Written
by DAVID KEYES
Here it is: with grotesque and repugnant tastes, the worst
movie of 1980. My worst 1980 list was almost guaranteed
to be led by "Prom Night", but all of that changed when
I ran into the living nightmare of "I Spit On Your Grave"
just recently. It is a work of sexist and unordinary humans,
so lacking in human decency that they are the type of people
cinema should immediately condemn. Calling the movie worthless
would be mercy; it is repulsively pathetic, yes, but more
so, it is the type of movie where even the most perverted
human beings would immediately be turned off by it. Viewing
it, I felt like I was betraying every intention that made
me a film critic.
A girl gets raped up in the woods by four men, and then
she kills them--end of story. That's it; no plot twists,
no real plot, no decent characters, nothing. This entire
100-minute madness spends all its time with this woman being
raped and tortured by four men, and then in the end, tables
turn, and she gives them a taste of their own medicine.
These contemptible scenes are filmed with little dialogue
and little dramatic notion, with characters so ridiculous
and nasty that they could not even make it in the porn industry.
These aspects tie in with the vile rape scenes, all culminating
when the woman who was raped goes on a killing spree and
mercilessly and disgustingly disposes of her rapists.
Example: she seduces one of them into her house, gives
him a bath, and castrates him with a knife. At first, he
doesn't even know it: he mumbles the words "that was so
sweet it was painful," and finds himself covered in blood
fountaining from his private area.
I couldn't honestly describe the other scenes, for they
are just as bad, and just as tasteless. Sure, men probably
deserve this treatment when they rape women, but why even
bother making a movie about it? Does anyone think that people
would be entertained by this kind of sick and nasty stuff?
Movies like "I Spit On Your Grave" are undoubtedly the
sins of filmmaking; take one look at them, and they are
instant disgraces, from top to bottom. Sometimes movies
like this can be so bad and so clumsy that they are laughable;
"I Spit On Your Grave" is not even that--it is worthless
and sickening entertainment, deserving to only live at the
bottom of a garbage bin. I hope I never lay eyes on it again.