I Spit on Your Grave stars Camille Keaton as Jennifer Hills, a writer who leaves the bustling city of New York to write her next novel in the rural countryside. She rents a house at Parkhill Lake and on her trip she stops at a local gas station to fill her tank and ask for directions. We are introduced to the station attendant, Johnny (Eron Tabor), and his two hoodlum friends, Stanley (Anthony Nichols) and Andy (Gunter Kleemann). While Johnny tends to Jennifer’s car he has a casual conversation with her, and Andy and Stanley play a knife game in the grass nearby.

Although Johnny is acting politely, he and his two friends look to be unpleasant characters, judging from their dress and ownership of a switchblade. Being the middle of the day, Andy and Stanley seem to be unemployed hangers-on to their leader, Johnny.

Not a shy woman, Jennifer reaches the house and is so enraptured with the riverside location she immediately undresses and goes for a swim. This gives the audience the first glimpse of nudity. It’s also director Meir Zarchi first opportunity to create sexual arousal in the viewer, a response he will soon turn to disgust, followed by horror.

After a short swim, Zarchi cuts to Jennifer inside the bedroom of the house unpacking. When she puts some clothes in the top drawer of a dresser, she discovers a pistol of unknown origin. The director is telling us that further into the film Jennifer will be in danger and will use the gun in some way. The swim foreshadows the sex, the gun foreshadows the violence: If theater-goers weren’t paying close attention before, they were now.

The doorbell rings and now we meet mentally challenged grocery delivery boy Matthew (Richard Pace). Jennifer is somewhat surprised that Matthew found the place (we must assume Jennifer called in a grocery order as it wasn’t shown in the film). The director is now telling us Jennifer’s location is secluded and out of the way to any visitors. Matthew informs Jennifer he knows the area well as he has delivered there numerous times.

After Matthew leaves Jennifer, we see him join up with Johnny and his friends at the gas station. Matthew brags about seeing Jennifer’s breasts and they all kill the rest of the day by going fishing and talking about screwing women from the city.

The next day we find Jennifer near the river writing while in a hammock. Two of the hoodlums are in a motorboat and they show off speeding around in circles like idiots. Jennifer cannot continue writing with the disturbance so she leaves and goes inside the house.

Jennifer continues writing her book into the evening until she hears strange noises coming from outside the house. She investigates, but finds nothing.

The next afternoon we find Jennifer out on the river sunbathing in a canoe. Stanley and Andy come by in the motorboat and tie a rope to the canoe. They pull the canoe to shore. Jennifer tries to defend herself with an oar, but when it slips from her hands she runs into the woods to try to escape. The two hoodlums chase after her.

Johnny is waiting for Jennifer in the woods and throws her to the ground. He rips off her bathing suit and he, along with Stanley and Andy, pins her to the ground. Johnny calls out Matthew from the bush and tells him to have sex with her. The boys discussed getting Matthew a girl the night before while fishing and Johnny tells Matthew this is his chance to lose his cherry.

Matthew still refuses, so Johnny has him help the other men pin Jennifer to the ground while he rapes her. Jennifer walks away afterward and the men let her go. After she walks a few hundred yards they surround her and Andy takes his turn.

The men walk away and leave Jennifer half conscience draped over a rock. They return to the motorboat and leave the area, taking Jennifer’s canoe along with them. They dump the canoe in the middle of the river and continue on without it.

Jennifer manages to make it back to the house and crawls to the phone in the living room. Unfortunately, the men are waiting for her in the house and Stanley kicks the phone from her hands. This time Jennifer takes the initiative and begins to fight back by biting Stanley in the leg and ear, but she is no match for the larger and stronger man and she quits after repeated blows to the head, ribs, and stomach.

After some more stomach-churning violence and rape, Johnny tells Matthew to return inside with his switchblade to kill Jennifer so she can’t identify them. Matthew enters the house but doesn’t have the constitution to commit murder. Instead, he wipes the blade in blood from Jennifer’s face and runs back to the others. Johnny sees the blood and believes Matthew committed the crime.

