“Original Spit: A Tribute (of sorts) to Meir Zarchi’s Legacy and the Path of American Horror”

Wakka wakka?

(Warning: Contains some graphic material.)

Speaking of graves, I’m not quite so sure that silent actor Buster Keaton could have envisioned the things his grand-daughter would be doing in “Day of the Woman”. In fact, before his porkpie hat blew sky high upon his discovery of the dirty, dirty truth, he might even be inclined to mistake the film for one of those delightful runaway comedies like his “Seven Chances”, given the truculent little title might suggest the possibility of a hard-headed female love interest. Or maybe a hilarious romantic role reversal? But, for those of you who know what Meir Zarchi’s “I Spit on Your Grave” is all about and why it has remained famous all these years, then you’ll know there’s definitely a...reversal.

Perhaps I'm pussy-footing around the issue because I'm timid myself. I only put it to you gently if only to emphasize, enlighten and possibly upset the weight of a truism that's essential to the following dissection: rape ain’t something to be taken lightly. Especially when it’s in the employ of Hollywood machinery. The horror genre has already been robbed of its blackened heart and soul. Must we do more to dishonor its memory? At least the slasher flicks of the 70s had as much going for themselves. Now, as producers beat the bottom of the idea box, sacrilege is back on the menu until further notice.

For those of you unfamiliar with this movie, let me enlighten you. A woman named Jennifer moves into the backwoods to finish her novel in the solitude of a lakeside cabin. From the very beginning she is harassed and tormented by a group of local men who eventually build up their pushy advances to outright sexual assault. And a brutal one at that.

 No.

Now, that might not sound too bad but that’s only because I’m easing up on the recitation. Hell, if the movie were a stand-alone piece (which, to date, it no longer is), then I might even be inclined to even suggest it to die-hard cinephiles looking to test their meddle. No, my beef ain’t so much with Zarchi, writer and director of the genesis film in Q. My problem, as you might have guessed, is with the re-make, gleefully announced through a predictably gruesome shorthand trailer released by Anchor Bay Entertainment a month or so back.

As if the recent panoply of Wes Craven rehashes weren’t enough, they had to go and recycle a film that is, by all rights, the worst kind of film to remake. Not because of the violence per se but because what that violence would have us believe about our culture and about ourselves.

I’ve kept my mouth relatively shut on the matter  until now because it's just been a bunch of crazy idiots running around the forest splattering corn syrup around. But given the trend many of these remakes are taking, this is not only a crime against our taste as moviegoers but a crime against the genre, with classic horror films that don’t need to be remade in the first place. This is, in historical equivalence, the invasion of Poland. This is Franz Ferdinand getting shot in the head. This is the cinematic counterpart of Pearl Harbor. Only it’s a little less painful since we don't have Ben Affleck running around with a chainsaw.  Thankfully not even Hollywood is that crazy.

Days of Infamy: remake at fever pitch.

And excuse me if I’m out of line but I’m going to just call it. Modern American horror films suck. Suck BIG time. And that’s precisely because they’re all cheap knock-offs with no attempt to update them or make them relevant beyond what power tools the killers bring to play with. Pardon the movie reference, but it’s like having the geneticists from Jurassic Park using dinosaur DNA to replicate more fossils. It just doesn’t add up. In that way, we should tackle the genre dilemma with this cardinal rule: not all remakes are bad, but all bad horror films today are pretty much remakes. At least in one sense or another.

Granted, a few Fangoria subscribers will be rubbed the wrong way on this whole affair but the examples really aren’t that difficult to drum up. Take Alexander Aja’s gruesome geek show “The Hills Have Eyes” from 2006. Or what about Nelson McCormmick’s infuriatingly benign “Prom Night”? Glen Morgan’s stockingful of crap that was “Black Christmas”? We should all just forget Marcus Nispel’s stilted ‘update’ of Tobe Hooper’s masterfully crafted “Texas Chainsaw Massacre”. And that doesn’t even graze the hellspawn of 2000-era imitations and offshoots like “P2” or “Amusement”. And let’s certainly not forget the latest torture porn craze embodied in the “Hostel” franchise, where snuff fetishes masquerade as experimental and/or gutsy workmanship. Now it looks like Stephen R. Monroe will be joining that esteemed little club, right? But I say wrong. Monroe’s remake has declared open-season on what little rationality remained in Hollywood horror.

All that’s necessary to inspire “fear” these days is a clown mask, no-name actresses who are as disposable in their acting skills as they are with their wardrobe, and some guy who likes to torture people for reasons not too afar of boredom, an MO which sadly seems to stimulate a good deal of the target audience. But this is not just the same old trend of super-violent horror which trudges on with a surprisingly strong studio backing.

Why the sudden cause for alarm? Why now, you might ask? And to that I respond with equal curiosity, "to what end do should we encourage this...immaturity"?

Bear Jew is happy...

I can’t remember how many times someone has told me I’m being too sensitive about one thing or another. Whether that's about when someone pokes fun at me for my ‘slanty eyes’ or whether it’s about depictions of whatever controversial element tossed onto the silver screen. The latter especially presents a problem because, in the words of most, you know “it’s all fake”, so what’s the point of worrying about it? Yet what most people seem unable or unwilling to realize is is that watching a movie is an action. It’s a decision to absorb something at one level or another. Though that's not validation, at the very least it's a distant cousin. Whether or not it is “real” is hardly the point. When you see someone’s face caved in with a blunt instrument, is it so natural to shrug those images off just because we know it wasn’t real?

The way we react to violence has become more sophisticated steadily since the days of John Ford or chocolate syrup. No more can we depict a gunshot wound with a Wilhelm scream and desperate grasping of the torso. A slow stagger before tumbling in a cloud of dust. The envelope can only be pushed one way and that's forward. And if a movie shows a lag in that department, if we’re brought out of that illusion for even a moment, then we scoff. Hah! Yeah, it’s just a guy in a rubber suit. You can see the strings on that flying saucer. Then you yawn in such a predictable way.

So as realism evolves back into parallel collusion with fantasy, the two becoming synchronous pieces of the same twisted puzzle we call the horror genre once more, it’s more important than ever to realize the distinction between them. Between what's real and fake. Men like Tom Savini, Rob Bottin or Greg Nicotero have always been there to give us severed heads and fountains of gore as our appetites have dictated. Yet the cartoonism that is often a trademark of their work is fun in a way that takes a certain brand of maturity to enjoy. We howl when we see Bruce Campbell ask “Who’s laughing now?” as he chops his own alien hand off with a chainsaw. Our guts bust when Uma Thurman ‘turbines’ with her katanas on the dance floor of a Japanese night club. We die laughing when Paris Hilton gets a pike through the head. But are we supposed to enjoy a gang rape scene with that same kind of carelessness?

I’d be tempted to warn you about spoilers but there really isn’t all that much of a plot to divulge for “Spit”. And while Monroe has spruced up the color palette and doused the photography in 2000 Roth-esque torture tropes, there doesn’t seem to be all that much weight given to the story, despite what hardcore gorehounds will tell you.

All in my head, huh?

While most films will give even the loosest justification to insert eye-catching bits of mayhem or sex, the original “Spit’s” approach was crafted to inspire catharsis precisely through the excess of its brutality. The gang rape scene in the original is lengthy; almost 45 minutes of humiliation and sodomy. Then comes the second half, which is about as complex as the first: four castrations and a Hail Mary. These repeated violations and subsequent killings were apparently meant to cultivate a sense of disgust and sympathy for the heroine. Yet, bloodied, weary and left for dead, it might be argued (and has been by several notable critics including Mr. Roger Ebert) that Jennifer’s ordeal has less to do with female empowerment than it does with a thinly-veiled exploitation, one whose indulgent design is not all that dissimilar from pornography. In short, a lot of people see it as catering to our worst impulses as moviegoers for voyeurism, playing them off as progressive. Nay, even moral.

As Alfred Hitchcock once announced, “Revenge should be sweet. Not fattening.” In other words, though these may be simple entertainments, you shouldn’t eat your fat ass to death with garbage just because it’s right there in front of you. The horror genre of late has forgotten how to savor its own vitality and the ability to deliver experiences that are actually enthralling. Not just sickening. The need for vengeance in “Spit” has no allegiance other than to that of simple biology. Like a racial divide, the members of this conflict can’t choose their sides. It’s male versus female and the uniforms are denoted only so far as we can gawk south of the waistband. Men are disgusting, evil pigs who have to be put in their place and women are the hapless victims who must to resort to the same violent tactics as the pigs in order to achieve any kind of sanity in this world. It's a message about as effective as using your copy of 'The Feminine Mystique' to beat frat boys to death with. 

In that way, crap like this just cheapens what’s truly at stake. It’s dignity on the dollar menu. Taste for tat. Bad wordplay for a bad movie. I know those moralistic statements might ring of puritanical redundancy but it seems to be a lesson that Hollywood has rarely seen fit to learn for itself. 

But I resist the temptation to actually judge Zarchi’s piece. That battle has been fought way too many times to be relevant. The moral ambiguity alone can go either way and, if it is as people say, and Zarchi really was inspired to make the film after assisting a rape victim in New York, then perhaps the path to hell really is paved with good intentions. I can’t claim to know what the guy was thinking and I won’t try. The original 1974 experience, while grotesque, disturbing and almost mentally-challenged in its simplicity, remains provocative with the primal reactions it still inspires. It’s testimony enough that, whatever Zarchi’s aim was, his impact is undeniable.

