Camille Keaton on the legacy of I Spit on Your… | Little White Lies

Women In Film

Camille Keaton on the lega­cy of I Spit on Your Grave

04 Oct 2020

Words by Elena Lazic

A woman with long, wild hair and a pained expression, covered in dirt or blood. She stands amongst the trees in a dark, moody forest setting.
A woman with long, wild hair and a pained expression, covered in dirt or blood. She stands amongst the trees in a dark, moody forest setting.
The actor reflects on her role in the con­tro­ver­sial rape revenge clas­sic from 1978.

I Spit on Your Grave did not exact­ly take the world of cin­e­ma by storm when it was released, first open­ing in a hand­ful of dri­ve-ins in Amer­i­ca and then in grind­house cin­e­mas in 1980, two years after it was com­plet­ed. There is good rea­son to believe that the film would have nev­er reached a wider audi­ence were it not for the crit­ics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, who waged a war against what they per­ceived to be a total­ly despi­ca­ble film and, accord­ing to Ebert, the worst he had ever seen.

Ebert sure didn’t like it, I heard him talk about it and it real­ly hurt my feel­ings,” says Camille Keaton, the star of the film. But [writer/​director] Meir [Zarchi] told me not to wor­ry about it: Camille, this is the best pub­lic­i­ty that we could ever get!’ And he was right. That made every­body want to go see it.”

In the film, Keaton plays Jen­nifer Hills, a young woman who escapes the chaos of New York City by going on a solo writ­ing retreat in an iso­lat­ed house upstate. After a few brief moments of bliss­ful soli­tude, beau­ti­ful­ly cap­tured by Zarchi, Jen­nifer is raped and left for dead by four local men in an extend­ed sequence of rare bru­tal­i­ty – the source of the con­tro­ver­sy around the film, which saw Siskel and Ebert go so far as to stand out­side the­atres advis­ing view­ers to buy tick­ets to any oth­er film instead.

Although Keaton says that she always knew the film would be con­tro­ver­sial, she is also very can­did about her part in it. It’s my pro­fes­sion; I do my work and I do what I’m sup­posed to do. I don’t know how oth­er peo­ple see it.” She explains that her main rea­son for tak­ing on the role at the time was that after appear­ing in a few gial­lo films in Italy, she was eager to make a film in Amer­i­ca. Also, what attract­ed me to it was that there’s quite a few dif­fer­ent things in the film for my char­ac­ter to do. In the begin­ning she’s not hav­ing any prob­lems, then she gets attacked, and then she goes on her revenge. And that was fun, espe­cial­ly the revenge part!”

Person in boat on calm water, surrounded by lush greenery.

Indeed, I Spit on Your Grave is just as well-known for the scene of the attack on Hills as it is for the ret­rib­u­to­ry vio­lence then inflict­ed by the young hero­ine on her assail­lants. Lur­ing them one by one, she pro­ceeds to mur­der them in increas­ing­ly spe­cif­ic and imag­i­na­tive ways. I espe­cial­ly enjoyed doing the motor­boat scene,” Keaton reflects, refer­ring to the moment when her char­ac­ter chas­es down one of her attack­ers in a speed­boat, steer­ing the engine with one hand and hold­ing a small axe in the oth­er. We did those in the last cou­ple of days of film­ing. I’d nev­er oper­at­ed a motor­boat before!”

Though she evi­dent­ly had fun mak­ing the film, Keaton explains that she ini­tial­ly wor­ried that I Spit on Your Grave might not be the best way to kick­start her act­ing career in Amer­i­ca. But then I stopped wor­ry­ing about that, and I thought I should do it. A lot of famous actors out of Hol­ly­wood have done films in their past that they prob­a­bly don’t like to talk about very much. I don’t think that kind of thing real­ly affects you.”

Time has ulti­mate­ly val­i­dat­ed Keaton’s deci­sion: not only is she still act­ing, but the film’s new Blu-ray release (which also includes the 2010 remake, two sub­se­quent sequels and the most recent addi­tion to the fran­chise, Deja Vu, in which Keaton repris­es her role) only solid­i­fies its already stur­dy rep­u­ta­tion as a cult clas­sic and one of the best rape revenge movies ever made.

I Spit on Your Grave: The Com­plete Col­lec­tion is avail­able on Blu-ray and DVD on 5 Octo­ber cour­tesy of Kalei­do­scope Home Entertainment.

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