The genre stems from a fascination with
revenge in western culture, beginning with the descriptive
tragedies of the Greeks and continuing in
Elizabethan England (by
Thomas Kyd and
William Shakespeare). This desire for revenge or to experience revenge has also been the catalyst of many horror films and novels in general, not just those dealing with sexual assault and rape. The hybrid-genre's most well known and well labeled works are from the latter half of the 20th century, except the 1931's film
A Woman Branded, which is about a woman who was raped and contracted
venereal disease and seeks revenge on the man who raped her. It is possibly considered as the earliest precursor of the "
rape and revenge" subgenre, retrospectively
. The Virgin Spring In 1960, the term ''
rape and revenge" was coined in
Ingmar Bergman's
The Virgin Spring, considered the earliest film and precursor of the subgenre; the film is about a father who seeks vengeance on three herdsmen for the rape and murder of his daughter. This film, however, is technically a "Rape and Avenge" film as it is not the victim herself that does the killings. According to director
Ingmar Bergman, inspiration for the film came from the legend of Per Töre, which he read as a student. Per Töre has seven daughters who fall victim to seven rapists. He was also heavily influenced by
Japanese cinema, being particularly a fan of
Rashomon (1950).
The Phantom of Soho The 1964 movie
The Phantom of Soho, based on a book by
Bryan Edgar Wallace, was the first movie to have the rape-victim herself become a serial revenge killer. The production company
CCC infused this storyline later into the iconography of the
Giallo in co-producing the seminal
The Bird with the Crystal Plumage that has a similar theme. The 1973's film
Thriller – A Cruel Picture definitively codified the ethics and development of the genre, although the film was banned in Sweden, where it was made.
Influences and pioneers '', depicted rape and graphic violence, drew substantial attention and is considered one of the pioneers in the subgenre.|175x175px The U.S. release of
The Virgin Spring inspired
Wes Craven's debut film
The Last House on the Left, which is based on both Bergman's film and the Swedish ballad
Töres döttrar i Wänge. Like Bergman's film, the plot of
The Last House on the Left features the victim's parents exacting vengeance on their daughter's rapists. In some respects, the film was more brutal and controversial than Bergman's film, due to explicit rape and mutilation. Filmmakers in the United States continued to produce rape and revenge films throughout the 1970s including
Sam Peckinpah's
Straw Dogs,
Michael Winner's
Death Wish,
Lamont Johnson's
Lipstick, and
Meir Zarchi's
I Spit on Your Grave; some of them were mainly distributed through
mainstream theaters, while others were screened independently in
underground cinemas as
exploitation films. In addition to American films, rape and revenge films have been made in the Philippines (e.g.;
Lino Brocka's
Insiang), Japan (e.g.,
Takashi Ishii's
Freeze Me), Finland, Russia (
The Voroshilov Sharpshooter), Argentina (e.g., ''I'll Never Die Alone
; [2008]; original title: No Moriré Sola
), and Norway (e.g., The Whore [2009]; original title: Hora
).'' Several female directors created films in this genre including
Virginie Despentes'
Baise-moi (2000),
Coralie Fargeat's
Revenge (2017),
Jennifer Kent's
The Nightingale (2018), and
Emerald Fennell's
Promising Young Woman (2020). The latter film revitalized the subgenre and garnered multiple awards and nominations
. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and
Promising Young Woman are subverted examples of the subgenre where a character was raped and murdered off-screen before the protagonist seeks revenge, although both films lack the use of graphic violence and onscreen rape. Some movies are usually not regarded as belonging to the subgenre, but may feature a "
rape and revenge" subplot as part of their story. These include
Stanley Kubrick's
Clockwork Orange,
Gaspar Noé's
Irréversible,
Quentin Tarantino's
Pulp Fiction and
Kill Bill,
Lars von Trier's
Dogville, and
Paul Verhoeven's
Elle.
Explanation of the subgenre Rape and revenge films generally follow a
three-act structure; • Rape: The main character / victim is (violently) raped and may be further abused,
tortured, or left for dead. • Return: There are two potential outcomes of the violence against the victim: • The protagonist is
devastated by the victim's death (if the protagonist is not themself the victim). • The victim survives, but barely, and
rehabilitates themself. • Revenge: The main character/victim, sometimes with the assistance of a third-party, engages in a plot to exact vengeance and eliminate their rapist(s). In
Irréversible, the structure was reversed, with the first part depicting the revenge before tracing back the events which led to that point.
Roger Ebert argues that, by using this structure as well as a false revenge,
Irréversible cannot be classified as an exploitation film, as no exploitation of the subject matter takes place. == Notable films ==