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From ZERO to 6 ♥s. 100% ad-free. Run on pure love for movies, documentaries and TV-series. June 2025: Countdown to: Top 10: Best horror comedy movies - Upcoming review: There's Still Tomorrow (2023)
Eagerly anticipating this month ... (6-25)
Joachim Trier's Sentimental Value (2025)
Showing posts with label rape-and-revenge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rape-and-revenge. Show all posts
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.]
Darkness envelopes two characters on this uninformative poster for Jorge Sánchez-Cabezudo's The Night of the Sunflowers
A rapist and murderer of women is loose in a rural area of Castilly y Leon, Spain, when an outsider cave scientist arrives there with his beautiful girlfriend to to explore a newly discovered grotto.
The Night of the Sunflowers is written and directed by debuting Jorge Sánchez-Cabezudo (Mustek (1997, short)). The title is a literal translation of the original Spanish title.
The film starts promising and shows a grueling rape crime in real-time. - We are boarded on The Night of the Sunflowers, as it turns out to be chronologically sophisticated. But its thriller promise is soon abandoned by Sánchez-Cabezudo in favor of a feel-bad crime drama, which reaches new heights in the depressing content variety. - Not least because all of the developments seem realistically enough.
SPOILER The scientist's crew soon strike down the wrong villager as revenge, and a local cop talks them into cutting up and disappearing the body. - But the deceased man's father-in-law, who is also the local police chief, finds them out, takes a bribe and informs everyone that he never wants to hear talk of the incident. Meanwhile the real criminal returns home to his wife and TV on the couch.
The Night of the Sunflowers is a study in humanity's willingness to sweep even truly horrific crimes under the rug, and about crimes' tendency to spur new crimes, and about the amoral in man. It is well-made but extremely depressing.
Sánchez-Cabezudo talks about the film in a 6-minute clip here
Cost: Unknown Box office: 1.6 mil. $
= Uncertain but likely a mega-flop (projected return of 0.45 times the cost)
[The Night of the Sunflowers was released 25 August (Spain) and runs 123 minutes. The film did not have a North-American release, (though it was screened at Cleveland International Film Festival). Its 3 biggest markets were Spain with 1.1 mil. $ (68.8 % of the total gross), the UK with 120k $ (7.5 %) and France with 114k $ (7.1 %). If made on a low budget of 3.5 mil. $, the film would rank as a mega-flop. The film was nominated for 3 Goya awards, among other honors. Sánchez-Cabezudo has not returned with a feature since but instead turned to writing and directing for TV. 2.8k+ IMDb users have given The Night of the Sunflowers a 7.1/10 average rating.]
The Grim Reaper is transparent and brandishes a razor knife on this poster for Ruggero Deodato's The House on the Edge of the Park
Alex and Ricky are two degenerate auto-mechanics in New York, who go with a pair of women to a party in New Jersey, where they take the guests hostage, torture and rape them.
The House on the Edge of the Park is written by Gianfranco Clerici (Miami Golem (1985)) and Vincenzo Mannino (The Antichrist (1974)) and directed by Italian master filmmaker Ruggero Deodato (Fenomenal and the Treasure Tutankamen (1968)). It is his 13th feature.
Deodato has a certain style, and the eerily contrapuntal music (by Riz Ortolani (Killer Crocodile (1989))) quickly puts the viewer in the filmmaker's shadow land (as his hostages?) The question is whether this place is horrific, arousing, and/or suspenseful?
Certain scenes of the film are truly sadistic, and yet The House on the Edge of the Park is miles away from the horrors of Deodato's preceding masterpiece, Cannibal Holocaust (1980). David Hess (The Last House on the Left (1972)) is frightening as an ultra-psychopath, and so is Giovanni Lombardo Radice (The Soul Keeper/Prendimi l'Anima (2002)) as his psycho chum. SPOILER The film's ending is grotesque: All the guests seemingly let themselves be tortured, just so they in the end can take their revenge...!
