Demi Moore has had a career glow up after her Oscar-nominated movie The Substance became such a hit. But that asset isn’t what people are focusing on lately. Let’s turn the clock back 47 years and look at a poster for I Spit on Your Grave. This was a sexploitation revenge movie directed by Meir Zarchi. It was the 70s. a decade filled with shocking movies such as The Exorcist and Jaws.
I Spit on Your Grave was very controversial at the time. Apparently a woman seeking to avenge her sexual assailants was just too shocking for theatergoers of the time. The Motion Picture Association of America originally gave it an R rating, but Zarchi added a rape scene and it ended up with an X rating. But he edited it down a little more and eventually got an R.
Zarchi talked to Fangoria in 1984 and discussed all the controversy surrounding the film.
“Frankly, I’m not concerned whether it receives bad press or not. It doesn’t touch me one way or the other whatsoever. If you told me that the public does not like it and the critics like it, then there is something very, very bad about that. Who am I reaching? Three-hundred critics around the United States, or 2,000 around the world? It’s really the public that counts, the 20 million who have seen the film around the globe.”
The poster shows a bloodied woman in tattered clothes facing away from the camera. The rumor is that it’s Demi Moore. Apparently, in her memoir, Inside Out, she admitted that it was her in the one sheet and the rest is history.
But the documentary Growing Up With I Spit on Your Grave came out the same year as her book, and in that film, it’s still unclear.
This award-winning doc is available to stream for free on Amazon, Roku and Plex and it deeps dives into the cult classic, thigh contoversty and all. It’s fun to see everyone talk about being involved in such a controversial classic.