I Spit on your Rape Revenge Remakes

I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE (2010)
D. Steven Monroe
Anchor Bay Ent.
1.85



It is certainly arguable if the world even needed a remake of Meir Zarchi’s brutal exploitation classic I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE, and really any movie that tried to update it was not going to live up to the big shoes of the original. That film is one that has for years split horror and sleaze films fans to almost violent extremes. In one camp you have those who feel the original movie is nothing but misogynist, hateful garbage. A film that brutalizes women for the enjoyment of a rag tag crowd of impotent men who get off on seeing females dis-empowered and sexually abused for lengthy amounts of time. On the other side is the group who see the film as a superior piece of exploitation cinema, that attacks the material with an almost feminist agenda. A work of primal rage, that contains a surprising amount of quiet beauty and fury. The controversy of Siskel and Ebert reviewing the movie has become stuff of film criticism legend and even a lot of genre critics have spent years poo pooing the film as a way to not have to take a stand on it.

"The remake will be remembered for the subtle use of phallic imagery"

But with the major success of so many remakes it was only a matter of time. When something like LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT has a major Hollywood remake that lands in theaters it is only fitting the I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE will have one too. So the question remains how do you update one of the seriously most disturbing movies of all time for modern, jaded audiences?



The answer seems to be simply just up the gore to the expected splatterpunk levels and hope for the best. Story wise this is almost exactly the same. Young city girl Jennifer Hills (Sarah Butler) goes to the woods to write her first book in peace and quiet. Her first interaction along the way is at a redneck gas station where she inadvertently humiliates the group of yokels there when she spurns the advances of the local tough guy when he hits on her. Once settled in she has plumbing issues and the town handicap Matthew (Chad Lindberg) helps her out and develops a crush on her. Soon the town goons and Matthew have crashed her cabin and are abusing her in an attempt to have Matthew lose his manhood.

"A moment clearly echoing the original film. Or the Denmark Classic A Summer Day"

The scene is clearly here driven by class distinction as much as by sexual desire or even violence as the men are consistently driving home the fact that they feel she is looking down on them. The actual humilation scene goes on for quite some time as they scare, here, call her names, read her book out loud and make fun of it and finally force her to fellate a gun and bottle while comparing her to a horse that needs to be tamed. It is a long and unpleasant scene, made worse because knowing the original film, you know this is all leading up to her being brutally raped at any time.



But in a new twist, she gets loose and finds the town Sheriff in the woods hunting. (SPOILER ALERT) who of course knows the boys and once has her back to her cabin starts to arrest her for making false accusations and for having drugs. Then the boys come back and the expected rape begins. Which is not as brutal as the original film. Here only the character of Matthew and the Sheriff are shown fully forcing themselves on Jennifer. The others are shown in kind of a in and out haze as she loses consciousness and the movie fades out. It is actually a far more tasteful choice in direction that was expected given the pedigree of movie being remade. It still follows the same structure, though backwards, as she is here attacks at her home first then in the woods. This time she jumps off a bridge after her attack and the guys loose track of her once she is in the water. Unlike the original where she is left for dead after they believe Matthew has killed her.

"Hill-billy bathub time!"

Here in the remake the movie takes a severe bad turn. Jennifer simply is removed from the narrative for a significant amount of time. The film is supposed to be her story, yet for a good ten minutes or more she is gone from the film as we spend time with the rapists as we know their families, and how they are trying to get away with the crime. What steam the movie has built up to the point, and it isn’t terrible, goes all over the place and becomes an unfocused mess.



Then it tries to become a slasher/stalker picture as she comes back for vengeance, asking the audience to put aside some pretty illogical things, like for example that Jennifer has survived in the woods, injured for over a month on her own. But even more that she is now able to overpower and kill these hulking maniacal men on her own, even in her crazed malnourished state.



