I Spit on Your Grave/Day of the Woman (1978) - Zarchi's infamous, unrelenting rape-and-revenge picture

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A sensation-promising and quite long tagline overheads an image of scantily clad Demi Moore (who does not act in the film, however!) with a bloodied hunting knife in a forest on this great poster for Meir Zarchi's I Spit on Your Grave

Jennifer is a short story writer from New York who arrives at a summerhouse in Connecticut, and her partially bared body induces four local men til beat her up, gang rape her and leave her for dead. But she doesn't die. In fact she wakes up with revenge on her mind!

I Spit on Your Grave is written, directed and edited by debuting Meir Zarchi (Rachel (1960, writer)).

We get to know a repulsive sediment of men through fairly well-acted performances here, and Camille Keaton (The Butterfly Room (2012)) is beautiful as the victimized Jennifer, who exacts gruesome vengeance: SPOILER Especially the castration scene is grim.

Apart from this, the film actually has some fine imagery (cinematography by Nuri Habib (Bipanah (1953))) and is fundamentally ambiguous, - it seems simultaneously feminist and exploitation-minded, - and shocking. The trailer and poster indicates that audiences should be outraged that Jennifer would allegedly not be convicted for her revenge in any American court. The ascertainment is highly speculative, and most will probably also find that it is not her revenge that is outrageous but the crime that precedes it.

 

Watch a short trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 80k $

Box office: Unknown

= Uncertain

[I Spit on Your Grave premiered 23 May (Cannes Film Festival, out of competition) and runs 102 minutes. Zarchi has explained that inspiration for the story came from his meeting and helping a rape victim in New York in 1974. Keaton was reportedly chosen from a New York audition out of 4,000 women. Shooting took place from July - August (1978) in New York and Connecticut. 2 crew members resigned during production, because they could not take the portrayed violence. Zarchi limited mention of anal rape to obtain the R rating. Zarchi himself distributed the film initially at drive-ins, without much success, before Jerry Gross Organization eventually distributed it wider in North America, now under the title I Spit on Your Grave, although still to reportedly small results. Gross had the poster made seen above with a then unknown Demi Moore posing with her back to the camera, as she was working on another film for him at the time. I Spit on Your Grave was released in a handful of other markets but didn't find a mass audience before it was released on video. It was banned in many countries, including Norway, Ireland, Australia, the UK, Iceland, Canada and West Germany. Roger Ebert gave it a 0/4 star rating, translating to 3 notches under this one. The film inspired an unofficial 1993 sequel (with Keaton), three remake sequels (2010; 2013; 2015) and finally an official sequel by Zarchi and with Keaton, entitled I Spit on Your Grave: Deja Vu (2016). Zarchi first returned with Don't Mess with My Sister! (1985). Keaton returned first in Raw Force (1982). I Spit on Your Grave is rotten at 51 % with a 5.40/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of I Spit on Your Grave?

Imprint (2006) - Venture far, far abroad with Miike's hard-to-watch Masters of Horror entry

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This poster for Takashi Miike's Imprint clearly indicates that the film is ripe with horrific, grueling images, gore and torture

An American journalist (Billy Drago (Supernatural (2008, TV-series))) is looking for his lost love on a cursed Japanese island, where torture-loving whores with gruesome abortion backgrounds have their home.

Imprint is written by Daisuke Tengan (The Eel/Unagi (1997)), adapting the 1999 novel Bokke e, kyōtē by Shimako Iwai (Rakuen (2003)), and directed by Takashi Miike (Shinjuku kuroshakai: Chaina mafia sensô (1995)). It is the 13th and last episode of the first season of TV movie anthology series Masters of Horror.

Without reservations this is a disgusting film, in fact so much so that one almost agrees with the series' executive producer Mick Garris and the executives at Showtime who decided to shelve it and never run it on TV as part of the anthology. But in the atmospheric, stylized universe conjured up here, and in the extreme imagery that goes along with it also lie the unshakable elements of the cultural clash that is Imprint.

 

Related posts:

 

Other Masters of Horror TV movies: 2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

Fair Haired Child (2006, TV movie) - Malone turns out another weak Masters of Horror TV movie 

Dance of the Dead (2005) - Hooper's ugly Masters of Horror nonsense
Chocolate (2005) - Flavors, visions and eroticism in Garris' TV movie thriller
Deer Woman (2005) - Landis and son's solid Masters of Horror entry 
Cigarette Burns (2005) - Carpenter burns out in weird, tiresome TV movie    

Haeckel's Tale (2006, TV movie) - Another bland Masters entry 

Pick Me Up (2006, TV movie) - Cohen's so-so Masters of Horror entry

Takashi Miike: 1999 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess 

Audition/オーディション (Ōdishon) (1999) - Miike hamstrings your sleep 

 

 

Watch a clip from the film here

 

Cost: Unknown

Box office: None - TV movie

= Uncertain

[Imprint premiered 25 February (Yubari Interntational Film Festival) and runs 63 minutes. Shooting took place in Japan, including in Tokyo. Miike claims that he checked up during production and thought that he created something within the bounds of what could be screened on US TV, but the film was nevertheless denied screening when completed. Instead it was shown theatrically in Japan as well as through screenings in festivals in several other markets, along with on TV in yet other markets before getting a home video release broadly. It is the only film in the Masters of Horror series to get shelved due to its content. Miike returned with Waru: kenketsu-hen (2006, video) and theatrically with Taiyô no kizu (2006). Drago returned in Seven Mummies (2006). 7.7k+ IMDb users have given Imprint a 6.9/10 average rating.]

What do you think of Imprint?

