Don't Mess with My Sister! (1985) Online

I enjoy the old classic horrors. Low budgets, questionable acting, cheesey effects etc. I spit on your grave, or Day of the Woman as the US print is known is a classic of the genre. Imagine my exitement when I stumbled upon a copy of "Family and Honor" (UK title) in a bargain bucket at the local video shop.

The initial exitement of the find was the only pleasure this film gave me. I viewed it once, with much use of fast-forward ; and in the words of Mr Gump, "that's about all I want to say about that..."

An abomination of a film. No gore. No story. No point.

Don't Mess With My Sister was a pleasant surprise. Those expecting the vicarious, somewhat questionable thrills of the director's I Spit On Your Grave will surely be disappointed, but those that appreciate a true auteur style will be amply rewarded. It's a shame that mostly brain-dead gorehound fans of Grave are the only ones that see this film. It's got style and mood, and the acting is great considering the low budget. To me it had the same feel of early Scorcese. I think the marketing of the film as some violent revenge drama is to blame. Don't let that put you off from seeing this film. Basically it's a wonderful character study and simple story of working class Italians in 70's New York. A couple of days in the life of an average Joe that go horribly wrong. Think After Hours or Mean Streets on a much smaller scale. I really liked the ambiguity of this film. It's no epic, but rather a nice little existential fragment of a movie.

Meir Zarchi's follow-up to his solid rape/revenge shocker, I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE, features some of the ugliest actors I've ever seen in a movie. The casts of SANTA SANGRE and FREAKS looks like Baywatch extras compared to the uglies-on-a-stick in this misfire.

The cliched story involves a junkman with Arnold Horschack's good looks having an affair with an ugly scrubber. Mr. Junkyard's business partners, the homely brothers of his dog-faced wife, get p***ed off and hell breaks loose.

But hell breaking loose in this flick is about as exciting as an old man breaking wind in his incontinence pad because it's all so badly directed, written and scored.

And though I've never heard it officially, I suspect this film's shoot was canned before the climax was shot because everything just ENDS like somebody turned the stinkin' lights out.

Not even good exploitation. Pukey.

This movie is definitely one of the worst movies I have seen. It takes about an hour before anything happens that would lead to any conflict, and then just when it looks like things are going to pick up, it just ends. Nothing gets resolved, all the plot points brought up don't conclude, nothing happens. It just goes on for 85 minutes to have NO POINT. Barely any violence, either. This so called "Revenge flick" has barely any of the sort. Avoid this movie at all costs.

It's fairly clear straight from the beginning why this second and last film by director Meir Zarchi isn't nowhere near as notorious and widely banned as its predecessor "I Spit on your Grave" … Heck, after seeing this film, you'll even wonder how these two films could possibly have been directed by one and the same person. And, last but not least, you'll also be extremely grateful that Zarchi retired from the horror/cult movie industry immediately after the release of this piece of garbage. "Don't Mess With My Sister" is shamelessly promoted as a revenge-thriller (it can even be found in box sets that are entitled "The Sweet Revenge Box" or "The Retaliation Collection"), but it's actually a intolerably dull and shockingly ordinary family drama. Who seriously cares about the random divorce issues of an unsympathetic couple and their ugly and constantly interfering family members? A dumb guy, who got forced into marrying the ugly duckling sister in order to obtain partnership in her brothers' filthy junkyard business, develops a crush on a sexy blond belly dancer and gradually considers leaving his wife. So what! Good for him, I would have left her even without the belly dancer coming along. Besides, the Mrs. booked the belly dancer herself as a birthday present for her hard-working husband, so actually she only has herself to blame. Anyway, that's basically the entire story. No vengeance, no sleazy payback or even self-righteous suicide to enjoy here! There's exactly ONE murder sequence in the entire film and that isn't even relevant to the plot. If, after experiencing the phenomenon called "I Spit on your Grave", your expectations were highly set on seeing bloody castrations or revolting sexual violations, you will feel robbed like rarely ever before. There's nothing positive to say about "Don't Mess with my Sister"… It's dull, ugly, fake and wannabe-engaging and totally retarded.

Steven is a scrap-yard bookkeeper who's working for his wife's brothers and attending night school to get his accounting degree. His life takes a turn for the worst when he falls for and finally hooks up for the night with the belly dancer that was hired for his birthday, which just happens to go the same school. This leads to trouble for Steven, as his wife and her brothers find out about it and trouble suddenly occurs.