The movie really goes limp in the second half as the filmmakers start giving Jennifer goofy catch phrases such as “It’s Date Night!” after she kills her abusers in an attempt to make her really clever and to set her in the pantheon of on screen killers. In an attempt to keep up with the Jones the filmmakers chose to have her slaughter her abusers in complex and painful ways that would be much more at home in one of the SAW films that a simple revenge set up. So one fellow is strung up over a bathtub full of water and lye, and their has his eye-lids pulled open with fish hooks and smeared with fish guts until CGI crows appear and tear out his peepers (seriously, I am not making that up!) and finally one unlucky rapist scum is strung up like a stallion with a metal bridal knocking out his teeth and finally castrated in a nod to the original film. But taken one step further as his removed member is shoved into his broken, bleeding mouth. There is also a shotgun sodomy bit where she viciously fucks one of the slobs in the ass with the barrel of a shotgun while screaming at him about why he violated her. The biggest problem with that scene is that it was done better a couple of years ago in the film CLOSURE with Gillian Anderson, almost down to extremely similar dialogue,

"Just whatever you do, don't stuff a fake severed cock in my mouth. That would be REALLY humiliating..."

The director has stated one of his goals this time around was to “correct” the flaws of the original by not having the Jennifer Character use her sexuality to seduce the villains into her grasp. Such as the scene in the original where she Seduces Matthew before Hanging him. It is the ONE questionable scene in the original that really muddies the moral waters about the intention of the filmmaker. But the director here simply pulls that back entirely too far and almost gets rid of the main character’s point of view altogether. By removing her from the mid section of the film we lose touch with her and lose sympathy. We don’t see what she is going through, her pathos and he need to do these guys in. It simply doesn’t work. I commend him on his attempt to try to make it less sleazy, but at the end of the day he also makes it kind of ridiculous, making the bad guys charactitures in the process (not that the original isn’t guilty of that either). The main villain's speech about “a man being just a man” from the original film is also absent here, which was another focal point.



So what you are left with is a rather unfocused modern revenge film, with a few well done suspenseful moments, some heavy gore, and not a lot else making it worth the time. It certainly is not the worst of the remakes I’ve seen, but redundant keeps popping into my mind as a word to describe the experience.

Review © Andy Copp

Siskel and Ebert Go Off about Women In Danger IN Horror Films

A NIGHTMARE ON YOUR ST. Or in your bedroom, or basement, or pre-school...

The new remake of A NIGHTMARE ON ELM ST. by the shit slingers at Platinum Dunes Entertainment is causing a storm of internet bad mouthing among horror fans. Which is really weird because these same fans didn't really speak up much when those same cinematic rapists destroyed the credibility of the original TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE or even the remake of FRIDAY THE 13TH which was an abortion at best. But now, finally these guys get one right, and the horror fans and internet in general are up in arms as if you just shot their baby.

In some ways it is easy to see why. This new ELM ST. does what a lot of horror films don't really do anymore. It dares to be truly uncomfortable, confrontational horror film-making. Granted it is painted into a corner far too often by the very nature of being a remake, so there are moments that feel recycled or redundant because they are just repeats of scenes we know and love. Where this movie succeeds is in the new material. Both the new script and the performances of this new A NIGHTMARE ON ELM ST. push into darker, uglier, much more upsetting territory that most movies reserve for weeping lifetime dramas, not something that dares to confront you as horror films often do.

But It think to fully get a grip on just how brave and how big of a gamble this movie is taking it is important to look back at some social history of the American landscape. Some nasty and unfortunate stuff. By the early to mid 80's there was a full scale panic going on in American dealing with sexual abuse primarily brought on by the McMartin pre-school scandal. A scandal that began in 1983 when children in a Manhatten Beach California pre-school began to make some startling accusations against one of the people who worked the school. soon the allegations had spread to pretty much the whole staff, then other well standing members of the community. Before long over 48 children in the community were claiming to have been raped and abused to the tune of 321 felonious counts. Accusations had become increasingly bizarre to include such things as flying people, satanic rituals, exotic animals and a supposed labyrinthine set of tunnels under the school that led to occult ritual chambers for sacrifices of babies.  The trial became the most costly in American history (usurped later by our pal O.J. Simpson). But the media storm behind it swept the nation and the allegations of sexual abuse in schools, nurseries, churches, and homes sky-rocketed. Suddenly it was believed that a satanic network of Devil worshipers were hiding under every rock snatching kids to make pornography and snuff films. Psychiatrists embedded their entire careers on a new sickness called "Multiple Personality Disorder" and "Repressed Memory Syndrome" both of which were caused by sexual and ritual abuse. But the catch being that if you had either of these conditions, you probably didn't remember your abuse and needed therapy to remember it and get well. Tons of vicious circles appeared and tore families apart.

