I Spit on Your Grave reborn

Shocking rape-revenge flick gets a remake

Regardless of what you make of the news that one of the 1970s’ most notorious grindhouse flicks has spawned an equally gruelling remake, you have to concede the fact that any viewer who sees the title of I Spit on Your Grave and still buys a ticket should have an inkling of what they’re in for.

“I can’t imagine that anyone’s going to come in to the movie thinking that they’re seeing My Best Friend’s Wedding,” says director Steven R. Monroe.

Monroe’s remake of Meir Zarchi’s 1978 rape-revenge shocker plays Aug. 19 at the Bloor Cinema as part of the Toronto After Dark Film Festival.

Co-presented by Rue Morgue, the event marks the film’s second appearance in Canada after a tumultuous — though, as Monroe attests, largely positively received — world premiere at Montreal’s Fantasia festival in July.

Given that vintage horror flicks ranging from The Amityville Horror to The Toolbox Murders have already been recycled, it was only a matter of time before enterprising producers got around to I Spit on Your Grave.

Yet one aspect that makes Zarchi’s film (originally titled Day of the Woman) unusual was that it wasn’t really a horror movie in the first place.

Instead, it was a grim, grimy drama about a woman whose writing retreat at a remote cottage ends with her physical and sexual brutalization by a group of locals. Presented in a manner that was explicit and protracted even by the standards of exploitation cinema, her rape is followed by a campaign of vengeance that’s nearly as ugly.

That description could easily be applied to Monroe’s remake. Sarah Butler stars as Jennifer, a writer who is again subjected to horrific abuse before she evades her assailants, eventually re-emerging as their hunter.

Unsurprisingly, I Spit on Your Grave has already attracted controversy both in and outside the horror community. While some people are wary of seeing changes made to a work of such infamy, others question whether a movie of its nature should exist at all. Says Monroe in a recent phone interview from his office in Los Angeles, “There are people online right now who are saying, ‘Anyone who sees this movie is sick and perverted and should go to jail.’ That’s absolutely insane.”

The 45-year-old director says that the majority of criticism that has appeared has come from people who have yet to see the movie, which isn’t released theatrically until October.

“What I’ve gotten from people who’ve seen the whole film has been very positive in the sense that they were very disturbed and upset by the film but not disgusted,” he says.

That may seem like a strange distinction to make but I Spit on Your Grave has always been a peculiar and problematic case.

Zarchi’s original figures prominently in Men, Women & Chainsaws, a pioneering examination of gender dynamics in horror cinema by academic Carol J. Clover. Clover argued that matters of sadism and spectatorship in slasher movies are more complicated than they initially appear. And as abhorrent as they were, the roughest scenes in Zarchi’s movie may have been less exploitative than equivalent sequences in more prestigious fare like Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs or Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy.

Monroe’s version also makes an important change by presenting its protagonist as a coolly calculating killer in the movie’s final third rather than someone who uses her sexuality to turn the tables on her victimizers, as the character did in the original.

The director says the remake’s producers backed the change. Zarchi — an executive producer on the new film — did not agree.

“Though he didn’t technically have a say in things, we always wanted his blessing,” Monroe explains. “But this was one thing that was a constant argument — he believes in what he did in the original and we had problems with it so that had to go.”

Other viewers may still be troubled by the presence of so much sexually violent imagery in a movie that otherwise aims at the same audience that keeps the Saw franchise in business.

Yet Monroe wonders why such imagery should be verboten when moviegoers have become so blasé about other varieties of screen violence.

“This certainly isn’t the first film that’s had an upsetting rape sequence,” he notes. “But people are so offended that that’s part of the film yet they have no problem with any violence of any type in other movies. Nobody flinches at all at how incredibly horrific violence has gotten, especially in war and action films.”

What was important to Monroe was making sure everything about his film was realistic and therefore as upsetting as it ought to be.

“I honestly believe that as long as something is portrayed truthfully and realistically, it doesn’t matter what subject you’re touching on,” says the filmmaker. “I don’t think anything is taboo.”

I Spit on Your Grave plays Aug. 19 as part of the Toronto After Dark Film Festival.