That the new posters sport taglines like “It’s date night…”, with Jennifer stand-in Sarah Butler scowling at us with a pair of yawning hedge-clippers, you can guess that this entire thing is a sick (but veiled) attempt to cater to an otherwise non-existent female demographic. And where Zarchi was passionate about his message, the producers at Anchor Bay are just looking for a built-in market, passing off the films brutality as though it were just there as some kind of awkward joke to be bypassed on the road to the Halloween season.

At best it’s a money grab. At worst it’s self-deception. For both viewers and makers. Take for instance this post from an IMDB user asking about the upcoming film:

“[To] Anybody that saw a test-screening.

I was wondering if you can tell me some things, don't worry about it being spoilers because people are gonna see it anyways.

I'd like to know how disturbing and detailed it is.

Just go into some details about some of the first half of the movie... not the second helf [sic]... save that as a surprise!!

What are some of the intiminations [sic] at first before the brutality [sic] like rape?

When does she get nude in the movie?

1: Is she forced to strip?

2: Does she get stripped by the guys?

or

3: Is she already naked in the next gruesome scene?

What kind of torture?

1: Any wine bottle violation scene?

2: Any sadism such as cutting or tied up scenes?

or

3: Slapping or other brutallity?

What kind of sexual violence is there aside from rape?

One of the actors also stated that each character has it's [sic] own perversions, such as one videotapes the crime. What other perversions can there be?

Thanks for any details!!!”

Control fantasies are just that. Fantasies about the domination of others. Taking pleasure from the infliction of pain or submission on others, borne through inferiority complexes, issues of power or whatever. A rose by any other name: this sure as hell doesn’t sound like an invitation for progress. It sounds more like people getting vicarious hard-ons. Of course if you’d be comfortable meeting up with the inquisitive mind(s) behind such questions as those above on the street corner, lemme know and I’ll just shut up about the whole thing.

Otherwise, orient yourself in any manner you see fit. I just want to know, that if we’re going to be indulging ourselves in these kinds of ways, what’s wrong with good old fashioned porn? Why bother yourself with poor-quality ‘mainstream’ exploitation movies when you can sate those kinds of appetites just as easily with an Ethernet cable and a bottle of lotion? Blaxploitation. Sexploitation. Even the more recent phenomenon of "hentai" were all manifestations from the same issues of censorship, accessibility and availability. You couldn’t just find that stuff at your local movie house. You had to go to the red light districts in a trenchcoat at two in the morning to get that kind of kick. The origin of these types of movies arose precisely from the Grindhouse tradition, which were underground not through choice but because that was the only way.

Boo! No really, I mean it this time! BOO!

Given the relative lenience of American pictures today, this modern overlap is pointless and unneeded. Which is precisely why this crap has got to stop. Now! Want to push your psycho-sexual boundaries to the brink? Go read something interesting like the “120 Days of Sodom” and forget any of this terrible sh*t ever happened.

If it’s fear we’re looking for I’m certainly not getting it. Loud noises and things popping out of closets is surprise. It’s an evolutionarily trait. Vestigial. It’s a natural defensive reaction as our body responds to potential danger. But that’s not fear. Fear, with a capital 'eff yeah', is dread. Dreading what’s behind that locked door. Dreading if the heroine is going to make it out of this alive. Dreading the ominous silence that greets our heavy breathes in the damp corridors of 'what if'. That feeling of doom and foreboding is what we want. The sort of dread you get when the ticking mechanisms of a roller-coaster nears the peak of the drop and we can feel our guts rushing up into the cavity of our chests. D-R-E-A-D.

John Carpenter--one of the pioneers of the original slasher flick and the mind behind such notable cult classics as “The Thing” (a good remake!?) and “Escape from New York”--had this to say: “What scares me is what scares you. We're all afraid of the same things. That's why horror is such a powerful genre. All you have to do is ask yourself what frightens you and you'll know what frightens me.”

So ask yourself: are you afraid of being gang-raped every time you go into the woods? Do you always think there’s some Jigsaw killer lurking around every street corner waiting to teach you a tortuous lesson in the value of life? Obviously these would be terrible things to endure but they hardly embody the rational fears that we're absorbed with on a daily basis. If anything they are just extremes with kernels of truth barely fitted to the center. Yeah, the realism and effects have gotten better over the years. But  so what? The resonance and dread have faded into nothing more than bloody memories. Ones that need responsible revivals.

By confronting our darkest fears we can, in a way, learn and adapt from them.  But the blades with which Michael Myers or Freddy Krueger skewer their victims are sadly double-edged ones. And it’s a responsibility that should be trusted to the sure and steady hands of innovators. Not the shaky clutches of copycats.

----A.H.

For a list of other controversial films, stay tuned!