Jennifer wakes up and takes a bath and goes to bed. After the shock wears off, she contemplates what to do. She smokes, takes walks in the forest, retypes her manuscript, and finally decides to kill the motherfuckers who raped her.

Two weeks pass and we see the guys together at a cafe speaking about the murder and worrying about the stench the body must be making in the summer heat. To investigate the problem, Johnny sends Stanley and Andy to reconnoiter the area. From the motorboat, they see Jennifer alive and sitting on the lawn.

Because of his deception, Matthew receives a beating from the boys and is sent on his way having lost the only friends he had in the town. Meanwhile, Jennifer drives to a local church and asks for forgiveness, presumably for the crimes she is about to commit.

Jennifer drives to the gas station and from a distance sees that Johnny has a wife and two kids. She then moves to the grocery store and sees that Matthew is working. She returns home and telephones in a food order knowing that Matthew will be sent with the delivery.

When Matthew arrives and sees her, he becomes frightened and pulls out a knife. Jennifer lures him down to the river under a large tree. She undoes her white dress to show Matthew her naked body and tells him there is no reason to be angry with her because of the loss of his friends (he blames her presence in the area for the loss) as she will be his friend and give him a summer to remember.

Jennifer unbuckles Matthew’s pants and pulls him down on top of her. While he’s having sex with her, she slips a noose around his neck. She pulls him off and strings him up from a tree. He dies hanging there with his pants around his ankles.

After Matthew’s death, Jennifer unties him and throws his body and his delivery bicycle into the river. She returns to the house and to further cover her tracks, telephones the grocery store to complain that she ordered food over an hour previous and the delivery has yet to arrive.

Continue reading the review after the jump…

There are better examples of WIP (such as Caged Heat and The Big Doll House), but Mattei is notable not only for WIP films, but also for other categories of exploitation such as Nazisploitation (SS Girls, SS Extermination Love Camp), Sexploitation (Sexy Night Report, Nero and Poppea, Caligula and Messalina), and cannibal films (Land of Death), which makes him required watching in exploitation cinema.

Bruno Mattei used his most popular pseudonym, Vincent Dawn, to direct this classic WIP exploitation flick. It stars Laura Gemser as Emanuelle, a journalist who goes undercover, with the collaboration of Amnesty International, to expose corruption and human rights violations in an Italian prison.

Pretending to be a girl named Laura Kendall, a prostitute, pimp killer, and drug pusher, it doesn’t take long for her to feel the wrath of the prison’s head guard. When introductions were made to the head warden (played by Lorraine De Selle), Emanuelle was slow to answer questions, which led to a few vigorous jabs with a billy club to the ribs. This was the first example of the many abuses she would receive while residing at the Santa Catarina Women’s Penitentiary.

After a quick scene to introduce us to Kitty (Maria Romano), Emanuelle is brought to the infirmary for a medical exam. It’s here that we see Gemser undress for the first time and show us that she is as beautiful in body as she is in face. Dr. Moran (Gabriele Tinti) gives her a clean bill of health. Moran is a prisoner in the male section of the prison and was given the doctor position by the head warden. He also becomes Emanuelle’s love interest.

We then get to meet the various other inmates, including the butchy Hertha (Françoise Perrot) and her bitch Consuelo (Ursula Flores) and then we are party to a lesbian scene between the two for the head guard’s benefit. She is a voyeur and gains sexual gratification from watching. After a riot in the men’s prison, we return to Emanuelle and her first confrontation with prison authority.

Emanuelle is given a chamber pot full of human waste and told by the guards to empty it in the adjacent room. When she refuses, after being insulted, and throws the pot’s contents over the guard who antagonized her, a fight ensues. She is subdued and thrown in the hole.

