I know what you're thinking (yes, I can read minds; oine of my many talents). You're thinking "Lillian, you've lost your damn mind. First of all, this movie is from 1989, which means it's at least 10 years past the "Grindhouse" era, second, it's a made for TV movie, so it never played in any theater, Grindhouse or otherwise, and thirdly, it's a made for TV melodrama with Jaclyn Smith...how in any way does this resemble a "Grindhouse Flick"?" I'm glad you asked that
(or rather thought it) because this whole review is going to be about me making a case for how this movie DOES fit into the exploitation/Grindhouse tradition, and for why it's sad that this movie is so overlooked. First off, yes, this movie was made in 1989 and it stars Jaclyn Smith as a cop returning to the backwoods town where she grew up to "settle the score" with someone from her past. I sure as hell had no idea that this movie would ever resemble a grindhouse flick (I didn't even know what grindhouse was back when I first saw this movie in 1992, and neither did my mother, plus there's no way in hell she would have let me watch this movie if she'd had a hint what it was about...this is the woman who flew into a rage when she caught me looking longingly at "I Spit on Your Grave" in the video store when I was 10). No, I thought what most of you probably think, that this is some cheap, stupid little romantic drama that's not worth my time. Right from the first ten minutes of the movie, though, I could see that I was wrong.

The movie opens with a teenage girl running through a field on a farm, and she runs into a shed (a "cold room" where people store their canned goods in order to help them cool down from the canning process) and a man knocks her out and ties her up. In fact, he doesn't just tie her, he hog-ties her, where her wrists are tied behind her back and her ankles are tied together, too, with a rope looped around her neck tied to her wrists, and then her ankles and wrists are bound together behind her back with another length of rope. This is notable both because it's painful and can result in death if the victim is left tied this way too long, and because this is a method used to subdue animals, which makes it doubly disturbing to see it done to a human. Then after he ties her this way, the man rapes her. The screen fades to black and then we see Jaclyn Smith wake up in her bed and we see that it's all been a dream, but the movie had me hook, line, and sinker right away (and again I wonder what drugs my mom was ON that she let me continue watching it). Now of course the rape scene is all shadowy and you can't really tell exactly what's going on and there's no nudity, but the whole scene is sleazy and icky and it gets under my skin even now just as well as any other rape/revenge flick might.

Let's talk about that, the "rape/revenge" flick. First of all, if you've seen many of these movies, you'll see they all follow a similar pattern: woman is raped, woman gets gruesome revenge on the guy/guys who rape her, movie ends on a note of bloody triumph. You might alson note that in mnovies like this, the men are pretty much all portrayed as brainless lunkheads who act like cavemen and seek to make all women subservient to them. Boy does "Settle the Score" ever fill THAT requirement. Seriously, every man in this movie either beats his wife, beats his kids, rapes women, or thinks it's a woman's fault for getting raped in the first place. Hell, the "good guy" in the movie who's supposed to be the "romantic lead" tackles Kitty (Jaclyn Smith's character) during a
fight, tries to force her to have sex with him, and when she pushes him off, asks her, "When did you become frigid?" And not only that, but SHE RESPONDS BY TELLING HIM ABOUT THE RAPE, as though she needed to give him the reason for her "frigidity" because his question is VALID (hello dumb fuck, I am not "FRIGID" because I push you off of me when you're trying to force me to have sex with you). Seriously, it boggles the mind. THIS is how the movie wants us
to see men?

And the women are no better in this town (30 miles south of Cavemanville). The elderly mother spills some scalding hot food on the floor of the kitchen and then severely burns her hands trying to scoop it back into the pan so her husband won't be mad at her for wasting food, and the sister-in-law calls Kitty a "slut" for talking to her husband (keep in mind that this would be Kitty's BROTHER...now I know this is the south, but should she really be jealous because she thinks that a man's sister is going to have sex with him?) The people in this movie make my skin crawl, the whole lot of 'em. But see, that's the world that the rape/revenge flick creates...the woman has no choice but to turn savage and go for violent retribution because all men are pigs. I mean, if the
movie didn't set things up this way, you wouldn't feel the woman were justified in killing her rapist. The act has to be so horrible that the revenge feels justified. Watch how "I Spit on Your Grave" paints its men as inhuman; barely literate and sure as hell not worthy of our respect or pity. Hell, those guys actually come off looking BETTER than the men in "Settle the Score," at least to my view. And where that movie has its line of cringe-inducing dialogue (where the cringe comes because the line is effective and not because the acting is bad) "That's what I like in a woman. total submission." "Settle the Score" has a line just as chilling "See, all you women think you're so smart...well you didn't look so smart trussed up like a pig on the cold room floor." Seriously, UGH, right? Bleh. I need a hot shower. In bleach.

"Alright, Lillian," you're now thinking, "Maybe this movie is a rape/revenge flick...so what? Why are you writing about it?" Well, first of all, it's the most wonderful time of the year, where we at Cinema Crazed celebrate everything sleazy and tasteless and gory and exploitative. I think this movie deserves a mention, since it fits every one of those categories. And second...well, it kind of makes me sad that this movie doesn't get the respect it deserves. I mean, ok, no one really RESPECTS grindhouse flicks, but those of us who love them, we seek them out and enjoy the hell out of them when we find them, and we love them for that. I think this movie needs to be included in the ranks of the great throwbacks to exploitation films of the past. I mean, it got me hooked on sleazy movies before I even knew what "exploitation films" were, and it is at least twice as cringe-inducing as the recent "Last House on the Left" remake, and I can't help but think that it would be right at home among its bretheren ("I Spit on Your Grave" and "Thriller: A Cruel Picture" and "Night Train
Murders," just to name three). When TV networks still refuse to this day to show "I Spit on Your Grave" even in an edited version, I think this movie has balls for sneaking itself past the censors by disguising itself as some kind of respectable TV melodrama. Somehow, that charade makes me love it even more.

The acting here is pretty top-notch if you ask me, better than it has any right to be considering that this is a sleazy TV movie populated with little known character actors who are all supposed to revolve around the star, Jaclyn Smith, but the Musical score is absolutely HORRENDOUS. Good LORD it's bad (and you can barely hear half the damn performances because the hideous music is busy drowning them out). Mark Snow is the man responsible for the music in this movie (according to the opening credits) and he should be ashamed of himself. It sounds like he tied a synthesizer to an elephant, threw it down the stairs, and then recorded it to play at full volume. That's cruelty to animals AND humans (since we're the ones forced to listen to the finished product). And who was in charge of the ending? The final scene before the movie fades out is stupid and ridiculous, with some of the worst dialogue I've ever heard (Man: "How will I find you?" Woman: "Just call a cop." *she drives away*) What? That's almost bad enough to make me forget everything I LIKE about this movie. Whoever wrote that should be tied to a synthesizer and thrown down a flight of stairs (Mark Snow could record it and use it for the soundtrack on his next film).

Aside from some cheesy scenes and the godawful music, this is a movie that deserves to be played in sleazy theaters double-billed with another sleazy movie so creepy people can sit and watch it and have a hell of a good time doing what they love. In short, this movie deserves to be mentioned among other grindhouse movies because, hiding under a thin veneer of respectability, this is really a grindhouse flick at heart. That's why I love it so much.