I Spit on Your Grave

(1978) **1/2

Watching this movie, I learned that I can get tired of watching a naked woman walk around in the woods. I've never heard it called anything besides the title above, but according to imdb its official title is Day of the Woman, which is sick irony. Or maybe just sick. Read on.

Jennifer Hill takes a break from NYC where she writes short stories for women's magazines and drives up to Four Guys That Rape You in upstate New York. There's the gas station guy (the brains of the group), the nearly retarded guy (also the brains), and two guys too dead-beat to ever buy themselves shirts.

One day while Jenny is sunning herself in a canoe, Shirtless and Shirtless drive by in their motor-dinghy and harass her, eventually putting a line on her canoe and dragging her away. Instead of jumping out like an intelligent, suspicious New Yorker, she lets them drag her off into the reeds, where the other two are waiting. What follows could only be called the Day of the Men, I guess, as she's assaulted, released, assaulted, released, intercepted at home, assaulted. This is one of those 70's movies that has actors not acting as the characters would, but acting however the id-propelled story says to. At the end of the day Gas Station tells Retarded to go back inside and stab her. Didn't I tell you he was the brains?

Well, thanks to an excrutiating bit of friendly banter between Jenny and her would-be killer days before things go bad, he doesn't do it. She informs nobody and sets about recovering and revenging. The revenging is pretty satisfying, although I doubt that anyone could actually plan every step of it that way. Who knew, for instance, that when she snagged the little motorboat for herself and drove in loud circles around Shirtless, who she just pushed out, that he would thrash and yell like a helpless little girl?

I Spit on Your Grave has some of that raw, wanton, 70's intensity that you might want to see, but probably only once or twice in your whole life. It's also 100 minutes of film that could have made its point in 75, so there's a fair amount of padding. Even during the "good" stuff, you may find your patience tested.