“Thriller” or “They Called Her One Eye” is a film that doesn’t just inspire our beautiful avenging angel Frigga to seek revenge, but it’s so brutal you’ll want revenge on someone, too. Frigga is a woman that’s had a horrible life, that’s for sure. As a young girl she was molested and raped by a pervert on the way home, and grew up quite traumatized and mute from the experience. Bringing down her guard one day, she meets a suave man who wines and dines her. And then she’s properly drugged. She’s also torn from her family, and forced into prostitution by the gent, who makes an example after she rebels, and cuts her eye out. We’re forced for a good time to watch Frigga suffer through her capture, as she’s forced into prostitution, engages in all sorts of devious sexual acts, and Vibenius seems almost obsessed with Christina Lindberg’s body, which is not surprising.

Lindberg was utterly gorgeous and stunning, with a curvaceous body, simple face, and ability to win the audience over without a bit of dialogue. There’s hardcore sex very much in the area of an average sexploitation film as she endures punishment and sick desires from each of her clients, and Frigga slowly develops an addiction to heroin. Sick of the lifestyle after viewing the vicious murder of a friend, she trains herself in every form of self defense she can. She learns to stunt drive, she becomes a marksman, learns martial arts, and even learns survival from soldiers. This inspires her to seek pure sweet vengeance on her tormentors, and she makes every one pay as she hunts them down in their haunts and destroys each individual, eventually leading her to her original tormentor, which inspires a vicious finale that provides Frigga with the closure she desperately needs. The character is broken, beaten and a mere shell in the end, but at least she can be this in peace.

Meir Zarchi’s “I Spit on Your Grave” or as it’s alternately called “Day of the Woman,” is an excruciating film to sit through. It’s so excruciating in fact that audiences for it are still split to this day. Many love it for its unflinching brutality and sheer vengeance wreaked by its female protagonist Jennifer, while others view it as nothing more than a sadistic montage of rape and misogyny that Zarchi presumably revels in. I love it, for its ability to still inspire pure vitriol years after this film lost its appeal to mainstream audiences. For those of us who do love this, “I Spit on Your Grave” is a flawed, but utterly powerful account of a woman who is ravaged, victimized, beaten, and violently gang raped without anyone to help her, and she can only rely on the exhaustion of her tormentors which allows her to gather her bearings and seek revenge on them one by one.

Camille Keaton is a gorgeous woman. Slim and slender with so much sexual appeal to her, Jennifer returns again rebuilt, and hell bent on making her rapists pay. She slowly appeals to the sexual desires of her assailants and gathers them for vicious murders one by one, up until the finale involving a motor boat and a head. But quite obviously the most memorable and painful moment in the history of cinema involves Jennifer seducing the leader of the pack, engaging in masturbation with him in a bathtub, and then proceeding in castrating him without his notice. That is until he sees the blood flowing, and the scene just becomes much more painful with every second. “I Spit on Your Grave” is still a powerful and effective revenge film, and one that still angers many. And it’s also a hell of a revenge flick.

Jim Hemphill’s indie horror film is by far one of the best revenge films of the millennium for the simple fact that it homages many classic films without making it obvious. Not to mention he rarely directly references a film, even though the allusions are there. The character Michelle is tortured and tormented merely for… well, being herself. Physically, she’s a specimen that inspires hate and envy from the females of an elite group of high schoolers she attempts to befriend. She’s statuesque, blond, bosomy, and utterly sexy without even trying, and mentally she’s an utterly intelligent and meek girl who wants nothing more than to be accepted. And she pays for it by being drugged and gang raped during a party, and then completely humiliated by the girls of the group who find no sympathy in her incident. The rape here is difficult to sit through as star Hennessy pulls off her rape with utter conviction.

She screams for help, is sadly muffled and even jolts and bursts with a scream upon her attacker Aaron penetrating the virginal victim with merciless eagerness. To add insult to injury, her mother displays no sympathy to her plight, and no one will believe her story when she begs for help. So she takes on another form as a sex siren dressed in her now infamous sexual lure and lollipop that becomes a magnet for her targets in no time. She soon seduces and entices all the men of the group, and succeeds in inflicting some rather painful and gruesome forms of payback; some of which includes bitten off members, and sodomy with assorted objects. Which all leads to a bloody finale where she picks off the rest of the group one by one at a Halloween party donning a Jason mask, and makes her last stand in a blood soaked rage leading to one of the most tragic endings to one of the more tragic characters in the revenge genre who sadly doesn’t win out in the end.

Sure, upon first glance, you wouldn’t call this a revenge film. In fact, it’s rarely if ever called a revenge film, nor is it categorized as one. It’s not stylish, or action packed, or even frightening. But it is disturbing, and is definitely violent. Many wrote this off as mere Oscar bait, but director Field bases his film on a slow deliberately paced thriller that begins as a relationship that starts on the wrong foot and ends in bloodshed. “In the Bedroom” is an excellent little mounting gem that displays the wrath of mourning parents in the face of defeat. While it’s not Kevin Bacon gun slinging, it does reveal the lengths some folks will go to to ensure retribution to the spirit of their loved ones. Matt and Ruth Fowler, local working class folks for their New England town are embroiled in their son’s newest relationship with a young single mom.

Their son Frank, a young man with a lot of potential, engages in an affair with Natalie, who is recently divorced with her abusive husband. The problem is Natalie’s ex Richard is very much apart of her life, especially with Frank around, and he finds himself constantly intimidated by the older man who feels threatened by Frank. But after a confrontation, Frank is violently murdered by Richard and sure enough is out on bail. The path is set as to add insult to injury, Richard constantly comes across them in town, and Matt and Ruth decide to do something about it, leading to an awfully grim and unsettling finale in which Matt takes matters into his own hands ending the life of Richard and finally settling their anger and loathing towards their son’s fate. The tone, set with the rather humdrum reaction by the couple in the closing scene, makes this a rather morbid picture of a chain of events that lead to a vicious payback from a once mild mannered couple, the likes of which not seen since "Last House on the Left."

The benefits of “Carrie” is not that it’s one of Brian DePalma’s absolute best films, but we also get to see many sadistic bastards murdered in a haze of firey rage that they so rightfully deserve. Sure, lives are lost, innocent and inept, but Carrie White gets her revenge, and folks who were once bullied cheered and hoped that someday this would be their own retribution. All the while Stephen King gives us more of a reason to fear the quiet ones pushed much too far. Carrie White is a girl who means no harm and yet is always tortured. In the rather shocking opening shot, we witness an angelic Carrie taking a shower which dissolves into blood dripping down her inner thigh. She’s horrified to discover it’s her first period, and she’s punished for it by the girls in her locker room who throw tampons at her and torment her.

Carrie is a girl who is raised by a religious fanatic of a mother, and really seeks understanding which she gets in the form of her gym teacher who just wants the best for her, and her acquaintance Sue, who seeks to become Carrie’s guardian when suspicion of a plan by the local elite group of snobs arises. As prom night emerges, Carrie is purposely asked out by Sue’s boyfriend in an attempt to give her confidence, and is elected prom queen which sets the stage for Carrie’s last bout of bloody payback to her tauntors as she’s doused with pig’s blood which sets off her mental functions of powerful telekinesis. In one of the most brilliant sequences ever made, Carrie’s emotional responses shut down as she wreaks havoc on the prom goers inflicting painful and bloody deaths, and then brings down her primary harassers Chris and Billy in a violent ball of flames as they attempt to kill her. Though Carrie is one of the many tragic figures of the Revenge genre, she finally struck back at her demons through her power, and scored one for those punished for simply existing.