tweeted that it wasn’t rape if the victim was unconscious.)
This movie needs a detailed discussion but David Maguire was for me not the right guy. He got lost in the remake and sequels (and he talks in that dry film-studies-speak), and he failed to address a central problem of the movie.
The big issue, of course, is whether the 25 minute abuse and rape of Jennifer in the first part is salacious and exploitative, and a truly disgusting form of torture porn, or is a realistic portrayal of gang rape. People disagree about that. (American Psycho the book throws up the same dilemma). The director Meir Zarchi claimed ISOYG as a feminist statement. Mr Maguire says quite rightly
It is deeply distressing to watch – it was in 1978 and remains so today.
The second big issue, for me, is that the revenge part of the movie is totally incredible and is pure fantasy. No woman ever did anything like this, it’s all ridiculous, like any old ridiculous thriller. So the gruesome silliness of the revenge for me trashes and trivialises the unflinching realism of the rape, and the whole movie therefore has to be condemned.
WEINSTEIN TRIAL – A CURIOUS FOOTNOTE
I don’t know if you noticed this but Goodreads popped up in the Weinstein trial… how strange. The defense noticed a juror had been reading and reviewing books on Goodreads which showed a particular bias – the story is here
https://www.theguardian.com/books/boo...
Just as Psycho is often thought to be the first modern horror movie and Halloween the first slasher movie, ISOYG is the first rape-revenge movie. It’s not, of course – there’s Bergman’s The Virgin Spring (1960) for instance. But it’s the first that made a big splash.
Other independent horror films from the 60s and 70s are now re-evaluated and revered by fans and critics – Night of the Living Dead, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre – but not ISOG. Trash it was and trash it remains.
Rape revenge films are intrinsically dodgy – one critic says “there’s no denying that rape fetishists might in fact be the main audience seeking out these types of films”.
Can’t fault this book for being out of date, it’s not – Mr Maguire incorporates Trump’s grab em by the pussy remark and the Harvey Weinstein trial into his discussion. (Also Cee Lo Green who in 2014 tweeted that it wasn’t rape if the victim was unconscious.)
This movie needs a detailed discussion but David Maguire was for me not the right guy. He got lost in the remake and sequels (and he talks in that dry film-studies-speak), and he failed to address a central problem of the movie.
The big issue, of course, is whether the 25 minute abuse and rape of Jennifer in the first part is salacious and exploitative, and a truly disgusting form of torture porn, or is a realistic portrayal of gang rape. People disagree about that. (American Psycho the book throws up the same dilemma). The director Meir Zarchi claimed ISOYG as a feminist statement. Mr Maguire says quite rightly
It is deeply distressing to watch – it was in 1978 and remains so today.
The second big issue, for me, is that the revenge part of the movie is totally incredible and is pure fantasy. No woman ever did anything like this, it’s all ridiculous, like any old ridiculous thriller. So the gruesome silliness of the revenge for me trashes and trivialises the unflinching realism of the rape, and the whole movie therefore has to be condemned.
WEINSTEIN TRIAL – A CURIOUS FOOTNOTE
I don’t know if you noticed this but Goodreads popped up in the Weinstein trial… how strange. The defense noticed a juror had been reading and reviewing books on Goodreads which showed a particular bias – the story is here
https://www.theguardian.com/books/boo...
September 11, 2018
This begins wonderfully with a thorough analysis of 1970s second wave feminism and the dialogue between its thinkers, movie critics, and Meir Zarchi (the director). The end, however, devotes way too many pages to the 2010 remake and its sequels. While I agree those films should be addressed, the book is not billed as an analysis of the *franchise* nor does the thesis presented at the beginning of the work seem aimed at a discussion of anything other than the original film and its relevance as a cinematic/cultural/cult-tural touchstone. I would've liked much more to have read how this film impacted other *more relevant* (subjective, I know) films inspired by ISOYG than the forgettable (and almost entirely forgotten) remake and its sequels. Overall, though, it presents a decent look at the cultural history of the original film at the time it was made.
