FEARnet's Final Girl Friday: Jennifer Hills

It’s a new FEARnet feature dedicated to the awesome women of horror, the final girls. A label first coined by film scholar Carol Clover, the Final Girl embarks on a battle against a monster which ultimately causes a personal transformation. In other words, this girl drives the story, fights the slasher, and at the end, is a changed person.

This week’s final girl is Jennifer Hills from I Spit on Your Grave (Day of the Woman), an extremely controversial film in its time and one that many still find difficult to watch. It’s held up as a classic example of a rape/revenge film and in some circles considered to be a positive force in the criticism of mainstream movie making, a reaction to violence against women and a fully feminist film.

Movie: I Spit on Your Grave
Year: 1978
Final Girl: Jennifer Hills
Best Kill: In classic final girl style, Jennifer takes emotion involved with the atrocities that have been committed against her and uses it as fuel for what turns into extremely bloody, and ultimately cathartic revenge. She tricks and torments the perpetrators, eventually castrating one, hacking one up with an axe and in the finale, hitting one with a motorboat. The motorboat finale is the scene I would pick for best kill, but it’s been blocked for embedding. Instead, watch the trailer below.