A circus free for all of abuse allegations appeared over night as people who went to therapists for various problems, were suddenly told they were abused and didn't remember it. They were told their families held secret histories of sexual abuse, Satanic rituals, and possibly murder. These people basically were weened from their families and into the safety nets of these psychiatrists who then fed them stories, and took their money, for the rest of their lives.

The other side of the coin is that thanks to all of this the true life horrors of sexual abuse finally was being talked about. The generation before the 80's kept it locked away and never spoken. Incest, pedophilia, familial rape all went on but went un-reported or worse the victims were blamed. But thanks to a media surge in the 80's many people were able to come forward and out their demons (and in a lot of cases their abusers) and get free of those shackles. Sexual abuse came out of the closet so to speak, the topic just had to wrestle free of the panic and bullshit involved to be seen realistically and with a study eye towards helping people. The generation I have grown up with is the first real generation that grow up semi-openly talking about the topic. The generation now, has grown up with it being bandied about on talk shows an self help groups enough that it can be the subject of ridicule and black humor jokes. But it still is extremely taboo and an uncomfortable subject because so many people still do suffer because of it. Sexual abuse is a REAL life horror that far too many people have to face in their daily lives. While it CAN be talked about more openly now, it is still more often than not America's dirty little secret. A secret that still eats and tears at the youth.

So for a mainstream horror film, a remake of a classic on at that, to tackle the subject so boldly, so in your face takes balls. The new A NIGHTMARE ON ELM ST is in many ways this generations first post McMartin horror film.

In the original Elm St. it is stated that Freddy was a "horrible dirty child killer" and there is quite a bit of sexual imagery scattered through out the original film. But they never quite come out and say he is a child molester. Wes Craven has in interviews said in, but never makes it a huge deal. It is implied, and the audience is left to sort of fill in that blank for themselves. In subsequent sequels that detail is all but abandoned as the drive to make Freddy an Anti-hero is pursued. With only one shot in Part 2 really recalling this at all as we see a brief moment of Freddy putting what looks to be a severed child's arm into a furnace. The Kids of Elm St. are not directly connected to Freddy in the original films, just the parents for having killed him an this is his revenge.

This time out the gate the detail of Freddy being a pedophile is brought right to the front lines. While it is never actually shown, there is enough nasty, uncomfortable images of kids being locked in his boiler room, children with torn, slashed and bloodied clothes, and tons of drawings the kids made for him while alive that have very subtle sexual images in them. It is outright said by the middle of the movie that Freddy was a child molester, but then is later recanted, with actual details of the McMartin trial given as parallel to Freddy's case. But of course it is false and he IS a pedophile and molester and guilty of the sins we think he is.

But what makes this even more complex is the kids of Elm St are ALREADY his victims. He had molested them as children at the pre-school he worked at. Now he is preying on them in their dreams to avenge his death.

the allegory there is truly disturbing though. The idea that the evil bogyman that molested you as a child, has tracked you down as an adult, after you have repressed and "dealt" with the memories is actually pretty terrifying. The idea that the horror of those memories manifest themselves and haunt these kids into their dreams as they approach adulthood is a potent one. The children of Elm St. are haunted, tormented by the sexual abuse of their pasts. Abuse their parents have tried to hide and sweep under the rug. These kids literally are staying awake, as their lives collapse around them like a dream. They take drugs to stay awake and cope. Freddy becomes the symbol of all the hardship a sexual abuse survivor has to go through in dealing with those memories of the trauma.