The hole is infested with rats. With too many of the vermin to fend off, Emanuelle is bitten, chewed on, and generally molested in the head and legs by the diseased animals. While Emanuelle is trying to fight off the rats, Consuelo is taken from her cell and put into a room where two male inmates beat and rape her. We find both the head warden and the chief inspector (Jacques Stany) are voyeurs as well as they watch the rape through a window while having sex themselves.

Later, Emanuelle is taken out of the hole because the head guard didn’t want her to be totally consumed by the rats. She is placed back in her cell and left to die from the infection. That is until her cellmate Pilar (Leila Ducci/Durante) fakes stomach pains to get Dr. Moran to the cell. When he arrives he is pointed in the direction of Emanuelle, whom he promptly takes to the infirmary.

Emanuelle recovers only to be put to hard labor in a gravel pit with the rest of the girls. After a fight breaks out between Consuelo and Hertha, in which Consuelo is killed, Kitty temporarily loses her mind witnessing such pointless violence causing the death of her friend. Elsewhere, the chief inspector receives a letter warning that an investigative journalist has infiltrated the jail to spy on the conditions and write an expose in the newspapers. The warden searches Emanuelle’s bed and finds her notes.

Emanuelle is beaten and tortured (her head is put in a metal bell and hit with billy clubs to cause an unbearable ringing noise). When she confesses to being a reporter working in collaboration with Amnesty International, the torture stops. She is put in a separate area away from the other prisoners and is drugged and poisoned.

Seeing the imperative to flee from the prison before Emanuelle is poisoned to death, Dr. Moran, with the help of Pilar and Kitty, makes arrangements for escape. The chief visits Emanuelle in her private room and rapes her. Moran sends a letter to the inspector of prisons to inform him of the atrocities perpetrated in one of his prisons. While in the cafeteria for meal time, Hertha threatens to expose the escape plot. This starts a riot and Kitty uses the commotion to leave the cafeteria and get Emanuelle to Dr. Moran. Hertha is killed and while all the guards are occupied breaking up the cafeteria riot, Emanuelle and Dr. Moran escape.

Emmanuelle and Dr. Moran get outside the walls and take refuge in a sheltered area full of hay. They make love. More guards are brought into the cafeteria and the riot is quelled. Pilar hits the head guard who shoots Pilar in return. This causes another prisoner to stab the head guard in the back. Both are brought to the infirmary where Pilar dies.

Guards with dogs are sent after Emanuelle and Dr. Moran and they are soon captured. When they are brought to the Head Warden’s office they find she, as well as the Chief Inspector have been arrested by the inspector of prisons. Dr. Moran’s letter was taken seriously.

The film ends with Emanuelle leaving in a car with the inspector, promising Dr. Moran she will wait for him until he is paroled.

This film benefits from a fantastic title, which will at least draw your attention. Whether the trailer will keep your interest depends on what type of movie-watcher you are. If you like bad movies, like we do, then you’ll be squirming for more… and if you don’t, you’ll be wanting your two minutes back. Regardless, the trailer promises innovative gore and violence.

Joaquin Montalvan directed and co-wrote Legend of the Hillbilly Butcher with Eunice Font, and stars Doreen Barnes, Allen East, S.E. Feinberg, and Paul E. Respass. Expect to see a 2014 release.

Legend of the Hillbilly Butcher – Synopsis:

In a lonely backwoods shack, Carl Henry Jessup spends his time drinkin’ an’ thinkin’ bout dem good ole days with only his half sister, Rae Lynn, and his friend, Billy Wayne to keep ’em company… that is, till folks start trespassin’ on his property and Carl gets off his ass and becomes the Hillbilly Butcher.” Legend of the Hillbilly Butcher is a return to the retro grindhouse horror films of the ’60s and ’70s that screened at drive-ins, and features cult icon, Ron Jason, of The Las Vegas Serial Killer and Corpse Grinders 2.

