Still, as incisive as Heller-Nicholas’ afterword is, it surely won’t prove to be the last word on rape in the cinema. On current form, rape-revenge films will keep on coming, cannibalising predecessors august and tawdry alike, whilst ever evolving new cross-cultural variations on their time-worn themes and narrative, aesthetic and generic manoeuvres.
Meanwhile, Heller-Nicholas’ excellent critical study shows that rape-revenge films carry much more richness and ideological complexity than had previously been attributed to them.