Well, I was expecting way worse. I just don't know. Maybe because I knew what I was getting myself into, but I didn't think it was all that bad of a low-budget flick, as its made out to be. I guess people were expecting another ultra-relentless exploitation foray in the shape of "I Spit On Your Grave". But this follow up is far from it and on a totally different level. You could probably blame all of this on poor and ill-conceived advertising that treats it like one.

Instead "Don't Mess with My Sister" is playing for an oddball, if raw drama that deals with family values, infidelity and a working class trying to make ends meat. After the controversy of the begin all and end all "I Spit..", Zarchi was probably trying to gain some respectability here. I expect that killed it for most viewers, but still it's quite a competent display by director / writer Meir Zarchi who keeps it on cruise control and strings along many different spontaneous developments amongst his own vogue. The impulsively junky plot could have gone towards a sleazy and brutal revenge angle, but Zarchi skewed away from this and the results weren't awful, but modest. The sultry music score by Todd Rice was simply oozing and controlled photography by Phil Gries got down amongst the grit. Acting from the no-name cast was more than suitable and Joe Perce's performance as the straight-mannered Steven was adequate and believable. Sure, it's far from great, but was I kept interested and entertained for it short running time. It does lull about in spots and the (lack of an) ending isn't much, but it delivers on those fronts that count if you're not looking for too much.

Simply it's not all that bad, if you know what you're getting. Which is a kooky drama.

Don't Mess with My Sister! (1985) * (out of 4)

Steven (Joe Perce) is stuck working at a junk yard for his wife's two brothers who are always picking on him and not paying him what he's worth. One night at a party being thrown for him, Steven strikes up a conversation with dancer Annika (Laura Lanfranchi) and soon after they are involved in an affair. When the wife finds out she informs her brothers who aren't happy with Steven.

Writer-director Meir Zarchi crashed onto the scene with his notorious I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE but it took him several more years before he came back with his second feature. With a title ilke DON'T MESS WITH MY SISTER! fans were expecting soem sort of exploitation trash but that's not what they got and this film has pretty much been forgotten. To be honest with you, I'm really not sure what Zarchi was trying with this picture but it certainly doesn't work.

Once you get past the fact that you're not getting anything like I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE, this film lets you down even more because there's really no point to anything you're watching. There must have been at least thirty times during the film where I wondered to myself what I was watching and what the point was. This is basically a drama about a man who gets tired of his wife and her brothers so he cheats on her with a questionable person. I won't ruin what happens but it's certainly not evough to warrant a feature length film.

The film clocks in at just 84-minutes and there's really not a bit of energy throughout. Zarchi really doesn't click as a director here as everything just comes across very flat and without much energy. It certainly doesn't help that some of the performances are really bad and get unintended laughs at times. Through in the fact that there's really not any violence, gore or nudity and you're left with a film that just isn't going to have much appeal.

DON'T MESS WITH MY SISTER! is a pretty poor film no matter how you look at it. I'm really not sure what the director was trying to do or why he thought this material would be something worth making.

Ugh. A real disappointment from the man that brought us "I Spit On Your Grave". There's not one revolting or intense moment in this film. Did they run out of film or something? What kind of an ending is that?

This film is billed as coming from "the makers of I Spit On Your Grave", which is probably the worst selling point I can think of, both because I Spit On Your Grave is the vilest, most misogynistic piece of trash ever made, and because this film bears absolutely no resemblance to it.

This is not a review of I Spit On Your Grave (even though I kind of just gave you one), but it's important to note that attempting to entice anyone who enjoyed a film that devotes half its running time to a series of brutal, graphic, and degrading rape scenes into watching this because the same director created both is a bit like telling kids who like Sesame Street to watch Meet The Feebles because both have puppets in them. Don't Mess With My Sister has very little violence, zero nudity, and never ventures anywhere near the categories of horror, exploitation, or revenge flick. The title has absolutely nothing to do with the plot, and doesn't even make sense considering that the only person messing with anyone's sister in this film is our central protagonist, who actually receives pretty minor punishment for his transgressions.

While certainly guilty of having the most misleading title in the history of cinema, Don't Mess With My Sister is actually a pretty decent little drama with fine acting and a simple but effective story: An unhappily married man who works in an unsatisfying job with his wife's two brothers engages in a tryst with a belly dancer. Complicating things a bit is that before this tryst he accidentally beats a man to death while saving the belly dancer from an attempted rape (I Spit On Your Grave fans will likely be very disappointed that the rape isn't successful, nor does it last for 40 minutes). When wife and brothers discover the affair, they engage in a furious rampage of revenge that involves hitting the man with a purse and dumping books out of a box. Not quite as impactful as the castration in Meir Zarchi's infamous predecessor, one would imagine.

