Does cinema need an homage to the excesses of 70s rapesploitation? Because that’s precisely what first-time writer/director Coralie Fargeat has done in this formulaic throwback to utter trash like Last House on the Left, I Spit on Your Grave, and others I’d just as soon not name (Spanish horror director Adrian Bogliano is responsible for a particularly egregious one in 2004). Her debut movie, Revenge, suggests it’s time to make rapesploitation fun again.
Sorry, it probably isn’t clear. Tom used rapesploitation as a word and I wasn’t sure if I missed that’s what that genre is actually called now or if he was purposefully trying to drum up the movie into some other thing, I guess. I thought the genre was call exploitation horror?
It’s real word. I don’t think that it was used back when Grindhouse proper was in its prime while the sub-genre was being created but it entered into use at some point, possibly in the last couple of decades or maybe even just the last, as part of of the examination of those films.
Maybe? I can’t say with certainty, so I am just speculating. I can only state I’ve seen it before and in other places than Tom’s articles.
I don’t recall it ever coming up in the 80s/early 90s but that isn’t to say it wasn’t out there. Before that, “Exploitation” as it’s own cross-genre thing was understood/out there but I don’t recall there being a ton of variant *sploitations beyond “blacksploitation” and a couple of other silly ones that I can’t recall off hand. But that has changed as the way we have talked about movies has continued to change.
I’m with you. That’s why I went with Tarentino GIF-snark in my first response. I think it wasn’t a thing until he opened the door to the appreciation of Grindhouse as art. Ostensibly. And his love of all " 'sploitation". And multiple homages specifically to Exploitation genres (Jackie Brown, Kill Bill). Maybe you could throw Guy Ritchie in across the pond?
Yeah, unfortunately (?), it’s a real term. And it definitely predates the 90s. It’s been a subgenre of grindhouse since before grindhouse was called grindhouse.
Rape is a horrific thing, and I think it’s uniquely horrific to men and women in their own way. To women because it happens to them, and to men because they can’t possibly understand what it’s like to live with that threat. Deliverance is remembered for that scene for a reason (it helps that the rest of the movies is good).
So plenty of movies have rape as a dramatic fulcrum, as the precipitating event. I think Virgin Spring is a masterpiece. Irreversible is easily Gasper Noe’s best movie, and it’s hard to watch for a good reason. Most recently, Wind River comes to mind as an example. And, as I mentioned, Titus Andronicus. These stories involve rape. They use it as a dramatic tool. But do they exploit it?
In the crass sense of exploitation, there are movies that use rape cheaply, as an excuse to set something up that they obviously intended to do in the first place. I Spit on Your Grave and Last House on the Left are just set ups for a reverse slasher movie. The rape is exploited without caring about the actual impact on a woman beyond making her really mad. In fact. the rape often has to be coupled with a murder or dismemberment or something. So long as the victim can go murder a bunch of dudes, it’s all good. That’s the exploitation.
Revenge is clearly playing on those kinds of movies, but it’s self aware enough that I think it manages to be a part of the genre without necessarily sinking to the genre’s level. If that makes sense. It’s no Virgin Spring, of course. But it’s also no Last House on the Left.
It’s kind of a shame. Dickey wrote that in the novel for very specific reasons, and John Boorman was faithful to the novel, but that is all most people remember…
That was my point. Grindhouse, until the 90s, was just an Industry term for “bad. cheaply made exploitation movies”; it certainly was not a “Genre”. Only when Tarantino and others put the exploitation in bejeweled boxes and said “look at this” did it become “arty”.
I would say Irreversible is hard to watch because the cinematography is disorienting and nauseating to the point where I quit after maybe five minutes. But I assume the rape scene is also really unpleasant.
That’s kind of crazy! Noted, however. Thanks for the extra info.
@tomchick after thinking about it, I can’t remember a rape scene that wasn’t used as a method for a revenge plot. I guess I didn’t realize how much of a trope that was.
Yeah, in pat movie language, rape is something too horrific to go unavenged.
By the way, in this interview, director Coralie Fargeat articulates what I was trying to get at in the review. This is partly how she keeps Revenge from being lumped in with the trash:
