Welcome to the 450th review at B-Movie Enema!

It took a while to get here, folks, but here we are. Just over 10 years since starting this blog, I’ve knocked through major milestone after major milestone. But all the while there were a few movies that I hadn’t covered that I knew I would have to in some way or another. So, when it came to this year’s milestone, the 450th, I needed to cover one of those movies. In fact, when I came to the decision to cover the 1978 rape-revenge exploitation classic I Spit on Your Grave, I used that to help shape the entirety of this month’s October theme.

But why is this movie so famous, or infamous? Well, this is maybe one of the greatest examples of how it was received by critics as well as somewhat close-minded or ill-informed audiences when it was released in November 1978. For all my life until I saw the movie for the first time some years ago, I had two things about the movie relayed to me: 1) it was so disliked and balls-to-the-wall rapey that it almost comes across and something “dirty” to want to watch and 2) my older brothers would always talk about one particular scene concerning a girl, a guy, a knife, and a tub… oh, and that guy’s dick.

This sort of stuff is exactly why this movie gets people curious and even wanting to watch the movie to see if it lives up to the hype of the horrendous reviews and my snickering brothers. It’s kind of like the reputation that Faces of Death had. While that movie did have some authentic footage, much of the worst stuff were recreations, but that didn’t stop people from buying into the hype of it being banned in like 40 countries advertised right on the box. It was like a movie you rented when you were going to an all-nighter with your guy friends and it was the headlining piece of entertainment… almost out of a dare. “Dudes, we’re gonna watch Faces of Death and try not to puke or get grossed out or whatever! If you can’t sit through it, you’re a massive pussy and you should walk out into traffic.”

That was how me and my friends talked back then. What, you didn’t?

I Spit on Your Grave and Cannibal Holocaust are the other two movies that make up the triumvirate of all-time great dare-you-to-watch movies. And I guess if we were to give “watch on a dare” classic movies a Mount Rushmore, the fourth would be Caligula. All four of those movies were released within a short period at the peak of the 42nd Street exploitation era.

I Spit on Your Grave was directed by Meir Zarchi. Zarchi is an Israeli filmmaker. He didn’t exactly have much of a career. He was listed as a producer for seven films between 1978 and 2021. Five of those credits were directly related to I Spit on Your Grave. He was the Executive Producer on the 2010 remake that spun into two sequels. The leading lady of the movie is the lovely Camille Keaton. Keaton is a beauty from Arkansas who was indeed a distant relative of the silent movie comedy legend Buster Keaton. Before this movie, she had mostly appeared in Italian films. Shortly after the movie, Camille would marry Meir. So I’m not sure if they had been dating prior to making I Spit on Your Grave or if that rolled out of making the movie.

But what is it about I Spit on Your Grave that made it so infamous? Well, it’s the immediate and harsh backlash from critics upon its release. There are three key figures and you know who two of them are in this backlash. Siskel and Ebert both called the movie the worst movie ever made. To be fair, Roger Ebert flat-out said it was the worst film ever made. Gene Siskel only said he could consider it as one of the worst films ever made. Luke Y. Thompson of The New Times pushed back against people defending the film as actually being a feminist movie because our leading lady wins in the end. He equated that line of thinking as saying that you defend cockfighting as pro-rooster because, at the end of the match, there is still a winning rooster. That’s incredibly dismissive and a shallow take because there is a much more direct comparison you can draw with other action thrillers. If a guy’s wife is raped and killed, and he then goes out and hunts down and kills her attackers, he’s lauded as a hero.

And I think that’s why some would later re-evaluate the film. The movie bombed hard at the box office, likely due to the backlash from critics. There was also a backlash from the public, most of which had never seen the movie for themselves and only followed the narrative from critics, all of which were male (though I’m not sure if Pauline Kael reviewed the movie or not). However, the movie performed quite well on home video in the early days of VHS and video rental stores. During the re-evaluation that rolled out of its popularity on home video, the idea that there was a major feminist subtext began to arise. Between authors noting the film was a good example of feminist wish-fulfillment to strike back against the abusers within the male population and the simple fact, as Carol J. Clover, a film professor and scholar pointed out her popular book Men, Women, and Chainsaws, at no point are we to sympathize with ANYONE OTHER than Keaton’s character, Jennifer. The bad guys are awful. Yes, there are a couple instances in which the male attackers are more than just ravenous rapists, but we’ll talk about why these characters are human, but not humanized, thus giving Jennifer the lion’s share of the sympathies we should be feeling throughout the movie.

Can ya already tell that I’m on the side of the re-evaluations of the movie?!? I’ll be touching upon more of these ideas as I begin diving deeper into the movie. This is a movie that is worthy of topical discussion. I doubt I would truly be the best guy to cover everything that’s here. That said, it’s time to get into one of the most infamous movies ever that I selected for this 450th review.

Much like last week’s feature, we are dealing with New Yorkers. Camille Keaton plays Jennifer, an aspiring author who lives a fairly cosmopolitan lifestyle in New York City. So much so, in fact, she is first seen in the movie with the doorman of her building loading her luggage into her car as she prepares for time away. Jennifer is a fancy lady headed out to the wilderness of Connecticut where she has rented a cottage to work on her manuscript.

Along the way, she stops for gas, and, as it turns out, she already comes face to face with the guys who will create all sorts of trouble for her. The poster for the movie consistently talked about how Jennifer exacts revenge on five men. That is not true. It’s kind of last The Last House of the Left talked about Mari dying on the poster while showing an image of Phylis’ final moments in the movie. But much like last week’s movie, we’ve got four guys, with one who we’ll meet later, being stunted and dominated by the leader of the group.

Speaking of the leader of our baddies, allow me to introduce you to this week’s David Hess, Eron Taber who plays Johnny Stillman.

Considering what Johnny’s ultimate fate is in this movie, his last name is really funny. Anyway, at the gas station run by Johnny are two other guys, Stanley and Andy. These two layabouts are unemployed and seemingly playing a game that consists of one guy picking up a knife, flipping it into the ground to force the other guy to stretch to reach it. I assume the first guy who falls loses. The fourth member of this movie is Matthew. Matthew delivers groceries to Jennifer once she gets settled into the cabin, but he’s mentally handicapped. In a way, he’s kind of like Junior last week. Where Junior is stunted by his disability of being an addict, Matthew is stunted in another way.

Jennifer and Johnny have a pleasant enough conversation. She’s talking about where she’s headed and how long she’s already driven, he pleasantly says that he bets she’ll like the area so much she won’t want to leave. I think that’s one of the more interesting facets of this movie. Last week, it was an immediate understanding that Krug and his gang are terrible people who mean to do harm. However, here, Johnny seems like an affable fella. Andy and Stanley make no effort to gawk over the very pretty Camille Keaton who just showed up in town. They are just doing their own thing. Seemingly, there is nothing Jennifer has to worry about or we should feel concerned about for her.

Jennifer is so at ease in her new surroundings, that she immediately goes to the lake behind her rented cabin, takes off all her clothes, and goes for a skinny dip. The camera watches her from afar. Now, typically, we’d think that means someone is watching her. No. Instead, this is just looking at the entirety of the wilderness she is now a part of like she’s a nymph rollicking in nature.

As she unpacks in her bedroom, Jennifer discovers something that she’s not exactly sure how to reconcile… a gun. Stashed away in a dresser drawer is a pistol. She stares at it and contemplates it. Her concentration on it is broken when Matthew knocks on the door to deliver her groceries. While it’s very clear she seems curious to the point of being bothered by the sight of the gun in the drawer, she pleasantly interacts with Matthew and talks to him about being a writer and working on her first novel. Now, Matthew does say something that Jennifer just blows off as if she is very aware that he’s kind of slow or just a backwater dullard. He says that New York City is an evil place. To show that she’s a nice lady and not at all evil, she gives him a large enough tip that he’s excited by it. She even says it’s a tip from “an evil lady.” She even agrees to be Matthew’s friend which makes him pretty dang happy.

Can ya blame him?

Matthew rides by the gas station. He exclaims there’s a new chick on the river and he’s seen her tits and everything! It’s obvious he is trying to impress the other three guys. They kind of only humor him. As he was pulling up, Andy and Stanley practically braced themselves to have to deal with him. They decide to spend the evening fishing. While Matthew is in the trees taking a shit, the other three guys talk about women and so on. Matthew is a virgin. Johnny says he wants to set him up with a girl so he can lose his virginity. Matthew says he wants a special lady. The lady he has in mind is Jennifer.

