The cinema is full of radical, disturbing, sometimes unbearable works, capable of challenging and / or revolting the spectators. And in this register, “Day of the Woman”, released 45 years ago, is placed there…
In the voluminous encyclopedia of world cinematographic productions, shocking works are not lacking. If many of them have lapsed abundantly into unhealthy voyeurism, ultra-violence and gratuitous sadism, sometimes surfing shamelessly on current trends as long as there are a few tickets up for grabs, other productions more or less less recent have fortunately taken on the task of setting certain record straight.
Radical works, deeply disturbing, even sometimes unsustainable, capable of challenging and / or revolting the spectators, for better or for worse. In this register, the shock film Day of The Woman is placed there.
Day of the Woman (otherwise known as “I Spit on Your Grave” or even “Eye for an Eye”) is the seminal film of the subgenre Rape & Revenge with The last house on the left; certainly one of the most censored films in the world.
In Britain it was banned from 1984 to 2001, then only a heavily redacted version was allowed to be released. In Canada, the film was not visible until 1998, while in the United States the director Meir Zarchi was obliged to cut 17 minutes from his film to escape an infamous X classification by the MPAA.
Moreover, no distributor was willing to distribute the film, forcing the director to try to release his film for the first time at his own expense, under the title Day of The Woman. The director, who will also produce the remake of his work in 2010, had the idea for this film after having helped in 1974 a woman who was wandering naked in the streets of New York, raped by two strangers.
45 years later, Day of The Woman / I Spit on Your Grave remains a shock film for its uncompromising representation of a sexual assault (a traumatic and long rape scene of rawness and implacable objectivity) and the consequences (physical transformations in particular) on the victim.
If the film is far from being a masterpiece, in particular because of a weaker second part (the heroine’s revenge) with its many implausibilities, I Spit on Your Grave remains an interesting work to discover, and obviously reserved for a very informed public.
there is also a little story behind the creation of his famous poster, at least the one we know. For the record, it shows a woman from behind, covered with scratches and bruises, her clothes partially torn, her buttocks also covered with bruises.
If the face of the unfortunate woman savagely attacked does not appear, she holds in her right hand a large hunting knife. A very strong visual, and logically disturbing, that the 2010 remake will also try to reproduce.
Cinemagic Pictures
One of the craziest rumors that swirled around Hollywood in the 80s was that the woman portraying the victim on the poster was actually…a back shot of Demi Moore, not lead actress Camille Keaton ! A photograph that would have been taken several years obviously before the future actress saw her career noticeably and gently take off with St. Elmo’s Fire.
In fact, it turns out that the poster in question is not from the year the film was released, but two years later, in 1980. First released under the title Day of the Woman, the film was renamed two years later for its release on VHS, and benefited from a new visual poster. It will be necessary to wait until 2019 to see the end of speculation: in his autobiography entitled Inside Outthe actress will confirm that it is indeed her on this shocking poster.
A revelation that was also backed up by Charles Band, a veteran B-movie producer/director, founder of the American VHS brand Wizard Video (later transformed into Full Moon Features), who was precisely in charge of the film’s re-release in the time.
Except that the person did not know then in 1980 that it was Demi Moore. The two met in 1982, and worked together on the set of Parasite. Chatting with him in his office, Demi Moore saw the poster for I Spit on Your Grave hung on the wall. She then called out to him: “don’t tell anyone, but it’s me on this poster…”
In her autobiography, the actress also makes a shocking and sad revelationwhich resonates like a terrible echo of the film: she was raped at the age of 15 by a man who had provided her mother with $500 in exchange…
At the age of 16, Demi Moore left home for Los Angeles. Lying about her age, she did nude photos for Japanese magazines, before starting real modeling work. One of his first shoots was the photo session that will be used to create the poster for I Spit on Your Grave.