La Grande Illusion (1937) - Renoir's high-flying anti-war smash

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The dove of freedom dies gruesomely on the barbed wire inside of a war-time soldier ensconced in grey on this evocative, artsy poster for Jean Renoir's La Grande Illusion

We follow some mainly French soldiers in a German POW camp during World War I, their brotherhood amongst themselves, and even with their enemies, - and eventually their escape from said camp.

La Grande Illusion is written by Charles Spaak (Two Women/L'Empreinte du Dieu (1940)) and great French co-writer/director Jean Renoir (Whirlpool of Fate/La Fille de l'Eau (1925)). The film features a rebellion using flutes! And towards the end of the story we follow two of the prisoners, who now co-habitate with a German women, again in a striking harmony.
This is a very fine film about humanism on a profound level. The proposed humanity, in the context of the First World War, - and one inevitably also watches it and reflects on the Second World War, - seems somehow escapist, though, in its strange, combat-free idealization. Still the film attains rare moments of brotherhood while it commits a powerful portrayal of the illusion behind humanly made grand conflicts, which has made it an especially scholarly favorite.

Related post:

Jean Renoir: Top 10: Best French movies

The Human Beast/La Bête Humaine/Judas Was a Woman (1938) or, Train of Love, Lust and Murder!

Watch an original French trailer for the film here

Cost: Unknown
Box office: Unknown 
= Uncertain - but seemingly at least a box office success
[La Grande Illusion premiered 8 June (Paris) and runs 114 minutes. Shooting took place in France from February - May 1937. Jean Gabin (Their Last Night/Leur Dernière Nuit (1953)) wore Renoir's aviator's uniform from the war, in which he actually served in France's air force. The film reportedly sold the incredible amount of 12.5 mil. tickets in production country France. However, fearing its possibly detrimental impact on the national fighting moral, the French authorities banned the film in 1940 for as long as the Second World War would last. In Germany, Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels declared the film "cinematic public enemy no. 1", and Nazi troops seized prints and negatives of the film, when they marched into France in 1940. La Grande Illusion became the first foreign film to be nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, which it lost to You Can't Take It with You. It won 3 National Board of Review awards, a prize at the Venice Film Festival and a few other honors. Regrettably neither the cost nor the gross numbers are known, but the film is recorded to have made 174k $ in a 2012 North-American re-release. No doubt if the huge French admissions tally is correct, La Grande Illusion was at least a box office success. The film was nearly lost due to the Second World War and the few left prints were scattered in Germany and later the Soviet Union. Roger Ebert gave the film a 4/4 star review, translating to 2 notches higher than this one. Renoir returned with La Marseillaise (1938). Gabin returned in The Messenger/Le Messager (1937); Pierre Fresnay (Les Affreux (1959)) in La Bataille Silencieuse (1937); and Erich von Stroheim (The Honeymoon (1930)) in Under Secret Orders (1937). La Grande Illusion is certified fresh at 97 % with a 9.37/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of La Grande Illusion?

Cannibal Holocaust (1980) - The uncompromising, violent, sensationalistic cannibal debate masterpiece

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Classic poster for Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust

QUICK REVIEW:

A documentary crew heads into the Amazon jungle to film the gruesome practices of indigenous tribes there. Their material is brought back without them and screened in the station HQ in New York, where the disturbing material prompts ethical questions.
It is completely understandable that Cannibal Holocaust has the much debated place in film history that it has. It is a completely gruesome, extremely real film and undoubtedly the best cannibal exploitation gore movie ever made.
The film is a shocking study in human inhumanity, and a biting critique of modern media standards and modern civilization in general, which is depicted as depraved and uncivilized.
It is an electric, hard-to-watch and strange film, and also the film that invented the found-footage format that has later spun a legitimate (mostly horror) sub-genre.
This controversial masterpiece is directed by great Italian director Ruggero Deodato, who had previously directed the very good cannibal movie Last Cannibal World/Ultimo Mondo Cannibale (1977), and who also in 1980 released the eerie rape-and-revenge horror The House on the Edge of the Park.

A still of the infamous impalement scene, which Deodato had to subsequently prove in court had not been accomplished by actually impaling an indigenous woman. The photographing man on the right I believe to be Robert Kerman, the pornstar/actor, who also starred in Umberto Lenzi's inferior cannibal movie Eaten Alive! (1980)

Cannibal Holocaust was banned in Italy shortly after its release, and Deodato was prosecuted and had to prove that his actors had not actually been eaten in the film, which he did. He, the producers, screenwriter and United Artists representative was, however, convicted of obscenity and violence and given a four month suspended sentence. Deodato struggled for years to have the Italian ban lifted, which it finally was.
Marketing of the film has stated that it has been banned in 50 nations, which is a dubious fact, but it certainly has been in many, and many countries have only recently lifted their bans. Besides visceral rape, murder, torture and cannibalistic scenes, it is especially the scenes of real animal deaths that have outraged people. In total there are 6 animal deaths on screen in the film.
Cannibal Holocaust has two unofficial sequels, and Deodato has been wanting to make his sequel for years, but hasn't found funding.
Instead, young, American horror maestro Eli Roth (Hostel (2005)) has now made The Green Inferno (2014), the first real new cannibal movie in ages, without a doubt with much inspiration from Deodato's classic.
The posters for this crazy, strong film don't trick anyone into seeing it unknowingly, as you see here:

Watch an old trailer for the enraged, (for some audiences enraging as well), film here

Cost: 0.1 mil. $
Box office: Reportedly 2 mil. $ in 10 days before it was seized and banned in Italy alone
= Huge hit

What do you think of Cannibal Holocaust?
Have you seen other Deodato films, and if so, what can you tell about them?