Generally speaking, there still does not seem to be too much to be worried about when it comes to Johnny and his crew of guys. They talk about guy things and generally seem like normal guys. Sure, they are, to quote Point Break, young, dumb, and full of cum, but they don’t seem like guys who will turn into the monsters they are just about to turn into.

The next day, Jennifer is working on her novel. As she works in the hammock near the river, a boat passes by with a couple guys who make a point to say hello to her. While she eventually waives back at them, she initially seems surprised by the gesture. It’s like she knows it’s weird for guys to randomly call out to her so far away from where she was, the boat was practically on the other side of the river so it could have been a hundred yards away, but she also tries not to be too unfriendly either.

If she had any concerns, they would be somewhat valid as the boat circles back to reveal it is Andy and Stanley cruising by to check her out. What’s more, they decide to do a bunch of goofing around right next to where she is trying to work. This does irritate her. Them passing by? Okay. Them coming back to check her out? Eh, not great, but whatever. Them goofing off and giving her trouble working? That’s a no-go. Frustrated, she returns to the cabin to work inside. Later that night, while she is getting ready to go to sleep, she hears odd calls and whistles from outside. She goes outside to check, but ultimately doesn’t see anyone.

That’s when she remembers the gun in the drawer but opts to not take it out.

The next day is when things all go south. Jennifer is in the boat that comes with the cabin and relaxing as it lazily drifts down the river. Andy and Stanley drive by to mess with her once again. She uses a paddle to try to defend herself but they ram her boat and grab hold of it to drag it behind them. When they stop, she tries to use the paddle and run away from them but the two guys overpower her. They chase her and hog-call her before she eventually runs into Johnny who knocks her over and rips her bikini top off. When he starts roughing her up a bit, Andy and Stanley seem as though they aren’t quite so sure anymore, but they help hold her down to finish removing her bikini.

Johnny then calls Matthew to come out from the bushes so he can have his way with her and lose his virginity. It was the plan all along. But when Matthew refuses to do it this way, Johnny decides to go ahead and have her for himself. While Johnny has his way, the other three guys kind of have these expressions as if they are not into it. Matthew, in particular, is quite upset. Jennifer tries crawling away from the men while Johnny tries to convince Matthew to get her and have his turn. He still refuses and even tries to help her to her feet and back to her cabin. Muddied, bloodied, and naked, Jennifer treks through the woods back to the cabin.

Sadly, her nightmare is not over.

As she walks through the woods, she hears someone playing the harmonica and discovers that Andy and Johnny have gotten ahead of her. Soon, Stanley and Matthew come out into the open and hold her as Andy brutally rapes her. I think it’s heavily implied that he anally rapes her. It’s at this point that you realize if Andy or Stanley weren’t so sure about what Johnny is up to, they’ve had a change of heart. She loses consciousness for a few moments and the guys walk away. When they get back to their motorboat, they take her paddle and boat with them, depositing the boat and her bikini in the middle of the river.

Sadly, her nightmare is still not over yet.

Jennifer slowly makes her way back to the cabin. Dazed, and in pain, she has to crawl the final few dozen feet back to the door. Inside, she crawls to the telephone to call the police when the phone is kicked away from her by Stanley. The guys were already inside the cabin waiting for her. She tries fighting back but Stanley starts beating her up pretty badly. After finally getting up something I suppose these guys would call courage, Matthew finally decides to take a turn. He makes a whole scene of getting undressed before getting on top of Jennifer and raping her. The guys tease Matthew for not being able to orgasm and they mock Jennifer’s writing when they find the manuscript in the cabin. Andy rips the manuscript into pieces.

Jennifer begs Stanley to stop, but he gets enraged and starts slapping and kicking her before the others pull him away and out of the cabin. On the way to the boat, Johnny says they can’t let her go. Johnny gives Matthew a knife to stab Jennifer, but when he goes back into the cabin to kill her, he decides he can’t and, instead, puts some of her blood onto the knife to make it look like he went through with the murder.