May 6, 2018
The latest Cultographies book is David Maguire’s analysis of Meir Zarchi’s 1978 rape-revenge film, I Spit on Your Grave. Maguire looks at the issues surrounding the film — the misogyny, especially, but also the feminist reevaluation of it in the years following its release as well. Most importantly, the author doesn’t just look at I Spit on Your Grave in a vacuum.
Maguire’s analysis of Zarchi’s movie looks at the films which preceded it, such as Deliverance — which fellow writer Rikke Schubart defined as the “birth” of the rape-revenge film in his 2007 book, Super Bitches and Action Babes: The Female Hero in Popular Cinema, 1970–2006 — as well as other grindhouse fare such as The Last House on the Left.
Obviously, Carol Clover’s “final girl” theory from 1992’s Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film gets a lot of play in Maguire’s book, but he’s also interested in examining just how the concept of rape-revenge plays out in comparison to many other films with which I Spit on Your Grave was contemporaneous, as well as those which succeeded it. Unfortunately, he doesn’t go back quite as far as I’d like. A discussion of roughies, such as The Defilers, would really have rounded out where the examination of the abused-woman-in-peril genre started, even though he does look at giallo and even the deep cut, The Witch Who Came From the Sea.
Looking at the film from so many different angles, especially when adeptly comparing and contrasting the 1978 original with its 2010 remake by Steven Monroe and that film’s attendant sequels, Maguire provides the most thorough and in-depth analysis of I Spit on Your Grave thus far published. It’s a fascinating read, and as stated in the introduction, it’s concise and clear in its purpose. As Maguire states in his final paragraph, “It is a film that defies easy classification and that is what makes it so interesting and so powerful.”
Maguire’s analysis of Zarchi’s movie looks at the films which preceded it, such as Deliverance — which fellow writer Rikke Schubart defined as the “birth” of the rape-revenge film in his 2007 book, Super Bitches and Action Babes: The Female Hero in Popular Cinema, 1970–2006 — as well as other grindhouse fare such as The Last House on the Left.
Obviously, Carol Clover’s “final girl” theory from 1992’s Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film gets a lot of play in Maguire’s book, but he’s also interested in examining just how the concept of rape-revenge plays out in comparison to many other films with which I Spit on Your Grave was contemporaneous, as well as those which succeeded it. Unfortunately, he doesn’t go back quite as far as I’d like. A discussion of roughies, such as The Defilers, would really have rounded out where the examination of the abused-woman-in-peril genre started, even though he does look at giallo and even the deep cut, The Witch Who Came From the Sea.
Looking at the film from so many different angles, especially when adeptly comparing and contrasting the 1978 original with its 2010 remake by Steven Monroe and that film’s attendant sequels, Maguire provides the most thorough and in-depth analysis of I Spit on Your Grave thus far published. It’s a fascinating read, and as stated in the introduction, it’s concise and clear in its purpose. As Maguire states in his final paragraph, “It is a film that defies easy classification and that is what makes it so interesting and so powerful.”
September 24, 2022
An interesting book which has some nice exploration of male gaze and filming techniques (point of view and diagetic sound stood out). Was accessible to follow as someone who had only heard of the film and isn't familiar with filming technicalities.
Explored the complexities of I Spit on Your Grave and how people see it as good or bad depictions of rape and why.
Had a lot of other bits of info about production and facts which put things into context but weren't all that interesting to read. Probably super interesting if you've been a big fan of the film for a long time and want to delve deeper.
Explored the complexities of I Spit on Your Grave and how people see it as good or bad depictions of rape and why.
Had a lot of other bits of info about production and facts which put things into context but weren't all that interesting to read. Probably super interesting if you've been a big fan of the film for a long time and want to delve deeper.
January 3, 2019
A very interesting topic—not just I Spit in Your Grave, but exploitation films altogether, and rape-revenge specifically—gets lost in the specificity of the cult of ISoYG and the complications of its remakes. The first half is pretty good, though it stops short of really getting into the feminist theory behind something like ISoYG and its obviously problematic elements. A good read.
December 26, 2021
Women in abusive relationships often have thoughts and feelings of revenge against the perpetrator, in fact it's not uncommon, so I felt empathy for the young woman and not much for the perpetrators. (the film is excellent)
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews