Director Alex Cox, writing on “extreme cinema” in The Guardian:
Perhaps the New Cinema Fund genuinely believed a more brutal, visible rape would add to the artistic quality of Revengers: the film was based on a pretty extreme and demented play, and it needed a certain shocking aspect. Equally possibly, the Film Council may have reckoned a more explicit rape might get us into Cannes, or pick up a few more foreign sales. In other words, this was a pragmatic rape, a money thing.