Listen here to 26 minutes of Ortolani's original score for the film
Cost: Unknown
Box office: Unknown
= Uncertain
[The House on the Edge of the Park was released 6 November (Italy) and runs 91 minutes. Deodato has said in an interview that his initial thought about the script was that it was "too violent." The filmmakers reportedly wanted Hess so much for their central villain part that they offered him half the rights to the film. Shooting took place in September 1979 in New York and in Rome, Italy. Details as to the film's cost and box office gross are regrettably scarce online. It did enrage the harsh British censors, who rejected it and put it on their 'video nasties' list, when they discovered in 1981 that it had been released on video in the country nonetheless. It was allowed a heavily cut release there in 2001, losing 11 minutes, and finally in 2011 with only about 40 seconds missing. Since 2011 a sequel titled The House on the Edge of the Park: Part II with Deodato and Radice involved has been 'in development'. Deodato returned with Atlantis Interceptors/I Predatori di Atlantide (1983). Hess returned in Jacqueline Susann's Valley of the Dolls (1981, miniseries) and theatrically in Swamp Thing (1982). 5.1k+ IMDb users have given The House on the Edge of the Park a 5.8/10 average rating.]
What do you think of The House on the Edge of the Park?
The ominous poster for Pedro Almodóvar's The Skin I Live In
QUICK REVIEW: SPOILER A feted Spanish plastic surgeon has a patient locked up in his basement: It is actually the man who raped his daughter, which made her commit suicide, whom the good doctor has now decided to give a sex change, slowly ... Meanwhile, the surgeon's mother also acts as his maid, who has never told him the Truth, and one day the other son comes and rapes the prisoner. She later breaks free. Antonio Banderas (I'm So Excited (2013)) acts well in this his first collaboration with Spanish master filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar (Bad Education/La Mala Educación (2004)) in 21 years. For better and for worse, the film examines the boundaries of the genders in a mad doctor-plot, which is greatly inhibited from excessive stylization and focus on decor over presence and soul. The result is a very vulgar and empty film that is improved by intermittent doses of humor. Almodóvar co-wrote The Skin I Live In with his brother Augustín Almodóvar (Wild Tales (2014) producer), based on the novel Mygale/Tarantula (1984) by Thierry Jonquet. Though I am an Almodóvar fan, I did not care much for this unusual sex drama. Currently, he is filming his next film, the drama Silencio (2016), which centers on a woman gone mad.
Watch the trailer for the film here - underlaid a track by Danish electronic artist Trentemøller
Cost: 13.5 mil. $ Box office: 30.8 mil. $ = Minor flop [The movie was released in the autumn, in contrast to Almodóvar's usual habit of spring releases in Spain and autumn for the rest of the world. It was nominated as Best Foreign Film at the Golden Globes and for 16 (!) Goya awards (Spain's Oscar), winning 4. The film is generally better reviewed than here.] What do you think of The Skin I Live In?
'Bad Men Will Bleed' is the tagline of the poster for Kristian Levring's The Salvation
Besides some rather ridiculous earlier attempts, the so-called 'potato westerns', Denmark has never made a real western. - Until now.
Danish post-1864 Denmark/Germany war US settler Jon and his brother Peter are finally met by Jon's beautiful, Danish wife and son after 7 years on different continents. But tragedy immediately strikes in the new, dangerous world, and Jon's revenge is swift. But there follows a bloodshed, which forces him to get more entangled in the small town, ripe with cowardice and bubbling oil ...
