1978 Movie vs 2010 Movie

The 1978 I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE was one of the most controversial exploitation films of the decade. It was simultaneously hailed as a feminist revenge fantasy and a gratuitous misogynistic mess. If you wanted to be completely fair it was both and that was mainly due to the direction of Meir Zarchi. He was able to make an uncomfortable movie that seemed to lasciviously dwell on the victimization of a woman but it also tried to show a woman taking back the power that was taken away from her by exacting revenge personally against those who did her wrong.
Where Zarchi had a misstep with me was in the way he had Jennifer use her sexuality as a means to her accomplishing her revenge plans. The idea that a woman who had been brutally raped would enter into sexual situations with her attackers just didn’t sit well with me but it did serve to make things more than just a straightforward revenge fantasy by making the audience question things that we did not really want to.
The 2010 film was just a bit too much of a HOSTEL style torture porn movie and that extended from the length and brutality of the rape scenes to the ridiculously complex set-ups Jennifer concocted to exact her revenge. The one thing that the remake did that I really liked was introducing the character of Sheriff Storch. It gave a legit reason why Jennifer would not go to the cops which the original never did) and created a character that was a real dichotomy: a despicable rapist/attempted murderer and a loving husband and father. Also adding some more layers to the character of Matthew helped a lot too even though I think that a lot of the problems with the portrayal of the character in the 1978 film had to do with the way society looked at the mentally retarded back then compared to now.
Advantage: I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE ’78


That’s what I thought. Last month I forced myself to watch the 2010 version just to be able to say “I have seen it, and I don’t like it”, I don’t really do rape-revenge movies if the rape is dragged to the most extend, which is why I have never finished The Last House on The Left (Let me know if I have missed anything). I have fast forwarded through I Spit On Your Grave, and honestly the rape scene was so long I was numb by the time the revenge moment kicked in. Not sure what people see in those movies. Many people said that the fact that the rape is so long and detailed raises the viewers anger and rage, and therefore makes the revenge moment more enjoyable, but I honestly don’t get it.
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I was trying to decide which rape was more overlong and gratuitous between the original and the remake but before I came to the decision I watched I SPIT N YOUR GRAVE 2 and the extended rape scenes were so ridiculously drawn out that they made the 1976 and 2010 movies looks restrained by comparison.
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Wow, really? And yet, the second part got rated R, while the remake from 2010 was NC-17. Congratulation MPAA, you did it again, LoL. But they were also talking about a revenge that has never been there before? Is the revenge really that extreme in part 2? I heard there is poop involved.
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Yes there was poo and deep open wounds involved. it was quite gross…not fun at all but pretty gross.
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Dang, I am concerned about how graphic these rape-revenge-torture-porn movies are going to be in the future.
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Hopefully the trend doesn’t take off any more than it already has with these straight to VOD/DVD films.
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Hopefully!
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