At this point, this sequence took up more than half of the runtime of the movie to this point. It’s a brutal sequence. Even in the most depraved movies, one rape scene is about the limit. This movie has four. It’s over 25 minutes of pure hell for Jennifer. The pure brutality of the sequence is shocking. The movie is practically a crime scene. I

I do not believe it is a stretch of any kind to say this movie kind of revels in this grotesque display of sexual violence not seen before or since. That is not to say that this movie is gleeful in it, but opts to showcase this at terrifying lengths and realism that it wants to be remembered for putting Jennifer and the audience through this so that we can revel in her ultimate revenge. Another movie that comes a few years after this one, Ms. 45, does a very similar thing. It allows us to see the incredible violence so we have a reason to root for the heroine afterward so we can see those deserving of their comeuppance to have great violence done to them.

It’s a hard movie that forces the viewer to be courageous. I will also say that there is no shade to say this is a movie that is too difficult to watch for most. Rape is no joy to watch and it should never be considered entertainment. Many say that they don’t see any reasonable excuse to even include it in a story. I can understand that. You can have a hundred things motivate a character before you land on using rape as a catalyst. But still… This movie went hard into that sequence and the story is more about this second half of the movie and Jennifer’s revenge.

As days and weeks pass, Jennifer contemplates life and tries to get back to writing. She even takes the pieces of the manuscript that Andy tore up and tapes them back together. The guys are very clearly uneasy. Andy and Stanley refuse to boat down toward the cabin. Matthew hasn’t really thought about anything to do with that day whatsoever. Johnny is very concerned about there being no news to come out about finding a dead girl in the cabin. The guys handle this all in various ways. Andy is solemn. Stanley is scared. Matthew is a doofus. Johnny is antsy and a little paranoid.

It’s kind of clear these guys really aren’t rapists and murderers. They may not exactly have been the best of guys. Johnny is clearly the schemer. Andy and Stanley are just idiots. Matthew just wants to fit in. Obviously, they had the capacity to rape and kill, but it is very obvious this is their first time. This does not exonerate them for what they did. This isn’t me saying, “Oh they are really good guys who made one bad decision.”

Not at all. In a lot of ways, this is a good way of kind of depicting that whole “bear in the woods” thing that blew up in online discourse a few months ago. You know what I’m talking about… Women were asked a simple question: “If you were in the forest, would you rather see a bear on the path ahead of you or a man.” Many women, much to the dismay of a lot of guys who don’t really understand what this is really saying, said they’d rather see the bear. This was mostly dismissed by guys who tried to “scientifically” explain to people that bears would have to be scarier because they are larger, stronger, and more ferocious than the average man.

That is not at all the point. Bears, unless already irritated or agitated by something, will likely just steer clear of you and you can easily go about your business without getting a bear curious or scared about what you are doing. A guy is calculating. You can communicate with a guy because he, like you, is human. Sure. However, you really can’t always tell what his intentions will be or what he might do next. For the most part, that bear will just walk away and in no time at all, there is a massive distance between you and it. The guy on the other hand might decide to follow a woman. Might try to watch her. Might not leave her alone. You don’t really know for sure. He might also have a weapon that you can’t see, unlike the bear’s claws and teeth which you can see and account for very easily.

I bring this up because think back to the first interactions Jennifer had with each of the guys. She had a very pleasant conversation with Johnny. I would even say it was on the friendlier side of professional as he pumped gas into her car. Her interaction with Matthew was sweet and kind and showed just how nice she can be to strangers. The interaction was so absent between her and Andy and Stanley that it was not even an interaction, but if you didn’t think they didn’t notice that she was attractive, you don’t understand people all that well. Attractive people are always noticed even when it doesn’t look like they are being noticed at all. Later, as Andy and Stanley did start showing more interest in her, it was creepy and weird. They kept buzzing by her place on the river. They approached her while she was basically asleep on the boat the second time.

