Editorials
[Through Her Eyes] The History of Rape-Revenge Films and the Importance of Female Directors
Rape has been used as a device since the start of cinema. In most cases, the female victim is assaulted by one or more villains, and then either she or a male figure in her life seeks revenge for her violation. Think Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring, Alfred Hitchcock’s Revenge, and Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left. Rape-revenge films are a source of spectacle and violence where women are brutalized, then they, or a male avenger, in turn, brutalize their rapists. They are shocking films often directed by men that are horrifying but at times empowering.
However, in this column, I will be shifting the focus onto rape-revenge films directed by women and how they interpret rape on screen. Each month I’ll be diving into films such as Revenge, American Mary, and M.F.A. to discuss how they use existing rape-revenge tropes to create new, potentially less exploitative ways of representing sexual violence against women in horror films. Before launching into how female directors are changing how rape-revenge narratives, however, it’s important to understand the history of rape-revenge films in horror, their tropes, and how they are viewed by wider audiences, especially women.
Early horror rape-revenge films rose to prominence in the 1970s and were immediately met with controversy. Their brutal portrayals of sexual violence earned them the title “Video Nasties,” which was bequeathed to these films by the British Board of Film Censors in 1984. They were too explicit to be sold in stores because they “glorified the act of rape and inspired ‘copycat’ crimes.” Films such as I Spit On Your Grave, Ms. 45, and The Last House on the Left earned cult followings and horrified large audiences.
These films have several key tropes. Most notably, a two-part narrative structure focuses on the woman’s rape and her subsequent revenge. These rapes usually involve multiple men who do not know the female protagonist. After the rape, the narrative shifts to focus on how the wronged woman will enact her revenge. In terms of iconography, rape-revenge films include sequences of screaming, dirt-covered women, sexually-repulsive men, and a transformation of said female victim into a sexual being. But most important to this project is how the rape-revenge genre utilizes the male gaze to objectify the female body during and after her rape, playing up the trope of transformation into a spectacle of violence and sex.
The male gaze, as theorized by Laura Mulvey, is connected to Freud’s view of scopophilia, or the pleasure derived from looking at an object. Mulvey says Freud, “associated scopophilia with taking other people as objects, subjecting them to a controlling and curious gaze.” Mulvey uses this psychoanalytic framework to establish this key cinematic term and how the film camera’s “conscious aim [is] always to eliminate intrusive camera presence and prevent a distancing awareness in the audience.” The male gaze is used to eroticize the female body on screen and make her a spectacle to be watched and figuratively consumed. Female bodies become a place of male fantasy and a place to project their desires. This leads to viewing the female body in pieces, with the camera focusing on a hand, mouth, or leg, to make parts of the body eroticized objects. These moments attempt to recreate the act of looking at the female body, seemingly reinforcing the ways in which the female body should and is viewed by men. The male gaze is prevalent in the rape-revenge film to eroticize the survivor before, during, and after her assault, constantly subjecting her to the control of the male gaze.
This is seen in I Spit On Your Grave (1978) both before and after Jennifer Hills’ rape. At the film’s beginning, Jennifer’s body is the focus of a man pumping gas; as he looks up and down her body, the camera mimics his gaze as it slowly pans up from her feet to her butt to her chest, painting a picture of male desire. Dressed modestly, she talks to him politely about her stay as he gazes at her body, foreshadowing horrifying acts to come. After her rape, this modest outfit is replaced with a sheer white dress that clings to her body and reveals her nipples and legs; her body continues to be eroticized and is viewed as such even though she has just endured a horrific assault. Even in moments of violence, Jennifer is meant to be viewed as a sexual figure, which is underscored by her use of sexuality to enact her revenge. This can be seen in other rape-revenge films such as Ms. 45 and The Last House on the Left.
Importantly, there are readings of these films that find power within exploitation, especially in the female-centered rape-revenge narrative. Sarah Projansky’s Watching Rape argues “that feminist analyses of rape films can be potential sites for activism against sexual violence because they make a taboo issue visible, but that in order to end rape we must engage in debates about it.” I Spit On Your Grave is read by feminist film critics such as Alexandra Heller-Nicholas as a film that portrays rape as “brutal, unglamorous, and unrelentingly cruel.” These films, to film theorist Carol Clover, were seen as a way to process the modern debate between sexual violence and the law, though it presents us with contradictions. The rape-revenge film, not unlike the slasher, is a film usually made by and for men. But, unlike the slasher, the rape-revenge film articulates feminist politics as the woman takes revenge against the men who rape her; these films do portray female power and some kind of reclamation of agency.
