It’s not often critics give films zero stars, but Roger Ebert did it with this film, calling it “sick, reprehensible, contemptible, a vile bag of garbage.” As part of the research, I’m scanning a book entitled The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis, which provides academic analyses of how woman movie characters who engage in violence are portrayed. There’s a chapter on the movie, so I was tempted to watch it. And I can understand why Ebert (and other critics) hated it. Simple logline: a woman is gang-raped multiple times and then sets out to brutally kill each of her rapists. And the rape sequence goes on for an excruciatingly long time, about forty-five minutes. Jennifer, a New York City writer, takes a trip to a New England cabin to finish a novel (this was my dream when I saw Misery, minus the being held hostage part). She’s spied on by a creepy gas station owner and his two buds; a delivery guy with a disability hangs with that group and is their designated punching bag. Two of the guys tow her rowboat and bring her to the rest of the group, who rape her. She escapes for a bit. They rape her. She goes home to call the cops. They’re waiting for her. Another set of rapes. After a recovery period, she proceeds to kill them one by one. One gets hung. The ringleader is castrated. The other two are impaled by an oboard motor. She speeds off into the distance. The end.
I was disgusted by the extended rape sequence, but I felt a certain primal catharsis (as did a lot of woman viewers, I read) when she exacts her revenge. She uses her power to seduce the delivery guy who’s infatuated with her and reluctantly goes along with the gang. His death is a quick hanging, somewhat merciful. The ringleader, a gas station with a wife and children, is castrated, right after she lures him back to his place. “You asked for it,” he pleads as she’s prepared to kill him. After he says that, they go back to his place. My guess is she was prepared to murder him fast, but he made his situation worse with his comment. So a slow bleeding in the bathtub allows him to suffer before his death. Ironically, his wife is blind to his extracurricular activities, blaming his “bum” friends for taking him away from the nuclear family unit. This goes against cinema’s (and society’s) claim that marriage settles a person down.
This movie is not for the squeamish. I grimaced during the rapes but stuck around to see the revenge. I wouldn’t blame anyone for not wanting to see it, but it is pro-single and deserves a place on my page.