Next on Jennifer’s hit list is Johnny. She drives to the gas station at closing and gets him into his car. Being that he is of the alpha male type, and thinking that Jennifer came back to get more of his irresistible manhood, he has no fear returning to the house with her.
When they arrive at the house, she pulls a gun on him, the one from the bedroom dresser, and makes him strip on the front lawn. Johnny, still not understanding his predicament, says she doesn’t need to use force as he will have sex with her again willingly.
Only when she puts a bullet at his foot does he realize the seriousness of his situation and complies with her demands. He then tries to blame Stanley for her being raped, fearing the punishment he is about to receive.
When Jennifer aims to shoot him, Johnny explains that he is just a man, that any man would have done what he did; that because of Jennifer’s actions he doesn’t have a guilty conscience since she was to blame for the incident. Her showing off her legs when they first met at the gas station, her exposing her bra-less chest to Matthew when he delivered her groceries, and her sunbathing in the canoe alone in a skimpy bikini, were all indicators that any man would assume to be an invitation.
Johnny’s defense seems to convince Jennifer and she allows him to take the gun from her hand. She caresses his face and kisses him. She invites him into the house so she can give him a hot bath.
While in the tub, the subject of Matthew’s disappearance is brought up. Jennifer blatantly tells Johnny that Matthew isn’t missing, he is dead. Jennifer tells the story of how she killed Matthew and Johnny believes she is joking. That is until she takes out the knife she took earlier from the ground where Matthew had dropped it, and while Johnny’s eyes are closed, slices his groin.
Jennifer locks Johnny in the bathroom and lets him to bleed to death in the bathtub while she rocks on the chair in the living room. After he bleeds out, she cleans up the mess and burns Johnny’s clothes.
When Johnny isn’t seen at the gas station, Stanley and Andy hop in the motorboat and head over to Jennifer’s house. Stanley drops Andy off in the woods with an ax and continues on toward the house on his own. Jennifer swims out to the boat and surprises Stanley before pushing him into the river.
While Andy watches from the shore, Jennifer uses the motorboat to harass Stanley. Stanley, quickly tiring from treading water, yells for Andy’s help. Andy enters the water and Jennifer aims the motorboat at him and drives close by him. Andy, in an effort to escape being hit, loses his grip on the ax and the weapon falls into boat.
Andy ignores the loss of the ax and swims out to his friend. While swimming Stanley back to shore, Andy sees Jennifer coming at him holding the ax in a striking position. Andy releases Stanley and tries to swim away from Jennifer, but she plants the ax squarely in Andy’s back before he can reach the safety of the shore.
With Andy out of commission, Jennifer returns her attention to Stanley who is still in the river treading water. He begs her not to kill him and she seems to comply with his wishes, bringing the boat close and shutting off the motor. Stanley swims to the boat, grabbing onto the top of the motor. He tries to excuse his earlier behavior by putting the whole rape incident on Johnny’s shoulders.
Jennifer takes sweet revenge by repeating the words Stanley said to her back in the house while he forced her to fellate him: She starts the motor and the last words he hears while the blades make hamburger meat of his manhood and he bleeds to death are, “Suck it, bitch!” The credits roll as Jennifer motors down the river having completed her gruesome retribution.
A film involving rape and murder could involve scenes of a graphic nature, which director Meir Zarchi did not shy away from. In fact, he reveled in it. The rape scenes are brutal (showing the carnal and base expressions on the mens’ faces when they ejaculated was particularly stomach-turning). The jerking of Matthew’s legs while being strangled by the noose would be another good example of the revelry.
If you put aside all the violence and blood, though, and strip down the film to its essence, it becomes a morality tale covering similar ground that Jonathan Kaplan’s The Accused did a decade later.
Both films took a hard line against rape and the excuses men use to justify their crime. Putting the blame on the victim, whether because she is drunk and flirtatious, or sexy and enticing in a bikini, has been used as a defense to rape throughout the ages. Where The Accused punished the criminals through the courts, I Spit on Your Grave took a more direct approach. It stated in unequivocal terms that rape, whether done by an alpha male or a mentally challenged one, deserves the severest punishment with no resulting remorse or guilt.
Over the next three decades, Zarchi would be both lambasted and congratulated for this film. On the one side, people deemed it demeaning toward women being just another example of the degradation of females in film (glorifying rape and blatant nudity), while the other would put forth arguments on the empowerment of women although in an antisocial and violent way (instead of cowering in fear like a weak, powerless object, the woman takes control and kills her attackers).
Either way, the critics mostly hated this film. Roger Ebert stated after watching this film back in 1980:
[It's] a vile bag of garbage… a movie so sick, reprehensible, and contemptible… Attending it was one of the most depressing experiences of my life. This is a film without a shred of artistic distinction. It lacks even simple craftsmanship. I do not often attribute motives to audience members, nor do I try to read their minds, but the people who were sitting around me… were vicarious sex criminals. … At the film’s end, I walked out of the theater quickly, feeling unclean, ashamed, and depressed. There is no reason to see this movie except to be entertained by the sight of sadism and suffering.
Zarchi, in an interview by Gavin C. Schmitt, stated that this film made Roger Ebert famous. It also put Meir in the spotlight as well. Cult film buffs awaited his next movie only to be disappointed with 1985′s Don’t Mess With My Sister. That was it for Zarchi’s film career (he didn’t make another film), but even though his career was short, Zarchi will always have a place in exploitation film history with I Spit on Your Grave. The 2010 remake of I Spit on Your Grave by Steven R. Monroe further validates Zarchi’s importance as a filmmaker, probably much to Ebert’s chagrin.
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