Clover even goes as far to say that if a woman made these films, they would be seen as “male-bashing.” In Clover’s eyes, if a woman made a film about women’s pain and trauma, it would go too far in the eyes of the young male spectator. However, even with these films focused on female power in the face of trauma, which articulates a type of feminist politics and grapples with what it means to represent rape, they still depend on the torture and explicit exploitation of the female body to shape the narrative.
However, Clover was writing this in her 1992 book, Men, Women, and Chainsaws, when there were virtually no rape-revenge films directed by women. Now, films like Revenge, M.F.A. and Holiday utilize cinematic mechanics to investigate and address how rape is presented on film. It may adopt fantastical elements, such as Jen’s miraculous survival in Revenge, but these films still begin to address the reality of sexual assault, from PTSD to how in most cases, women are raped by someone close to them.
These films mark the beginning of a new cycle in horror that speaks to a current cultural moment that, in being dominated by #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, attempts to work more in believing and supporting sexual assault survivors; they work to reclaim pre-existing exploitative tropes to create a potentially more empowering narrative that doesn’t solely rely on the violation of the female body at the hands of strange men. Through their work, these directors, such as Coralie Fargeat and Natalie Leite, work to create a new kind of gaze that refutes the piercing male gaze and views their female subjects with care, nuance, and power.
Here’s what we know about Longlegs so far. It’s coming in July of 2024, it’s directed by Osgood Perkins (The Blackcoat’s Daughter), and it features Maika Monroe (It Follows) as an FBI agent who discovers a personal connection between her and a serial killer who has ties to the occult. We know that the serial killer is going to be played by none other than Nicolas Cage and that the marketing has been nothing short of cryptic excellence up to this point.
At the very least, we can assume NEON’s upcoming film is going to be a dark, horror-fueled hunt for a serial killer. With that in mind, let’s take a look at five disturbing serial killers-versus-law-enforcement stories to get us even more jacked up for Longlegs.
MEMORIES OF MURDER (2003)
This South Korean film directed by Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-ho (Parasite) is a wild ride. The film features a handful of cops who seem like total goofs investigating a serial killer who brutally murders women who are out and wearing red on rainy evenings. The cops are tired, unorganized, and border on stoner comedy levels of idiocy. The movie at first seems to have a strange level of forgiveness for these characters as they try to pin the murders on a mentally handicapped person at one point, beating him and trying to coerce him into a confession for crimes he didn’t commit. A serious cop from the big city comes down to help with the case and is able to instill order.
But still, the killer evades and provokes not only the police but an entire country as everyone becomes more unstable and paranoid with each grizzly murder and sex crime.
I’ve never seen a film with a stranger tone than Memories of Murder. A movie that deals with such serious issues but has such fallible, seemingly nonserious people at its core. As the film rolls on and more women are murdered, you realize that a lot of these faults come from men who are hopeless and desperate to catch a killer in a country that – much like in another great serial killer story, Citizen X – is doing more harm to their plight than good.
Major spoiler warning: What makes Memories of Murder somehow more haunting is that it’s loosely based on a true story. It is a story where the real-life killer hadn’t been caught at the time of the film’s release. It ends with our main character Detective Park (Song Kang-ho), now a salesman, looking hopelessly at the audience (or judgingly) as the credits roll. Over sixteen years later the killer, Lee Choon Jae, was found using DNA evidence. He was already serving a life sentence for another murder. Choon Jae even admitted to watching the film during his court case saying, “I just watched it as a movie, I had no feeling or emotion towards the movie.”
In the end, Memories of Murder is a must-see for fans of the subgenre. The film juggles an almost slapstick tone with that of a dark murder mystery and yet, in the end, works like a charm.
CURE (1997)
If you watched 2023’s Hypnotic and thought to yourself, “A killer who hypnotizes his victims to get them to do his bidding is a pretty cool idea. I only wish it were a better movie!” Boy, do I have great news for you.
In Cure (spoilers ahead), a detective (Koji Yakusho) and forensic psychologist (Tsuyoshi Ujiki) team up to find a serial killer who’s brutally marking their victims by cutting a large “X” into their throats and chests. Not just a little “X” mind you but a big, gross, flappy one.
At each crime scene, the murderer is there and is coherent and willing to cooperate. They can remember committing the crimes but can’t remember why. Each of these murders is creepy on a cellular level because we watch the killers act out these crimes with zero emotion. They feel different than your average movie murder. Colder….meaner.
What’s going on here is that a man named Mamiya (Masato Hagiwara) is walking around and somehow manipulating people’s minds using the flame of a lighter and a strange conversational cadence to hypnotize them and convince them to murder. The detectives eventually catch him but are unable to understand the scope of what’s happening before it’s too late.
If you thought dealing with a psychopathic murderer was hard, imagine dealing with one who could convince you to go home and murder your wife. Not only is Cure amazingly filmed and edited but it has more horror elements than your average serial killer film.