Rock Hard \m/

The film received an X rating, which killed its distribution and was banned from many countries. But with a dedicated following and cult status worldwide, the film has stuck around for 30-plus years. Grindhouse has released a two-disc DVD that gives a remastered, uncut version of the film with a ton of extras.

The film itself tells the story of a rescue mission sent into the Amazon rainforest to retrieve a missing American film crew whose work was to document the culture and living habits of the native cannibal tribes of the region.

The team fails to save the crew as they are all dead by the time the team arrives. Only their remaining bones serve as evidence that the film crew was there. Well, bones and the crew’s film reels that the team convince the tribe to relinquish.

The rest of Cannibal Holocaust has the executives of Pan American Broadcast Company and Howard Monroe (Robert Kerman), the rescue team leader, first review the raw footage then broadcast an edited version of the recordings. The pre-edited reels show the crew raping and killing natives and the natives returning the favor with cannibalism added to the violence (we as the audience watch along with the players). By the end, Monroe wonders who were the worse savages, the natives or the film crew.

Yell! Magazine Review:

Sure, we’ve seen plenty of revenge movies, but few let us get behind a woman who has been brutally violated–Christ, she was savagely gang raped, I might as well call it what it is. And fewer movies, save Last House on the Left and Irréversible, show a rape scene as graphically as it is portrayed in I Spit on Your Grave. Speaking of rape scenes, I’m always left feeling a bit sick in the stomach after watching them. I guess if I felt anything else, I’d be a sick bastard.

The first half of I Spit on Your Grave basically builds an ungodly amount of gut-wrenching tension and suspense, taking time to develop characters and scene. We have Jennifer Hills (Sarah Butler), a writer, taking some time at a cabin deep in the middle of nowhere to finish her book. She has an unfortunate run-in with a few of the local boys, who then take it upon themselves to torment the shit out of her before gang raping her. There are interesting twists within all of this that’ll remain unsaid so that you can discover them for yourself.

The second half of this three-act film dives into the revenge, and some of the traps Sarah devises for these local white-trash boys puts to shame anything we witnessed in the Saw franchise. Let’s just say you’ll never look at fish hooks and crows the same way again. Nor will you look at hedge clippers the same.

But do you feel anything for Sarah in I Spit on Your Grave? You most certainly do. In fact, you’ll be rooting for her and you may be surprised that you support her extreme acts of violence. Some might argue that what she does goes beyond justice, that two wrongs don’t make a right, blah, blah, blah, but, though I’ve never been raped, I’m sure that anyone who has been has felt the rage and the desire to kill their attacker.

Some of the developments in the story (cell phone meets toilet) seem contrived and the one-liners are predictable, but I Spit on Your Grave is a solid film with loads of suspense, stomach-turning scenarios, and brutal violence. You should see this if you haven’t already.

Where many who were ignorant of this kind of a film and went to see Hostel in 2005, thought they had just seen the most disturbing film ever made, A Serbian Film will force them to review their perception of what disturbing really is.

When groups of people left French theaters during the rape scene in Irréversible back in 2002, they couldn’t have realized that that scene will, now and forever, seem quaint to those surviving this Srđan Spasojević film.

There are no redeeming features to A Serbian Film, which was the point I guess Srđan Spasojević was trying to make. Given that the film includes incestuous sodomy, eye socket fornication, deep-throat suffocation, and infant rape, you have to conclude that Spasojević wanted shock to be his coming-out party.

The Verdict:

As Cannibal Holocaust did in the ’70s, A Serbian Film will have run-ins with censorship, be banned in many countries, gather a cult following, and be avoided by everyone else.

Later

Either way, it doesn’t look like Paperboy is getting another official sequel anytime soon. Fortunately, there are some die-hard fans of the game, and a small group of filmmakers have brought Paperboy back to life in Grindhouse form. That’s right! Gaming to Grindhouse! And it’s filled with many epic and tragic moments that should please anyone who saw Hobo with a Shotgun, Machete, Planet Terror, and Death Proof.