Elm St. always represented mainstream American USA, apple pie and the ideal suburban neighborhood. Here it goes further into the emotional decay than the films had before. This Elm St. shows us the very real abusive corruption that goes on in America all the time and puts an ugly, burned, demonic face on it. But it also shows that these kids can be resourceful enough to get past it, to fight those demons too. Like a good horror film, it presents us with the horror, pulls the rug out from under us, but then shows us that the protagonists can pull it together enough to fight back.

Fans, don't like this. They want the old Robert Englund Freddy where it is Vaudeville a joke and a song. I love the old Freddy as much as anyone. The original A NIGHTMARE ON ELM ST. is a classic for a reason and still works. But this new one is its own movie. Though it repeats whole scenes, the movie still builds its own story and background around them and manages to be intelligent and thoughtful too. The movie just pushes the discussion of Sexual Abuse into the open that much more. But damn if it hasn't made even the hardest of fans uncomfortable and angry.


Reviews/ Articles © Andrew Copp

Positively the last house over there

Last House On The Left (2009)
D. Dennis Lliadis
Rogue Pictures
1.85

It is really hard to go into a remake of a classic (well kinda classic) film with an open mind. There was a movie critic here in Dayton that a friend and I were talking about recently, that I also had as a teacher a long time who was very wise when it came to reviewing films. People would often talk to him about how a movie should have done this, or been this way or that. But his theory was that have to review the movie presented to you, not the movie you wished you had seen. He called it the movie "within the frame". I'm terrible for that sometimes because being a filmmaker I tend to want to reconstruct things I feel are not working, or in cases like this one, when they are remakes I almost cannot help but to flashback on the originals for a comparison. This was exceptionally difficult while watching the remake of LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, because a) it is such a seminal and groundbreaking work in the horror genre, and b) it is a film that I have int he past thought about how I would remake myself. But about midway through this film I found I was able to turn off my brain and find the film "within the frame" and appreciate it for what it was.

The movie at hand is not substantially different from the original LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT. The tale is about two teenage girls who end up abducted but a gang of criminals, abused, raped and killed. Then by twist of chance (well not so much in this version) end up spending a night of refuge at the home of one of the girl's parents who figure out what has happened and exact revenge for their daughter. That's the general idea anyway. Well that is really the plot synopsis of the original film, here the movie is about two teenage girls who are captured by a gang of criminals, one is killed, the other is raped and left for dead. Through clever maneuvering on the girl's part it turns out the atrocity took place literally in the woods behind her house. Because the car they had stolen is wrecked the gang go to the first house they come to for help. Not knowing it is the parents of the girl they raped and think is dead. She makes her way back, the parents figure out what has happened, but are basically trapped in this remote summer home with these psychopaths who have hurt their daughter and killed her friend. So they take action. Somewhat in revenge but just as much in defense.

At the end of the day the movie is surprisingly compelling and well made. The trailers that everyone say made the movie look much more cheesy than it actually is. everything is played super straight, with no bullshit humor or over the top theatrics. There is some terrific acting from Tony Goldwin (remember him from GHOST?) and Monica Potter as the parents. The gang isn't bad either though I think Garret Dillahunt was Krug was cast more for his hunk good looks and chiseled chest than anything else. He's fine in the film, but I always felt like he was acting like a badass instead of was a true horrible badass. The girls fare a bit worse, Sarah Paxton is the focus of the film as Mari Collenwood and she basically is a blank slate to me. Martha MacIsaac is most recognisable from her role in SUPERBAD plays the best friend Paige and is much more spunky and identifiable as a character, but is so woefully underwritten that she barely registers at all too. In fact both girls characters are underwritten to the degree that when the bad stuff starts happening I felt less tension than I should have for them. I do however give props to the producers for hiring young actresses that look like actual people and not some cattle call for some WB drama. On that front I liked both girls. They just needed a bit more meat to chew on before their ordeal started. Riki Lindhome as Sadie is basically the sex appeal of the movie as she several times shows her boobs, but she has a unique look to her face that is rather odd and appealing. Once again her character is not really very defined (one minute she is into the rape and killing, the next she seems not to be, but not much is ever said or done with it) which is unfortunate. Though her topless fight scene is appreciated.

