The plan goes slightly awry when two of the family members, Kevin (Jonathan Peacy) and Scotty (Jeremy Ferdman), mistakenly sweep up Christy when they make their grab for Jennifer. Their anger grows to the point that they plan to kidnap Jennifer and dish out their brand of justice. The families of the five rapists, who hold a grudge against Jennifer, find out about the book as well when they hear Jennifer being interviewed on a religious radio show.
Jennifer has become a rape victim counselor, speaks to audiences around the world, and published a book about her experiences. She has raised a daughter, Christy (Jamie Bernadette), who is a world-renowned fashion model.
Now, 40 years later, Meir Zarchi returns to his cinematic creation to bring fans the only official sequel to the original movie - I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE: DÉJÀ VU.* Can Zarchi bring the same level of violence and depravity to the sequel that he did to the original, and will it play in 2019?įorty years after Jennifer’s brutal rape and revenge, she is living a good life. There’s no question that the audience wants to see these men pay for their crimes in the most brutal, sadistic fashion possible, and they do. The rape scene, which lasts nearly 30 minutes, is an endurance of human suffering on screen that’s as effective as it is repulsive.
The story about author Jennifer Hills (Camille Keaton) and her revenge on her five rapists, is a difficult movie to watch. When horror fans discuss the most controversial, the most powerful, the most unnerving movies, it’s inevitable that the discussion centers on writer/director Meir Zarchi’s 1978 grindhouse classic, I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE. The remake looks like just another horror film.Meir Zarchi digs up old hostilities and new players for “I Spit on Your Grave: Deja Vu”, the official sequel to the controversial 1978 rape-revenge film. Ban this sick filth!Īt any rate, the film existed at the hub of a cultural vortex that took in feminism, socialism, the video-nasty sensation and the resurgence of the moral majority. I Spit on Your Grave actually killed a man. It is said that brainy French novelist Bruce Vian, whose novel of the same name offered vague inspiration, was so shocked by the film version that he suffered a fatal heart attack. A rape-revenge story, in which an aspiring novelist chops up her abusers with bloody and savage determination, I Spit on Your Grave is - depending upon your view - either an exercise in practical misogyny or a key feminist text. The picture was, however, at the centre of more than a few intellectual punch-ups. Whereas Wes Craven, director of Last House on the Left, went on to have a career in mainstream horror, Meir Zarchi, the man behind I Spit, never quite made the leap into respectable society. “It is a movie so sick, reprehensible and contemptible that I can hardly believe it’s playing in respectable theaters,” Roger Ebert said at the time of its release. Now, first things first, it is only decent to own up that the original I Spit on your Grave is a fairly awful film. However, no film so forcefully demands an understanding of the era than does 1978′s I Spit on Your Grave. The suspicion that the Texas Chain Saw Massacre (sic) had been filmed by genuine amateurs with crappy equipment on one debauched weekend in the country made it seem twice as horrid. Virtually all the hyper-low budgeted films that have since been remade actually profited from their their blotched scruffiness. It’s hard to grasp the meaning of Last House on the Left without understanding the legacy of Vietnam and the killings at Kent State University. Some of the recent disinterments of 1970s and 1980s shockers have been perfectly serviceable - The Hills Have Eyes, in particular - but, even when they offer decent chills, the shift in context fatally impedes the retreads’ psychological traction.
It’s a warning about another horror remake that we almost certainly don’t need. Didn’t it? No, this is not a post about the makers of Sex and the City 2.