Remaking Rape-Revenge: The Last House on the Left (1972/2009) and I Spit on Your Grave (1978/2010)

Abstract

In order to illustrate the shifts between the classic and revisionist cycles of the genre, this chapter compares two canonical rape-revenge films with their recent remakes: The Last House on the Left (Wes Craven, 1972/ Dennis Iliadis, 2009) and I Spit on Your Grave (Meir Zarchi, 1978/Steven R. Monroe, 2010).¹ As canonical texts with both contemporary remakes and their own ongoing cult status, these films attest to the enduring relevance and popularity of the rape-revenge genre.² This chapter identifies key generic elements of rape-revenge instituted by these texts and uses the comparison between original and remake as a barometer of the genre’s continuities and changes. Later chapters delve into the diversity and the complexities of the revisionist genre—its more marginal, hybrid, and transnational manifestations—but I begin in this first chapter with the proposition that these films are the prototypical, or definitional, texts for the (Western) rape-revenge genre and, as such, can be used to elucidate the central features and issues of the genre.