What the movie has going for it is that it is a well oiled machine. It gets from point A to point B, to point C economically and swiftly. When it is time to get mean and dirty it doesn't pull too many punches. The pivotal rape scene that the movie should hinge on (more on that in a moment) is there and present and suitably ugly and repulsive. There were 3 walkouts in the theater tonight, making me wish I had went and saw this the weekend it came out in a theater packed with unsuspecting teenagers who thought the wretched FRIDAY THE 13TH remake was the height of terror. I would have righteously enjoyed watching crying teenagers crawl out of the theater because they couldn't handle what they were watching. I give this movie big props for not succumbing to the a post modern, goofy approach to the material. Only once in the final minutes of the movie does it go over the top in a way that most modern films like SAW or HOSTEL do and the scene is clearly something that was added to appease either a studio or test audience who demanded more gore and a more resolute finale. It clearly doesn't fit the tone of the rest of the film at all and in some ways deflates a lot of what has come before it.

So does the film work on its own "within the frame"? Yes actually it does. It is not a great horror film. The characters are a bit too thin, and in my eyes it isn't mean enough. It is meaner than most modern horror films even think about being. But...

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

It gets way too soft in the last third by having Mari and Justin both survive the events of the night. (Justin being the son of Krug the bad guy). the whole idea of bad things happening to good people is still there and accounted for, but the family ultimately will be okay after this. yes scarred by the incidents, but they survived it. They overcame. And by changing the focus of Mari dying to her living and the parents having to fight off the bad guys because they are more or less trapped in the house changes the film from a rape/revenge horror to a more of a survivalist horror or home invasion horror which is almost a different genre altogether. Which in turn renders the rape almost a mute point. Structurally in the way the movie is set up now there is no real point to the bad guys having raped Mari because the real reason the parents are fighting them is because they are wanting to make it through the night and get their daughter to safety. Revenge is secondary at best. If she had died and the parents sole purpose was to kill them then it becomes a revenge film with all the moral dilemmas that come with it. Which I get the feeling the filmmakers were trying very hard to avoid.

Now the real test. Does it hold up to the original film? Of course not. Though I do not consider the original film a perfect movie by a long shot. It is deeply flawed and has considerable problems. Many of which this remake gets right such as getting rid of the horrid comic relief which sinks the film on several occasions. This time they also get rid of any police characters, another extraneous detail that is simply not needed. They eliminate Krug's son being hooked on heroin. But the biggest elimination is most of the violence during the all important violation of the two girls. In the new film only one of the girl's is raped on only by Krug. The other girl is not raped or molested at all. There is no "piss your pants" moment. There is no carving of the name in the chest. No severed arm. No disembowelment or Sadie playing with the intestines. And most importantly no shots of the gang trying to wipe the blood off their hands of the incident or standing there dazed after the orgy of violence. We DO get Sadie looking kinda bewildered and then it starts to rain and maybe tears streak her eye make up, or maybe it is the rain. That is as close as we get to moral uncertainty for the characters. But there is not an orgy or horror comparable to the original. I'm not saying what is there isn't horrific. It was enough to drive people out of the theater. But comparatively speaking it is weak tea to what we got almost forty years ago.

But with that also comes the fact that this new version really isn't saying anything either. It is arguable that the original is or isn't this big message film about the death and destruction of life in Vietnam (which Craven and Cunningham claim it is). I've never bought that line of thinking. But it is clearly trying to say something on violence, the sudden nature of violence, and how it changes us. How we as humans react to the taking of a life of someone we care about and is it justifiable to react violently to that initiative? I've always found the final scenes of the original LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT to ring false when the cops come in and the parents are suddenly reminded of how vile they have become due to their revenge. Which is why I have always preferred I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE as a revenge film since it doesn't go all soft in the final reel. But I think both films discuss those impulses very well. I think this remake goes well out of its way to sidestep the issue altogether and stack the deck so it doesn't have to deal with it. Which is unfortunate to say the least.

So at the end of the day, it is a decent and entertaining, mean little film. With surprisingly good performances. I can recommend it if you can watch it with the original cleared from your head. which I know is very hard to do.



Andy Copp