The solid script and direction is by Kristian Levring (The King Is Alive (2000)) and co-writer Anders Thomas Jensen (The Green Butchers (2003)). The America that is presented here is a uniformly tough place, where greed, cruelty and self-regard reigns, in-line with Danish master filmmaker Lars Von Trier's notoriously America-critical Dogville (2003), (not to speak of follow-up Manderlay (2005) and his musical Dancer in the Dark (2000)), and in this strict focus The Salvation loses a central color of the western, that of the good American. But this is truly an outsider western, more accurately a Euro-western shot in South Africa! It is like a spaghetti western-inspired horse opera, shot digitally and stylistically infused with Sin City (2005) affinity. Salvation is visually impressive, with cool cinematography by Jens Schlosser (The One and Only/Den Eneste Ene (1999)). From the dusty railroad beginning and the following, exciting stage coach scenes, we see classic, well-made western settings. And later the cindered town of the film's gang leader tyrant Delarue is brought to good use as an atmospheric setting more than once. The style is that of a digitally heightened reality, fresh, sharp, simple and handsomely achieved. Complicating the story, - and making for a richer experience, - are some rich secondary characters; Delarue's mute woman played intensely by Eva Green (White Bird in a Blizzard (2014)); Jon's sympathetic, helpful brother Peter played by Mikael Persbrandt (In a Better World (2010)), who seems to be a bit preoccupied with getting his Swedish tongue to sound alternately Danish and Danish-American; and the town's 'yellow' mayor/undertaker, played beautifully by Jonathan Pryce (Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)). The Salvation's exciting cast also includes former Manchester United soccer star Eric Cantona as our heavy's right hand man, and Danish popstar Nanna Øland Fabricius, - better known as Oh Land, - who plays Jon's ill-fated wife. Lastly, Jeffrey Dean Morgan (The Possession (2012)) is good as the self-righteous Delarue. - He liked the movie so much, he's had a tattoo made on his arm of his character's favorite weapon in it! I sort-of understand, because Salvation is a solid good western. The tale is arch-typical and has been done before, yet it still it seems fresh; the Danish settler angle and music (by Kasper Winding (Me and Charly/Mig og Charly (1978)) is different, as is some of the visuals. Though it's shot in South Africa, it looks like the American West. The production is good, and the pacing modern yet graceful. If you are a western-lover, this may very well be your favorite movie this year, however unlikely, it is a Danish western. Rough, violent, with some dark humor and a strong hero in Mads Mikkelsen's (The Hunt (2012)) Jon, who tries to avoid conflict for as long as he can, and is different than any American western hero I can recall, if only because of his look and heritage. SPOILER The title seems to refer to Mikkelsen and Green's outsider renegade characters finding each other and forging a new alliance in their young adopted country (America), which the ending implies will strengthen its people's moral hollowness in extreme wealth (arriving in the form of oil.) - Go see this one!
Mads Mikkelsen as Jon in Kristian Levring's The Salvation
Mads Mikkelsen, co-writer/director Kristian Levring and Eva Green on the set of The Salvation
Budget: 10.5 mil. euros Box office: Not known yet = Still unknown What do you think of The Salvation? Any recent western/s that you want to recommend?
Genital injury by rusty garden shears is the unmistakable indication on this effective poster for Steven R. Monroe's I Spit on Your Grave
Jennifer
Hills goes alone to a forest house to begin work on her next novel, but
she encounters some unreciprocated male interest in the area already
before arriving.
I Spit on Your Grave is written by Adam Rockoff (Reporting for Christmas (2023)) and directed by Steven R. Monroe (The Contract (1999)). It is a remake of Meir Zarchi's Day of the Woman/I Spit on Your Grave
(1978), (Zarchi acts as an executive producer on it), this is a classic
rape-and-revenge horror film. For those ignorant to the subgenre, these
are generally films that contain the rape of a woman in the first part
of the film, often including torture and humiliation, and then in the
second part of the film, the woman takes her bloody revenge over her
violators, often involving at least one castration and generally
following the credo; 'an eye for the entire head.'
As for I Spit on Your Grave being a good date movie, as its poster above suggests, it may work if you want your date to leave, or if you just want to be uncomfortable with your date for about an hour and forty-five pretty long minutes. (And who doesn't want that...?)
The genre is said to have been started by none other than towering, cinematic master director Ingmar Bergman with his Virgin Spring/Jungfrukällan (1960), one of his best and most overlooked films. The rape-and-revenge films evoke something emotionally primitive in most audiences; after partaking in the sufferings of the protagonist at first, many rejoice in her following killing spree. Others sympathize more with the men. When the attack in the film starts, it lasts long, and it is very realistic and hard to watch, (although we 'only' really witness one of the rapes.) Most of it is psychological torture, intimidation and humiliation. Then when the tables finally turn, Jennifer also takes her time in meting out her justice. Her creativity is for the task seems endless, and it is clear in these scenes that the world of horror is now post Saw (2004) and other equally graphic torture films. The killings are sadistic and not a little ingenious also, although admittedly sick. The methods shall go undescribed here.