Basically, this film is, at its core, a character study of a man who has settled into an unhappy life and whose desire to overcome his stagnant situation leads to an unfortunate accident that turns his world in knots. The lead actor attempts to channel a young Al Pacino and doesn't come close, but does a fine job nonetheless. The characters are well-defined and suitably complex to create some emotional resonance (not the one-note rapist cretins that populate the world of ISOYG), and while the plot is rather simplistic, the ensemble handles the material with enough care that the mundane becomes drama. The ending is a bit dicey, and I'm not quite sure how things are resolved... this is probably because they aren't. But, leading up to the explosive climax (okay, that's a bit too strong a term... can one car exploding be considered "explosive"?), this lean bit of minor misanthropy is entertaining enough to be entertaining.

Not quite as exciting as sodomy and revenge, I know. But, given the choice between watching a backwoods rape fantasy or this tepid but serviceable street drama, I'll put in Don't Mess With My Sister over I Spit On Your Grave 11 times out of 10. I realize that I accidentally reviewed ISOYG along the way here, but it's actually rather necessary, since the most rewarding part of Don't Mess With My Sister is expecting something as stomach-churning and reprehensible as the former and getting the rather straight-forward affair-crisis drama of the latter.

Maybe I'm wrong about Meir Zarchi, because there is definitely intelligence present here beyond that of the basic feces-hurling ape on display in every frame of ISOYG. This certainly doesn't redeem the director for creating the most horridly lurid piece of cinema ever filmed, but seeing this, it's certainly striking how wide the film-maker's interests are.

Recommending this, however, becomes tricky. If you liked I Spit On Your Grave, you will definitely hate every second of this movie. If you agree with my assessment of I Spit On Your Grave, you may enjoy this enough as I did, but I'm forced to wonder how you even stumbled across this film unless you found it solely because of the "from the makers of" tag I cited earlier, which is kind of the only reason this was preserved on DVD, or even made to begin with, come to think of it. That's an existential conundrum I cannot address, but I will say without hesitation that this is a far superior movie by miles, simply because it IS an actual movie instead of a series of rape vignettes created to titillate misogynistic subhumans.

this movie sucks two thumbs down...ehhhh...way down

Steven (Joe Perce) works for his sister's brothers at a junkyard as a bookkeeper and seems to be disappointed in his life. He has a nice wife, a kid and is getting ready to graduate as a CPA. But what he really wants is a partnership and, when he doesn't get it, he decides to sleep with the belly-dancer his wife hired for his birthday party. Yeah, he sleeps with her, but not before they both accidentally kill an aggressive client of hers. Oh, the drama. Sporting a fantastic exploitation title and a DVD cover promising sleaze, this NYC lensed flick ends up being a huge disappointment. I was hoping for a Bronson-style vigilante revenge flick and instead got a Lifetime movie about infidelity for New Yawkers. I expected something sleazy, especially coming from Meir Zarchi, the guy who made I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE. Damn. Nothing will prepare you for the riveting scene where the arguing couple both arrive at the bank to close their joint account down AT THE SAME TIME!!! Ugh.

Meir Zahari's first film, I Spit On Your Grave was originally entitled The Day of the Woman. In Don't Mess With My Sister, it's time for Man to make a comeback. The main character has a problem with his wife and her two brothers and is lucky enough to make it with an erotic blonde exotic dancer. After the pair kill one of her clients and his wife begins to suspect her husband isn't just studying accounting at night school, she gets her brothers to take revenge. Any more would destroy the plot. Needless to say this film was made with Zahari's unique stylistic approach. Don't miss it. I didn't, I bought the rights!

Y'know, I'm probably wasting my time typing this review, coz it's such an obscure film with such a dire plot...

The only reason why I *have* taken the time to type this is coz I just *gotta* vent my spleen SOMEwhere...

Simply put, I was searching for a tape to record "Wasabi" (Jean Reno) on and came across this (my wife either bought this or it was a gift waaaaaaay before I met her). Just to make sure I wasn't gonna record over a classic, I did an on-screen fast-forward on it... no dialogue necessary, I picked up the gist of it just like that.

How sad... "Wasabi" is a much better investment...