I Spit on Your Grave (1978): C-

Often vilified as one of the most contemptible films ever made, writer/director Meir Zarchi’s I Spit on Your Grave (also known by the more upbeat title Day of the Woman) largely fails to live up to its horrendous hype, turning out to be simply another crudely made, explicitly violent ‘70s-era exploitation flick. Naïve Manhattanite Jennifer (Camille Keaton) heads off to the rural backwaters to write a novel – a journey into the middle of nowhere mirrored by her fictional tome’s story of a woman escaping her old life – only to find herself repeatedly beaten and raped by a trio of barbaric country bumpkins and their mentally challenged virgin sidekick. Socio-economic tensions play a role in motivating the rednecks to carry out their prolonged sexual assault (which takes place in three different locales over the course of 30-plus minutes), but by and large, Zarchi’s attempts to rationalize his villains’ violent behavior are undone by the obsessive misogyny infecting the film’s countless scenes of female-targeted brutality. To offset Jennifer’s vicious treatment, I Spit on Your Grave affords its victimized heroine a vengeful killing spree of her own, thereby attempting to posit a message of “I Will Survive” female empowerment in which sexist subjugation is countered with a noose, an ax, and a castrating knife. Instead, though, this third-act reversal of male-female power dynamics simply provides an estrogen-powered slice of the same sadistic pie.