I Spit on Your Grave

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
"Suck it, bitch!"
—Jennifer Hills

I Spit on Your Grave, also known as Day of the Woman, is an infamous 1978 grindhouse Rape and Revenge Exploitation Film directed by Meir Zarchi, about Jennifer Hills's rape and subsequent revenge against her four assailants. The rape scenes constitute some of the lengthiest, most brutal, and most realistic in cinematic history and contributed to the film being classified as a "video nasty."

Roger Ebert hates this film.

A Remake was made in 2010, which adds a new character, Sheriff Storch. Roger Ebert is not too fond of that film, either. Aside from the character of Sheriff Storch, the most notable stylistic difference to the original is that the middle act of the film follows the gang of rapists rather than Jennifer. The film has a montage of them going on with their lives before strange little creepy things start happening, I Know What You Did Last Summer style, making them all edgy and paranoid and worried that either someone knows what they did or somebody within the gang has turned on the others.

Tropes used in I Spit on Your Grave include:


  • All Men Are Perverts / I'm a Man, I Can't Help It: When Jennifer holds Johnny at gunpoint he tries to justify his raping of her with these arguments. At first it appears to dissuade her... as he finds out, it doesn't...
  • Blood From the Mouth: Averted, she's badly injured but not dying.
  • Break the Cutie: Done to the utter brutal extreme.
  • Chick Lit: Jennifer is an author of this.
  • Covers Always Lie: The poster says she murders five guys. But in the synopsis, she kills four. What?
    • At least in the remake, they added a fifth character.
  • Dirty Cop: Sheriff Storch in the remake.
  • The Ditz: Matthew (He's supposed to be mentally retarded, but still...). Not that the other rapists turn out to be a great deal smarter; first ordering the one person who had shown some reluctance to do these things to Jennifer to go and kill her and then one of them accepting an invitation to hop in her car and take a bath with her DESPITE the things he had formerly done to her and DESPITE that seconds earlier she had held him at gunpoint. Ah well, anyone who's seen the movie or read this article knows what happens to him.
  • Exploitation Film: And HOW.
  • Eye Scream: In the remake one of Jennifer's rapists films the attack and has a very distinct voyeuristic bent. In her revenge kill, Jennifer goes for the eyes.
  • Fan Disservice: Both the original and the remake. If the rape scenes arouse you, or you find the following full body shots of the naked, battered, bleeding, dirt-covered Jennifer remotely erotic, then you may be a potential threat to society.
  • Fan Service: The posters and the DVD cases depicting the lead girl walking around in a torn up shirt and panties. The poster design for the remake is arguably even more sexualised.
  • Femme Fatale: Jennifer pulls this on Matthew and Johnny.
  • Groin Attack: Have you not discerned what happens to Johnny yet?
  • He Who Fights Monsters: It's hard to argue that Jennifer doesn't become a Complete Monster in order to get revenge. In the remake, her whole demeanor changes, showing that she's become dead inside.
  • I Have Your Wife: In the 2010 remake, Jennifer captures Sheriff Storch's daughter to flush him out.
  • Ironic Echo: "Suck it, bitch!" The remake raises the number of lines that get an ironic echo to about a dozen.
  • Karmic Death: In the remake, Jennifer's revenge upon each of her rapists very specifically reflects the exact manners in which they tormented, degraded and violated her.
  • Kick the Dog: While it very much pales in comparison to what else they did to her, the rapists mock and rip up the novel that Jennifer was writing.
  • Most Writers Are Writers: Jennifer.
  • Not Quite Dead: Played with more overtly in the remake, but in the original also the rapists hope if not completely believe that Jennifer didn't survive the attack.
  • One-Liner: The twice aforementioned closing line.
  • Peer Pressure Makes You Evil: Poor, misguided, overeager Matthew.
  • Punch Clock Villain: Sheriff Storch in the remake, who has a loving wife and daughter, with another baby on the way.
  • Rape and Revenge: One of the classics of the genre.
  • Rape as Drama: The whole point of the movie.
  • Roaring Rampage of Revenge: In spades.
  • The Tooth Hurts: In a torture scene.
  • Torture Porn
  • Trailers Always Spoil: The trailer virtually gives away the entire plot. And repeats I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE about five times, presumably because they don't have anything more to show.
  • Video Nasties
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/I_Spit_on_Your_Grave?oldid=1960611"