Patrick Sullivan

(I’d love to put some smarty-pants wisecrack here, but I can’t)

You probably won’t see this at future editions of the Kent Film Festival. I Spit On Your Grave (1978) is an exceptionally unpleasant film about a young writer named Jennifer Hill who rents a house for the summer in what is obviously Kent. Hoping to write her novel, she instead endures a series of rapes at the hands of local goobers - about 38 minutes’ worth of screen time, and absolutely horrible to watch.

She gets her revenge on her attackers, luring them one by one to their doom. She kills one via a post-coital hanging; another gets a completely horrible surprise in the bathtub…

And that’s it. Movie over.

Gack. It’s a really awful thing to watch.

I Spit On Your Grave is done in such a deadpan way that it’s impossible to use the ordinary standards of schlock to describe it. I suspect director Meir Zarchi was trying to make a Statement and at the same time appeal to the drive-in audience.

Whatever he was after, it’s about as grueling a cinematic experience as there is. I can’t crack jokes about it, or give it a coil rating.

There are no laughs, no cheesy, over-the-top performances, no prurience, no nothing. Call it “relentlessly dreadful” and skip it.

(Jennifer Hill, about to finish off the last of her tormentors)