ABSTRACT
Two films which present interesting and different representations of the femme castratrice are I Spit on Your Grave and Sisters. The former belongs to the rape-revenge category, the latter to the psychotic slasher cycle. I Spit on Your Grave belongs to that category of rape-revenge films which presents a direct representation of the femme castratrice. There is no attempt to represent woman as castrator by implication or through filmic devices such as substitution or symbolism – as in Misery. Filled with a terrible but perfectly justifiable wrath, Jennifer becomes the all-powerful, all-destructive, deadly femme castratrice. Sisters explores the representation of woman as castrated/castrator while simultaneously playing on man's inability to tell the difference. There are at least two monsters in Sisters – Emile and Dominique – and the film, while presenting an analysis of ‘the oppression of women’, is also about man's fear of woman as deadly castrator.
