I love films that have a controversial history whether they are great or not. I find myself needing to see these if for no other reason than to see what all the fuss was about. In 1978 director Meir Zarchi unleashed his film I Spit On Your Grave aka Day of the Woman that shocked the world. Since it has not only become a cult classic, but spawned a remake and two sequels that were even more brutal as well as an official sequel in 2019. Now Ronin Flix is bringing the original film to 4K Ultra for the first time. 

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I Spit On Your Grave follows Jennifer, a writer who is working on a new novel and needs to get out of the city to finish it. She rents a riverside cabin in upstate New York to work on her novel, attracting the attention of a number of rowdy male locals. They catch Jennifer one day and strip her naked for the village idiot and rape her. Jennifer is later attacked and raped a further two times by the four degenerates, and her novel is also destroyed. But Jennifer recovers, and in her now-twisted, psychotic state, she begins to seek revenge on the men.

 

On the surface this film can be seen as just another horror thriller with a victimized woman that is often hard to watch. While those elements are there this is so much more about woman empowerment than anything else. After the horrific events of the film instead of the usual trope of bringing in a man to save the day it lets the victim find her strength and get her own brutal revenge and it delivers. Sure seeing this film now it is hard to imagine why it was surrounded by so much controversy, but you have to look at it in the time it was released.

 

I remember seeing this poster growing up in the video stores always wondering what this was and it took years before I was able to finally see it. It is a great movie with some flaws, but the overall tone and end result of seeing Jennifer dole out her justice is a worthy payoff to the brutality that came before it. The