The first trailer for the remake of I Spit On Your Grave arrived online Wednesday, just days after the poster featuring Sarah Butler, her garden shears and the tacky slogan "It's Date Night" began making the rounds. Perhaps understandably, both the trailer and the poster seem targeted to a horror-numbed younger audience -- the majority of whom likely have no idea it's a remake of one of the most notorious cult films of the last 50 years. But now it's time to catch up, and Movieline, as always, is here to help.
· The Sell: Both trailers make it clear that the film is about a young woman seeking vicious payback after being repeatedly beaten and raped by a gang of savages. In fairness to distributor Anchor Bay, the new film gets only a one-minute teaser compared to the 1980 original's epic 2:45 running time. (Note: The film was originally released in 1978 as Day of the Woman; it received a title change and this trailer for a 1980 re-release.) As a result, Spit '80 has outlandish depravity to spare -- the producers really want you to see this. Or, alternatively, revolted enough (a la Roger Ebert, famously) to tell everyone you know that you'll never see it. Spit '10 is quick-cut within an inch of its life; the brutality is explicitly told, not shown. It doesn't sell much beyond, well, wanting to go back and watch the original.
EDGE: Spit '80
· Narration: Technically you can't compare the two; Spit '10 relies exclusively on intertitles ("Some crimes... Are so brutal... That if you survive... Your only option... Is revenge") while Spit '80 has the kind of voiceover talent that turns you homesick for the grindhouse. They don't make them like that anymore.
EDGE: Spit '80
· Music: If you've heard one throbbing, percussive accompaniment to a montage of disposable violence, then you've heard them all. I much prefer the soothing wah-wah-disco lilt beneath the shooting / hanging / castrating / disemboweling carnage of the original. It's got a good beat, and you can ax to it.
EDGE: Spit '80
· Dialogue: Grim context notwithstanding, Spit '80 is widely acknowledged to have some of the most hilarious dialogue in the history of exploitation cinema -- which is saying something. (No pun intended!) That doesn't necessarily make it superior to Spit '10, but when all we've got to go on are crappy, portentous one-liners ("Forgive me father, for I will sin") and trivializing zingers ("It's date night," the female avenger mutters, closing her shears in front of a naked, bound aggressor), then "I don't like women giving me orders!" sounds like friggin' Faulkner.
EDGE: Spit '80
· Production Values: Finally, Spit '10 brings the heat! Though it's hard to imagine how anything shot on 35-millimeter film with a budget above $100,000 could possibly look or sound worse than director Meir Zarchi's shitamotography craptacular. Hoo boy. I have house plants that could direct better.
EDGE: Spit '10
· Title Cards: Come on. Spit '80 deserves this on the lone basis of its blocky, repeated entry from stage left (accompanied by the grindhouse voice of God croaking the title aloud), but frankly, it even looks better:
No contest.
EDGE: Spit '80
WINNER: Spit '80
View both trailers on the next page...