We’ve got the fan-made trailer for you right here entitled Paperboy 3: The Hard Way.

Check it out!

Eaten Alive! was Umberto Lenzi’s second foray into cannibal movies. His first, which started the sub-genre, was Il Paese del Sesso Selvaggio, Man from Deep River) (1973]. Lenzi decided to not only show the usual murder, rape, animal dismemberment, and gore that these films became famous for, but he decided that having his victims alive and conscience while they are being devoured would add to the horror. He was right as Eaten Alive! will turn your stomach.

Along with other Italian directors (most notably Ruggero Deodato), Umberto Lenzi challenged movie watchers and their tolerance for gore with a series of movies that dealt with cannibalism. The subgenre became famous worldwide for its animal cruelty (you see a large turtle being hacked apart and various other jungle creatures being disemboweled) and its graphic depiction of rape, torture, and the eating of human flesh. Although Deodado’s film Cannibal Holocaust (1980) is the subgenre’s crowning achievement, Lenzi’s movies, including Cannibal Ferox, gave it a run for its money. Not for the faint of heart, Cannibal Ferox is disgusting and brutal.

Movies about people making movies tend to be yawn-inducing, but movies about people making horror movies can be decidedly edgier. All About Evil is a black comedy directed and written by indie filmmaker Joshua Grannell, who puts a different spin on the film-within-a-film genre and takes a scathing look at the horror genre in and of itself.

It’s 1984. Little Deborah Tennis is destined to become a star — or so her father, the manager of Victoria Theatre, thinks. He encourages her to perform in the Wizard of Oz while his wife (aptly dressed as the Wicked Witch of the West) openly mocks her. Deborah is no Judy Garland, we soon learn, and the audience laughs even more as Dad accompanies his daughter on the piano. In her nervousness, little Debbie does a tinkle all over the stage (yet somehow keeps singing, a testimony to her determination to please her father) and has the misfortune to piss all over some wires, which electrocute her and leave her with a Rogue-esque streak of white in her hair.

That’s the formal introduction to the film, but I’d like to take a minute to discuss the opening credits. If the intro hasn’t already caught your interest, the title sequence certainly will. It features a vintage horror flick posters that change with a rolling fog, displaying cast and crew names to a kick-ass rock track. That may not sound like much, but the minimal effect, visual esthetics, and nod to some of the best horror classics were enough to sell me on All About Evil. They’re what really grabbed my attention and hooked me, not the teaser.

The story then takes us to present day. Deborah (Natasha Lyonne from American Pie) now manages the Victoria Theatre after her father’s untimely death and holds a day-job as a librarian. She’s urged to give up “show business” by her mother, who plans to sell the company to a large corporate entity, stating that the late Mr. Tennis would have wanted it that way. Deborah goes hysterical, and a heated argument leads to a bloody stabbing in the theater’s foyer. The projectionist, Mister Twigs (Jack Donner, Buffy The Vampire Slayer), is all too happy to cover for Deborah, who turns from meek librarian to bold murderess within minutes.

The crowd begins to get restless when the movie doesn’t play on time, and a startled Deborah accidentally cues the security footage that shows the brutal stabbing of her mother. The audience is fooled into thinking that it’s just a short film shot by Deborah. Even diehard horror fan and theatre regular Steven (Thomas Dekker, A Nightmare on Elm Street reboot) is enraptured by her gritty production. And so a darker, edgier Deborah is born.

Yell! Rating (x/5 Skulls):

[rating:4]

Year Released:

17 August 2010

Director:

Joshua Grannell

Cast/Crew

Natasha Lyonne, Thomas Dekker, Mink Stole, Noah Segan, Jack Donner, Jade Ramsey, Nikita Ramsey, Ariel Hart, and Cassandra Peterson

Genre

Horror, Comedy

Official URL:

none

Continue reading the review on the jump, and find out if Jamie Lee recommends All About Evil in the verdict.