Retro Slashers

The remake of I Spit On Your Grave (1978) is coming to DVD/Blu-Ray on Feb 7th in the UK and Feb 8th in the US – practically a simultaneous release. For the Brit version (both formats), Anchor Bay UK are holding a public vote for which of six covers should feature as the sleeve ‘flipside’.

Many times a flipside can be a buyer’s saving grace if the front-end bites the big one. This one looks a little too modern with all the white, and having the female’s face is a sign of the times – the original kept the focus squarely on the knife and the ass – a visual comment on the dehumanization at the core of the story.

The choices are below, voting is done through Facebook here. Ends 07.12.2010 6pm UK time.

In 1978, Meir Zarchi unleashed his low-budget horror film I Spit On Your Grave (originally entitled ‘Day Of The Woman’) on an unsuspecting world only to see it heavily censored in America, banned outright in numerous countries and then to become one of the most controversial, disturbing and debated films of our time. Now, director Steven R. Monroe (Complacent; Storm Cell) revisits Zarchi’s cult exploitation classic with a remake that exceeds all expectations and, 32 years on from the original, looks likely to ignite the fires of controversy all over again.

Seeking some peaceful solitude in which to complete her latest novel, Jennifer Hills (brilliantly played by relative newcomer Sarah Butler), a beautiful young writer from the city, rents an isolated cabin in the southern backwoods. Her presence attracts the attention of a group of locals who, sparked by a combination of lust, jealousy and damaged pride, subject Jennifer to a gruelling nightmare of humiliation, mental torture, physical abuse and rape before leaving her for dead in a nearby river. But Jennifer isn’t dead.

Having taking time to recover from her ordeal, Jennifer returns to exact eye-for-eye (and then some) vengeance upon her tormentors. Trapping each of her attackers one by one, she inflicts brutal acts of physical torment upon them with a grimly inventive and clinical ferocity that equals and even surpasses that which was inflicted upon her.

Providing an emotionally harrowing and far more disturbing and compelling experience than any horror film in recent memory, Monroe’s faithful but far superior remake of I Spit On Your Grave is an “extremely efficient grindhouse” (New York Times) that the Montreal Gazette claims “deliberately brutalizes its audience in order to convey the trauma, rage, and existential nihilism born of human cruelty… the issues it addresses – misogyny, society’s blame-the-victim mentality and the dehumanizing aspects of vengeance – are no less relevant today than they were in 1978.”

Boasting a strong and incredibly brave lead performance from Sarah Butler (CSI: New York; CSI: Miami), the film features a superb supporting cast that includes Jeff Branson (The Guiding Light; All My Children), Daniel Franzese (War Of The Worlds; Mean Girls; Bully), Rodney Eastman (Janie Jones; Spork), Chad Lindberg (Supernatural; Push), Andrew Howard (Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen; Blood River) and Tracey Walter (Batman).