Terri's Revenge - Lilith Likes to Watch
Title: Terri's Revenge
Year: 1976
Starring: Terri Hall, Jeanette Sinclair
Director: Zebedy Colt
Synopsis: A wife who has been sexually compromised by her husband forms a women’s group to take revenge on men. - via Letterboxd.com
Lilith's Notes: Terri Hall and Zebedy Colt collaborate on a rape revenge movie. What can go wrong?
"What a delicious combination"
Checklist time!
What does Lilith Like?
Zebedy Colt? Check.
Terri Hall? Check.
Roughies? Not usually.
Terri Hall in a Zebedy Colt directed roughie? I gotta try this.
Terri's Revenge! Is the story of a woman named Terri (played by Terri Hall) who is betrayed by Chad (played by Chad Lambert) the man she loves. She's set up to be assaulted by her lover and his friend Bill, (played by Peter Andrews). Brokenhearted, and violated, she commiserates with her friend (played by Jeanette Sinclair) who recalls the time she herself was assaulted by her boyfriend. The ladies decide men are the problem and tear through the town tormenting men and giving them a taste of their own medicine.
This was a case of wanting to like it but finding it lacking. While I don't have a lot of experience with lady revenge films, I really liked the premise of this movie. The execution however left me wanting.
The hour long runtime really hurts the film. I was expecting Terri and her friend to be honeypotting men left and right, seducing them in alleys and parties and luring them into secluded places to force their 70 pornstashed faces against their womanly crotches, or relentlessly riding their dicks to the impassioned pleas to stop, for the love of all, they’ve learned their lesson, stop!
Instead we get newspapers with plot-point headlines, and two tormented men. How did they find the first man? Who knows. Did Terri, her friend, or both of them lead him to his demise? We will never know.
In the finale of the film, Terri and her friend have caught themselves an undercover cop (played by Richard Ortolani) and to him, they do their worst! They flog and whip him, and Terri’s friend demands he eat her pussy while Terri twists a rope around his sac until it looks like it’s about to burst. Then, she inserts it into herself.
I am no expert on male anatomy but I imagine that hurts like a bastard. I didn’t enjoy looking at it, but you have to commend the performers. That’s dedication on both parties. That sure is revenge!
The unfortunate thing is that this story has great bones. There’s one scene where Terri is using a dildo on her friend, guiding her friend to pleasure, then requests details on her friend’s assault. Terri drives the toy so hard and staccato into her friend it’s almost an assault in itself. That is interesting.
This film brought to mind Anna Obsessed, another film about victimized women that resulted in a slipshod and broken final product.
When I think Zebedy Colt, I think weird. Artsy. This was neither.
When I think Terri Hall I think depraved, twisted, haunted. This was lacking.
This was not early in Colt nor Hall’s careers, they were both past the cruel The Story of Joanna and Hall had already shone in the absolutely gonzo Through the Looking Glass. Ahead of them would both would be The Devil Inside Her, and it would illustrate just how fucked up the Colt-Hall duo can get. That’s what I wanted from this flick, but the world would have to wait another few years for that delightfully strange offering of boobs and Satan and a garden of delights.
I like Terri Hall, and I like Zebedy Colt, and one thing I can say for certain is that this movie reminded me what I like about them.
Maybe I should grab some nice hearty veggies and give The Devil Inside Her a cozy re-watch.
Best Moment: When Terri and her friend become friends with benefits...
Worst Moment: After everything is said and done, the sound was terrible. The audio, the sound effects, and the looping music.
LILITH'S SCORE: 2.5/5
Until next time, my voracious voyeurs. I’m Lilith, and I’m always watching.
Not really sure what to say about this one. First off, what's it trying to do? I mean, yeah, the premise is, sexually abused women getting revenge by turning the tables and sexually abusing men in return. Its called Terri's Revenge!. But....it doesn't even bother to go there. When Terri tells her friend that she's got a plan to get revenge, her friend replies how they really do deserve severe punishing after everything "they put us through." They, meaning their men, should be put through the same thing. Isn't that what is implied there?
ReplyDeleteSo that would lead the viewer to believe that they are going after the men who actually hurt them, so as to hurt those very men back. But....they don't bother to go there. So...they find and sexually abuse other men. Inflicting great physical and psychological damage on them.
Not their men. Not the men who abused them. But...other men. Its implied that their second victim was a serial rapist in addition to being an undercover cop. But....what about the first man who was violently raped by Terri? Where on earth did they find him? What did he have to do with what happened to either of them? The film could have provided a little context there. Did.he have something to do with either of the women being raped? And if he did, the film should show us how and be very specific..
Hi! Welcome to the site.
DeleteYou're not wrong.
I think they were going for a Falling Down type idea. It's _society_ that's the problem. In this case, society means men.
Hi. Thanks for the reply. I went into this thinking it was something like I Spit on Your Grave. I like what one review on Letterbox’d said about Terri’s Revenge going “a head for an eye”. They definitely went head for an eye, just not on who I was expecting. After initially viewing it, it took me a bit to process it. I was expecting to see Terri and her friend giving their actual abusers a far more severe version of what they had given them. Terri even says that she will get even with Chad, which of course was her man. Then here is this random guy who comes from seemingly nowhere with no explanation and he gets absolutely obliterated by the pair. The whole time, I’m trying to figure out just who he is. I even paused it to see if maybe he was one of the 3 originals. Chad, his accomplice Bill, or Terri’s friend’s former man who abused her. And of course, he wasn’t any of them. So that got me thinking “well…what did this guy do to them? Especially to deserve THAT?” Second guy was different as he was a dirty cop who was also a rapist. Or…so they tell us. But…I’ll be honest, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for guy number one. Perhaps it’s…ambiguous.. In their quest to slay the dragon, so to speak, did Terry and her friend violently sexually assault an innocent man in the process? At least in that particular instance. Possibly. As a reviewer on letterbox’d said, it’s like the quote by Nietzsche. “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process, he does not become a monster. If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you”. By the end, Terri and her friend look just like the very thing they are going after.
DeleteAt the end of Falling Down, Michael Douglas’ character says to Robert Duvall’s character “so….I’m the bad guy?”. Terri and her friend were the female version of Bill Foster. By the end, although they can’t see it, the women are the bad guys.
You could argue that that is the point the film is trying to make. Women who are assaulted by strangers do nothing to "deserve it", and aren't asking for it, and neither are the innocent men. The notion that it can happen to men, that they are unsafe. freaks men out.
DeleteThe tables are turned, and it's as confusing and terrible as when it happens to anyone else.
This film is actually quite thought provoking. It is definitely more than just a wild triple X skin flick. The more I think about it, the more I see. You brought up a great point about how in one scene, when Terri is driving the toy hard into her friend and pressing her for details on her own assault and how that in itself is almost an assault. In that scene, we see Terri's emotional manipulation of her friend. So, in a sense, the women can't even fully trust one another. Even with both having been victims.
DeleteI've sort of imagined an added on alternate ending. A mirror image of sorts .Now it's a man (who had been a sexual assault victim of Terri and her friend) reflecting back on it and the viewer sees the wheels turning, so to speak. That would be a rather ominous ending. Is the male victim now contemplating payback as Terri was in the beginning? Which is to say that the cycle of sexual violence would continue. Or is he simply haunted by what happened to him? Either way, nothing has been won. That's my ambiguous alternate ending,.so to speak