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I Spit On Your Grave.
Despite its legendary status as one of the most controversial films ever, and although it's one of the mere two films he's directed, Meir Zarchi doesn't ever talk about 'I Spit On Your Grave.' Throughout our conversation Zarchi refers to the film by its alternate title, 'Day Of The Woman.' It's an interesting distinction, very much in keeping with Zarchi's insistence that the film is not the trashily exploitative flick suggested by its better-known title, but instead a treatise on male violence and female strength.
The 1978 film follows Jennifer Hill (played by Camille Keaton, who subsequently married - and divorced - Zarchi), a journalist who retreats to the country to write a novel. She's set upon by four local hicks who hunt her down, rape her repeatedly and leave her for dead. Despite her horrific treatment she recovers and sets about revenging herself on her attackers. It's the archetypal rape/revenge film and was banned outright almost everywhere (including Australia) for almost twenty years.
Like his film, Zarchi is interesting and not a little unsettling. For years he's remained all but silent about his film, but with its long-overdue release on DVD he's a well-prepared interviewee, with a strong European accent despite well over thirty years in the US, asking me about dB Magazine ("You have a good readership?") and myself ("You're 32! Pah! You could be my kid!"). He's also well-prepared when I ask if it feels strange talking about a movie he made 26 years ago.
"I tell you, in a sense it is a little bit strange, because usually no matter how famous or controversial films are, after a year or two they die - they go into oblivion and from time to time you see them on television. But to have a phenonemon like 'Day Of The Woman' creating such turmoil throughout the world almost every day of the year for the past 26 years, yes, it is a bit surreal."
The film was banned in Australia for almost two decades so Zarchi's hardly surprised when I admit that I'd only seen it when preparing for this interview. He's more interested when I mention that my wife had seen it and, whilst considering it an interesting and thought-provoking work, point-blank refused to ever watch the first half again. He laughs delightedly.
"You know, I'm really very curious always to hear what a woman says about it more than a man. What does your wife say about it?"
I explain that she thought the rape scenes - which go for an agonising 18 minutes on screen - were absolutely horrific. Which, of course, was the point.
"Yes indeed," Zarchi agrees. "Tell your wife when I watch it, I'm appalled myself."
He's not the only one. In the DVD commentary he explains that one of the electricians on the film was so shaken up by the absolutely horrific "rape at the rock" that he quit on the spot.
"True. True. Not only him, but during the rape in the house, which follows the rape at the rock, the makeup girl says 'I can't take this anymore' - when she was younger she had been raped and the scene brought back too painful a memory - so she left. Which I completely understand."
Which brings me to the source of the film's notoriety: the film has been lambasted as somehow glorifying rape. As he explains, the film was inspired by he and a friend encountering a bloodied and naked rape victim staggering out of a park in New York.
"I don't really think it was misunderstood, really," Zarchi says in response to charges that critics missed the point of the film.
"I think it would be more proper to say it was too overwhelming and too off-beat for people - people were not used to seeing something like that. Especially the rape at the rock."
I confess that when I watched the film for the second time to listen to the commentary, I couldn't stomach watching that scene again and listened from another room where I couldn't see the screen. It didn't really help.
Zarchi pauses. "I tell you something interesting: when I was filming, once they placed her on the rock and [the character] Andy penetrates her and she screams that horrible scream, I had the camera moving from her face, moving slowly and gently up, up, up, above the treetops, and then it pauses on the treetops and you see the treetops swaying slightly in the breeze, and the rape goes on and on and all you can hear is the screams, then I cut back to Andy as he pulls out of her - and I tell you, it was more frightening than actually seeing it. It was too much. Your imagination can go wild."
Zarchi also demonstrates a perverse pride in the film's position as one of the "video nasties" that became a political football in the UK in the early 'eighties, "but as I mentioned in the commentary, the picture was indestructable.
"I say this without any ego: the movie has its own power, its own life, and people are trying to destroy it, but it's like a cockroach! It can never be killed. He spreads and he lays eggs and there's more and more cockroaches! But for some people they are cockroaches, for other people they are diamonds."
Zarchi chuckles. "And it's OK, because the more they try to destroy it, the more publicity the movie gets, the more attention it gets. So may they continue to swat it!"
Andrew P Street
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'I Spit On Your Grave' deluxe edition is out now through Force Entertainment.
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