Rape and revenge films

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Rape and revenge films are a genre of exploitation film that was particularly popular in the 1970s[citation needed]. Rape / revenge movies generally follow the same three-act structure[dubious – discuss]:

  • Act I: A woman is gang raped, tortured, and left for dead.
  • Act II: The woman survives and rehabilitates herself.
  • Act III: The woman kills all of her rapists.

In some cases, the woman is killed at the end of the first act, and the "revenge" is carried out by her family (as in The Crow and The Virgin Spring). The most well-known[citation needed] rape / revenge movie is I Spit On Your Grave. Other notable rape / revenge movies include Lipstick (film), They Call Her One Eye, and Last House on the Left. See Zeeboe 2005 for a list of 20 other examples.

Although rape / revenge films usually[citation needed] claim to have a moral that the rapists "get what they deserve", the genre is frequently criticized[citation needed] for using that moral to justify creating exploitative and lurid rape scenes, followed by exploitative scenes of gruesome violence[citation needed].

The genre has attracted critical attention (Carol J. Clover, 1992; Claire Sisco King, 2003; Jacinda Read, 2000). Rape / Revenge films have been made in in Japan (e.g., Takashi Ishii's Freeze Me and in Finland (Anna Makela, no date, who also lists additional examples from Finland, Europe, and the United States).

[edit] References

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