Revenge
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
Rape / Revenge is a genre of exploitation films that was particularly popular in the 1970s. Rape / revenge movies all follow the same three-act structure:
- Act I: A woman is gang raped, tortured, and left for dead.
- Act II: The woman survives and rehabilitates herself.
- Act III: The woman brutally murders all of her rapists.
In some cases, the woman is killed at the end of the first act, and the "revenge" is carried out by her family. The most well-known rape / revenge movie is I Spit On Your Grave. Other notable rape / revenge movies include They Call Her One Eye, and Last House on the Left.
Although rape / revenge films ubiquitously claim to have a moral that the rapists "get what they deserve", the genre is frequently criticized for using that moral to justify creating exploitive and lurid rape scenes, followed by exploitive scenes of gruesome violence.
