Beautiful Women In Film, Arousal And Violence, Revenge Served Hot
fciwomenswrestling.com femcompetititor.com grapplingstars.com, Boiko-Olha-Shutterstock-photo
January 13, 2023,
It was a ground breaking film.
Even though it was considered a B movie.
Ah, the 1970’s and B movies.
Who could forget the incredible sexy Pam Grier in her heart pounding B movies? Coffy, Foxy Brown, Sheba Baby, Women In Cages and our favorite, drum roll please; The Arena.
The babes in those films never met a bikini they didn’t like.
We loved gorgeous young thick chick Barbara Hershey in Last Summer. Having said that, she really shined, violently so, and erotically charged, in Boxcar Bertha.
She was the best looking girl named Bertha that we have ever met.
What burned all of those above films into so many film goer’s minds was the combination of raw arousal and extreme violence.
The team at Psychology Today says things in very simple terms, “Biologists have long argued that basic sex differences related to reproduction evolutionarily favor sexually aggressive males.”
Who will most likely raise sexually aggressive males.
Sometimes violently so.
Well, the males in this next film are very aggressive.
The babe in this film never met a bikini she didn’t like either.
Possibly a bad combination in the waiting.
The rough scenes made you feel like you were there, and wish you weren’t, but you knew you had to finish it.
An associate, who was of age in the 1970’s, heard about the film through an Advertising Agency executive who almost whistled when he described the film.
I Spit on Your Grave.
Hmm, what a title.
I Spit On Your Grave is a 1978 American rape and revenge horror film edited, written, and directed by Meir Zarchi.
The film tells the story of Jennifer Hills (Camille Keaton), a fiction writer based in New York City who exacts revenge on each of her tormentors after four men gang rape and leave her for dead.
So, this beautiful, classy, elegant, sophisticated writer decides to get away to the country to find inspiration.
Boy does she.
No pacifist here.
Writer and reader, most likely she didn’t get around to “Gandhi”.
As she is getting gas, the usual spot in B movies to meet your future tormentors or their relatives with little or no teeth, our heroine talks to the station attendant while his buddies are hanging out on the grass.
They all get one look at her and a mixture of things go through their minds.
Mostly hatred. Why?
Let’s be up front and direct. As far as romance?
Don’t even think about it.
She is way out of their league.
This makes them very angry.
She is also from upscale New York City and they are country bumpkins.
That makes them even angrier.
You could see this one coming a long hayride away.
So, our beauty settles into a sprawling house in the middle of nowhere to find peace and serenity but the men are aware that she is there alone and they want a piece.
Not pie.
For them, it is not about sex.
What follows has to be one of the most violent rape scenes in movie history, especially since given what was on film in the 1940’s and 50’s, was oceans different in terms of being tame.
The criticism of the film was that it was exploitive.
That in a nutshell could describe many B movies in the 70’s. Doesn’t mean they were not entertaining or so ground breaking that the film’s images burned in your brain like an x-ray.
This went further.
They raped her so bad it was too excruciating to watch. Had it stopped there, it truly would have felt exploitive and abusive.
It was what she violently did afterwards to exact revenge that was stunning as well.
Think about the title.
She was alive to spit on their graves. The rapists were not.
The power of the film was that it opened up a lot of debates in the classroom and given its later box appeal, like blonde babe Elizabeth Berkley’s B movie classic Show Girls, started very slow in the theaters, but later did extremely well on video cassette rentals, the former spawning three sequels which, in our opinion, were purely exploitive and presented nothing unique.
Still, three sequels bout rape?
Not all agreed upon the impact of the film.
According to research, the film is noted for its controversial depiction of extreme graphic violence, particularly the lengthy depictions of gang rape, that take up 30 minutes of the film’s runtime.
During its wider release, it was branded a “video nasty” in the United Kingdom, and was a target of censorship by film commissioning bodies.
As such, then film critic Roger Ebert became one of the most notable detractors of the film, calling it “a vile bag of garbage”.
Grand standing?
The film remains highly controversial to this day, even being considered to be one of the worst films ever made.
That people can’t stop talking about.
For some, it is this controversy which has led to it being deemed a cult classic.
It’s kind of like saying the film is so bad that we can’t stop talking about it.
I’m not interested in the girl who sits in front of me in Roman History, so I only talk about her 16 hours a day, every day, 7 days a week.
But, I’m not interested.
Right.
Others said it empowers women because she survived and killed her perpetrators which is kind of like saying Pitbull fighting empowers the winning Pitbull because she survives for revenge.
Despite the controversy and negative reviews, the performance of Camille Keaton was praised by critics.
We would agree. She was incredible.
We watched for research purposes only. Truly.
In 2010, the film was included in Time magazine’s “Top 10 Ridiculously Violent Movies”.
Ridiculously? Nice way to cover their rears and still praise it.
It did catch on to the mainstream as research indicates that the A list actress Demi Moore posed in one of the future posters with her back turned and booty in focus.
Would we recommend the film?
No, we can’t. Seriously. The rape scenes are truly the most graphic that we have ever seen and to enjoy the artistic aspects to the film, you have to accept you will watch some parts that are repulsive.
Embarrassing.
Filled with self-loathing.
Having said that, it is hard to watch the film without talking about it.
The inspiration for “I Spit on Your Grave” came from an encounter writer-director Meir Zarchi had in 1974 with a young woman who was raped and beaten by two men at a park in New York City.
The idea did not begin to fully develop until Yuri Haviv, the film’s cinematographer, invited Zarchi to spend the weekend at a summer house he had rented in Kent, Connecticut which contains an extension of the Housatonic River nearby.
Meir spent four months writing the screenplay, the bulk of which was written at his usual Subway route to his office in Times Square and back home where his wife would then typewrite the handwritten pages in the evening. The typewriter his wife had used is seen in the film as the same one Jennifer uses to complete her manuscript.
Arousal and violence is a powerful combination.
We didn’t watch the sequels. Saw the trailers. Nothing to talk about there. Simply designed to titillate.
The disturbing question we ask is, if Mr. Zarchi had greatly reduced the rape scene, to say like one demonstrated in Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy, which was very effective, filmed in the 70’s as well, better known to a mainstream audience but not remotely as graphic, would the film have had the same effect?
We sense not.
Let us make this clear. What is the arousal? The rape scene?
Absolutely not.
It is the provocatively way she dressed before the assault and when she was seductively out for revenge.
I Spit On Your Grave is a film you shouldn’t watch, but can’t stop talking about.
Sometimes arousal and violence has that effect.
~ ~ ~
OPENING PHOTO Boiko-Olha-Shutterstock-photo fciwomenswrestling.com femcompetititor.com grapplingstars.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Spit_on_Your_Grave
https://fciwomenswrestling.com/