MANHUNTER (1986)
In the first-ever Hannibal Lecter story brought in front of the cameras, Detective Will Graham (William Petersen) finds his serial killers by stepping into their headspace. This is how he caught Hannibal Lecter (played here by Brian Cox), but not without paying a price. Graham became so obsessed with his cases that he ended up having a mental breakdown.
In Manhunter, Graham not only has to deal with Lecter playing psychological games with him from behind bars but a new serial killer in Francis Dolarhyde (in a legendary performance by Tom Noonan). One who likes to wear pantyhose on his head and murder entire families so that he can feel “seen” and “accepted” in their dead eyes. At one point Lecter even finds a way to gift Graham’s home address to the new killer via personal ads in a newspaper.
Michael Mann (Heat, Thief) directed a film that was far too stylish for its time but that fans and critics both would have loved today in the same way we appreciate movies like Nightcrawler or Drive. From the soundtrack to the visuals to the in-depth psychoanalysis of an insanely disturbed protagonist and the man trying to catch him. We watch Graham completely lose his shit and unravel as he takes us through the psyche of our killer. Which is as fascinating as it is fucked.
Manhunter is a classic case of a serial killer-versus-detective story where each side of the coin is tarnished in their own way when it’s all said and done. As Detective Park put it in Memories of Murder, “What kind of detective sleeps at night?”
INSOMNIA (2002)
Maybe it’s because of the foggy atmosphere. Maybe it’s because it’s the only film in Christopher Nolan’s filmography he didn’t write as well as direct. But for some reason, Insomnia always feels forgotten about whenever we give Nolan his flowers for whatever his latest cinematic achievement is.
Whatever the case, I know it’s no fault of the quality of the film, because Insomnia is a certified serial killer classic that adds several unique layers to the detective/killer dynamic. One way to create an extreme sense of unease with a movie villain is to cast someone you’d never expect in the role, which is exactly what Nolan did by casting the hilarious and sweet Robin Williams as a manipulative child murderer. He capped that off by casting Al Pacino as the embattled detective hunting him down.
This dynamic was fascinating as Williams was creepy and clever in the role. He was subdued in a way that was never boring but believable. On the other side of it, Al Pacino felt as if he’d walked straight off the set of 1995’s Heat and onto this one. A broken and imperfect man trying to stop a far worse one.
Aside from the stellar acting, Insomnia stands out because of its unique setting and plot. Both working against the detective. The investigation is taking place in a part of Alaska where the sun never goes down. This creates a beautiful, nightmare atmosphere where by the end of it, Pacino’s character is like a Freddy Krueger victim in the leadup to their eventual, exhausted death as he runs around town trying to catch a serial killer while dealing with the debilitating effects of insomnia. Meanwhile, he’s under an internal affairs investigation for planting evidence to catch another child killer and accidentally shoots his partner who he just found out is about to testify against him. The kicker here is that the killer knows what happened that fateful day and is using it to blackmail Pacino’s character into letting him get away with his own crimes.
If this is the kind of “what would you do?” intrigue we get with the story from Longlegs? We’ll be in for a treat. Hoo-ah.
FALLEN (1998)
Fallen may not be nearly as obscure as Memories of Murder or Cure. Hell, it boasts an all-star cast of Denzel Washington, John Goodman, Donald Sutherland, James Gandolfini, and Elias Koteas. But when you bring it up around anyone who has seen it, their ears perk up, and the word “underrated” usually follows. And when it comes to the occult tie-ins that Longlegs will allegedly have? Fallen may be the most appropriate film on this entire list.
In the movie, Detective Hobbs (Washington) catches vicious serial killer Edgar Reese (Koteas) who seems to place some sort of curse on him during Hobbs’ victory lap. After Reese is put to death via electric chair, dead bodies start popping up all over town with his M.O., eventually pointing towards Hobbs as the culprit. After all, Reese is dead. As Hobbs investigates he realizes that a fallen angel named Azazel is possessing human body after human body and using them to commit occult murders. It has its eyes fixated on him, his co-workers, and family members; wrecking their lives or flat-out murdering them one by one until the whole world is damned.
Mixing a demonic entity into a detective/serial killer story is fascinating because it puts our detective in the unsettling position of being the one who is hunted. How the hell do you stop a demon who can inhabit anyone they want with a mere touch?!
Fallen is a great mix of detective story and supernatural horror tale. Not only are we treated to Denzel Washington as the lead in a grim noir (complete with narration) as he uncovers this occult storyline, but we’re left with a pretty great “what would you do?” situation in a movie that isn’t afraid to take the story to some dark places. Especially when it comes to the way the film ends. It’s a great horror thriller in the same vein as Frailty but with a little more detective work mixed in.
Look for Longlegs in theaters on July 12, 2024.
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