Rape and revenge films (aka rape/revenge, rape-revenge) are a subgenre of exploitation film that was particularly popular in the 1970s. Rape/revenge movies generally follow the same three act structure: a woman is raped/gang raped, tortured, and left for dead; the woman survives and rehabilitates herself, and the woman takes revenge and kills her rapist(s).
In some cases, the woman is killed at the end of the first act, and the "revenge" is carried out by her family, as in The Virgin Spring, I Saw the Devil, and the original The Last House on the Left, which was inspired by the former movie. The Virgin Spring is particularly notable as being arguably the first in the genre as well as being directed by Ingmar Bergman.
