In 1978, Meir Zarchi’s then dismissed Day of the Woman crawled into theaters and disappeared shortly afterward. In 1981, the film was re-released under the far more interesting and provocative title I Spit on Your Grave, and gained enough notice to cause decent, upstanding citizens (who cared) to call it a festival of misogynistic violence. It remains one of the most jarring movies of its age, a brutal and strangely feminine film that not even the most craven, jaded, greedy Hollywood producer/recycler would think of remaking today. I think it’s superior to Deliverance.
Fast forward to today, where plastic schlock like Eli Roth’s Hostel is held up as the new face of horror (when it’s not competing with the J-Horror we’ve been led to believe constitutes imported brilliance). Pure garbage masquerading as a product of the fearful, paranoid times in which (we are told) we live.
So much junk has been produced in the wake of Hostel (and Rob Zombie and the Texas Chainsaw remakes), one could honestly believe that a new horror era is upon us. It’s a new era, indeed. An era of derivative shit.
Next up: how American blacks sold out to the white-horror model, yielding even dumber films than those in which they were once relegated to tokens. Why torture horror is incredibly not scary. Why inbred yokels can never replace an original idea. How even Ireland’s gorgeous landscape can’t save a horror movie.