The acting in Grave is actually outstanding. No one delivers anything less than a believable performance, which is remarkable due to the intense and uncomfortable nature of the film. Especially Sarah Butler (The Stranger Within (2013)) as Jennifer plays her part with strength and emotional power; and Andrew Howard (Boardwalk Empire, TV-series (2013)), who plays the threatening, violent psychopath sheriff, and does a very scary and convincing job at that. Rape-and-revenge films are obviously not for everyone. The late movie critic legend Roger Ebert watched both versions of I Spit on Your Grave and gave them both zero stars. He wrote that the new one is merely the "despicable remake of the despicable 1978 film." His film philosophy more or less commanded him to hate the entire subgenre. So if you have a weak stomach like Ebert had, and think that all movies should make us better individuals, then do yourself a favor, and don't see I Spit on Your Grave. With the title in mind, I can't really feel bad for people who 'mistakenly' watch it anyway. Some have defended the subgenre as a valve for letting out steam, so that we can accept the primitively speaking unsatisfying verdicts passed down to rapists in our societies, because at least in these films, the bastards get what they deserve. Anyway you look at it, the new I Spit on Your Grave is a surprisingly good remake, and an intense, 'refreshing' rape-and-revenge movie. In fact, it is better than the original: Zarchi's film had some technical and acting disadvantages, plus some confusion built into it: It was titled Day of the Woman, and most audiences will find themselves on the woman's (played by Zarchi's then wife Camille Keaton) side throughout the film. But it also has sensationalist pre-titles about how shocking it is that a woman carrying out this kind of revenge would be acquitted for her crimes from many courts in the States. This dubious 'fact' seems to rule the film in favor of the (rapist) men. The new Grave doesn't have these explicit ambiguities, (but will still leave many people ambiguous as to who's right, or rather, who of its parties are least in the wrong.) Its acting and effects are also superior to the original's. It is weakest in its beginning, where Jennifer is very clumsy, which mainly comes off as clumsy writing, and I also had some doubts as to believing that she is a writer. Had it merely been her law thesis or something else like that, which she had taken with her to the house to finish, I would have probably bought it immediately. But a novel? The MPAA advised the filmmakers to not cut the film down, because it was 'impactful', which is a piece of advice given from the censoring organization that I have never heard of before. The filmmakers did release the film uncut and unrated, which means a 'purer' cinema experience, but that fewer cinemas will show the film. Because of the low budget, the actors did their own stunts for the film, (save for two falling stunts), and real, empty guns were used, chipping a tooth on one of the actors in one scene. Related posts: 2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III] 2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II] 2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I] 2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess
Watch a trailer for the film here
Cost: 2 mil. $ Box office: 1.2 mil. $ = Huge flop (returned 0.6 times its cost)
[I Spit on Your Grave premiered 1 May (Texas Frightmare Weekend) and runs 108 minutes. Shooting took place from November 2009 - July 2010 in Louisiana. It opened #55 to a 32k $ first weekend in 12 theaters in North America, where it topped out at #43 and grossed 93k $ (7.8 % of the total gross). Its 3 biggest markets were Mexico with 328k $ (27.3 %), Peru with 222k $ (18.5 %) and Brazil with 150k $ (12.5 %). Like the original, the film likely grew profitable as a home video release. Roger Ebert gave it a 0/4 star review, translating to 4 notches under this one. 3 sequels followed, the first by Monroe, I Spit on Your Grave 2 (2013), and the latest (from 2019), by Zarchi. Monroe returned first with Mongolian Death Worm (2010, TV movie), Jabberwock (2011, TV movie) and theatrically with Complacent (2012). Butler returned in The Philly Kid (2012). I Spit on Your Grave is rotten at 31 % with a 4.50/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