“Okay, but Geoff,” you say, “what’s Matthew’s deal? He doesn’t seem like he had the capacity to think about attacking a person.” Well, if you didn’t like my bringing up the bear and the guy in the woods conundrum, you probably aren’t going to like this. Matthew is a victim of toxic masculinity. In an ecosystem in which Matthew only connects with and befriends three other guys who are basically bored and listless in a small town, the way they talk about women and being guys and stuff has an effect on Matthew that is more negative than their companionship is a positive to him. Through them, he’s learned that women are to be taken and you’re only a man if you saw a girl’s tits. The first thing he said to Andy and Stanley after meeting Jennifer was a lie that he saw her breasts and that she showed them to him. In a situation where someone takes an instant interest in someone, they might relay how attractive this person was they saw, but they wouldn’t make up a fake brag to say they saw that person’s privates. His desire to fit in with these guys who he sees as being normal guys who think they are hot shit and would have all the ladies they could want leads him to take part in what he thinks is the way the world works. He’s not able to see past that. He’s a victim of the very toxic masculinity that victimized Jennifer only on the side of the attackers, not the attacked.

It’s also, in a kind of twisted way, why he’s the first Jennifer gets revenge on.

After Andy and Stanley discover that he lied about killing Jennifer, Matthew is ostracized from his friends. They even jump him for not being smart enough, or man enough, to kill her. A little more time passes, and Jennifer stops at the church to seek forgiveness for what she is going to do. After she makes her peace with God, she watches Johnny and sees his wife and two kids visit him – revealing just how two-faced and horrible he is as a person. She then goes to watch Matthew go out on a grocery delivery. She gets her first idea on the road to revenge. She calls in a grocery order knowing he will deliver it. He already knows that it’s her who called in the order and tries to avoid making the delivery but finally does what he’s told to go, but he stashes the deli’s cheese knife in his pants.

When Matthew arrives, Jennifer calls out to him dressed in white almost like an angel. She lures him into the forest where she undresses as he exclaims that he hates her and that he’s lost all his friends because of her and his inability to kill her like they told him. She says that she thought they were friends like they agreed upon on her first day there. She reveals a breast and says she will give him a summer to remember the rest of his life. She begins seducing him. As the two have sex, she slips a noose around his neck and hoists him up, strangling him to death. She then swings his body out over the river and drops him and his bike into the river.

Jennifer next decides to visit Johnny. He is locking the place up because it’s a Sunday, but without saying anything, she motions for him to get in the car with her. They drive out to a field and she pulls a gun on him. She tells him to strip and, like a bitch, he says he wasn’t the guy who planned the whole attack on her. He blames Stanley. Oddly, enough, Stanley is the only one who didn’t rape her. Stanley had to be pulled out of the cabin because he was beating her up.

Johnny then blames Jennifer for leading everyone on. First, she was showing off her legs to Johnny by walking back and forth at the gas station. Second, when Matthew delivered groceries, she wasn’t wearing a bra so he practically could see her tits. Then, she was lying in her canoe… IN HER BIKINI! God, what a slut, am I right? Jennifer, stunned by what Johnny says about her being to blame, lowers the gun and he takes it and tosses it away. She invites him back to the cabin for a hot bath.

She asks him about his family as he bathes and she pins up her hair to join him. She then asks about his friends to which he says they aren’t his friends. They’re all idiots. He also got a call from the grocery store… It seems Matthew has gone missing since the day before. Clearly, Johnny is also a moron because being in the mere presence of Camille Keaton’s naked body has disconnected everything in his brain’s logic center. He doesn’t put two and two together that she might have something to do with Matthew’s disappearance, even after she tells him point blank that she killed him and dumped him in the river. He also doesn’t seem to understand that this lady he brutally raped is seemingly VERY nice to him today. He doesn’t have any warning bells going off?

Well, there’s one thing that goes off… his dick from his body.

Yeah, if it’s not the 25-minute multiple rape sequence that this movie is remembered for, it’s this scene. She doesn’t kill Johnny right away, but he wishes she had. After cutting his dick off, Jennifer leaves Johnny locked in the bathroom screaming and crying out for his mother while she goes to the living room and listens to a record while he slowly dies from bleeding out. By all accounts, you can’t die from this as there are no major arteries in a man’s didgeridoo, but it would still not be a very pleasant scenario. What matters most is this iconic scene in this movie.

Stanley and Andy realize it’s pretty odd for Johnny to take off on his wife and kids. As she says to them, they know that he’s not that kind of guy. After she angrily tells Andy and Stanley that she’ll “break their fuckin’ heads” if they come back to the gas station again, they decide to go out to the cabin to see if Jennifer has anything to do with Johnny’s sudden disappearance. They come with an axe too.

Jennifer calmly swings in the hammock waiting for them to come. Andy tries to be a smart guy and comes ashore before they are in view of the cabin. While Stanley is alone in the boat, Jennifer sneaks onto it and pushes Stanley into the river while Andy hides behind a tree and watches while she fucks with Stanley by buzzing by real close to him in the motorboat. Andy comes to Stanley’s aid but not before Jennifer got the axe from him. She rushes toward Andy and buries the axe into his back, killing him.

That leaves only Stanley as the last surviving attacker of hers. She approaches him in the boat and he grabs hold of the motor of the back of the boat. She gives him the order he gave her when he was slapping her around and shoving his junk into her face… “Suck it, bitch.”

She turns the motor back on and disembowels him before triumphantly boating away down the river.

I Spit on Your Grave is a masterpiece of exploitation cinema in the rape revenge genre. It’s a movie that can only be one of a kind. It does not fuck around or do anything in any half measures. It is bloody. It’s brutal. It doesn’t compromise anything and earns the NC-17 rating it still holds to this day after originally being an X-rated film. Originally, it earned its money back in small, limited engagements under the title Day of the Woman, which I think is a much more thought-provoking title and reveals that this really is a feminist wish-fulfillment fantasy in the vein that men had with movies like Death Wish a few years before. It wasn’t until 1980, when a new distributor picked it up for wider release that it received the title it is best known as, and the title we still refer to it today.

It will go down as many things… A movie that is not palatable to many, misunderstood by many more, and beloved by a few. Now, it can also go in the books as the 450th B-Movie Enema review. Personally, I think this movie is an excellent film because it does do what it sets out to do, give the woman her day. She gets to be the vigilante that dishes out justice. I also find it interesting that the movie does not kill the attackers in the order you would expect. I think most people given the same concept would kill Andy and Stanley first, then Matthew, and finally Johnny. After all, there’s no topping Johnny’s demise. But, it kind of works out anyway because, in the end, she killed the first people to fuck with her last and use their own boat to ride off into the sunset the boss bitch that she now is.

Camille Keaton is a little shaky at the beginning of the movie, but as the movie continues, she shines. If nothing else, the camera loves her in several scenes. Hell, I could even make an argument that in a couple instances during the rape sequence, there’s still a beauty being portrayed in her from underneath the dirt and bruises. It’s a weird thing. It’s not a thing that’s even easy to describe, but there is something in just a few of the fleeting shots of her making her way back to the cabin through the woods where you can see some sense of what she will ultimately gather the strength to become after she heals.

Despite commanding this movie, Keaton would not really do a whole lot immediately after this movie. It wouldn’t be until the 2010s and beyond that she really started to work heavily. I think a lot of that is due to the filmmakers of today wanting her because of her notoriety in this role. It would lead to her reprising the role of Jennifer Hills in a sequel directed by this film’s original writer and director, Meir Zarchi. In I Spit on Your Grave: Deja Vu, 40 years have passed, Jennfier is now a successful rape counselor after writing a memoir of what happened, her daughter is a model, and she’s now the target of a revenge plot perpetrated by the family of those she got her revenge on. While Keaton gained praise for her performance, the film didn’t land well with many citing the plot and the whopping two-hour twenty-eight-minute runtime creating many pacing issues. 2010 saw a remake of the film in which Sarah Butler took up the Jennifer role, again as a writer who this time goes to Louisiana to write her book. This saw two sequels in 2013 and 2015. Maybe one day I’ll look at either the direct sequel to this film or the remakes.

For now, though, we continue onto our next 70s horror film. Let’s go ahead and countdown to #500 which will be coming in roughly a year. That begins next week with 1970’s And Soon the Darkness. That’s a British film that also had a 2010 remake. How about that? Before we get to that review, tomorrow, come back here to the site or go to one of the links you’ll find to the right that will connect you the B-Movie Enema YouTube, Vimeo, or Roku channels to watch a new episode of B-Movie Enema: The Series. This time around, Nurse Disembuadee and I are watching a British vampire cult movie starring William Sylvester called Devils of Darkness.

Until then, thank you to those who have read my reviews and been around for a long time on this blog. It’s deeply appreciated. I hope these reviews entertain you when needed. To quote the amazingly beautiful Camille Keaton… “Suck it, bitch.”