Best Known for the Fanservice: Or in this case, the extreme Fan Disservice! Jodie Foster does a sexy dance and is then brutally gang raped. However, there have been videos made showing only the sexy dance out of context - taking the horror away in favor of straight titillation (something similar was done to a scene in Requiem for a Dream).
Narm: The "O" face of the first rapist. He looks as if he is in pain or just really constipated, which might get a chuckle from the audience. South Park even parodied it in "The China Probrem".
It even served as this on the set, Foster had to coach the actors playing her rapists through the scene because they found having to act that was so repellent they couldn't bring themselves to do it.
The loud upbeat music playing over the commotion. The bright red flashing lights illuminating the bar. What started with a simple dance and a kiss ends with Sarah getting overpowered easily and held down by three men who each take turns with her on a pinball machine. And five other men just watch nearby and cheer their friends on during the rape and ignore Sarah's cries for help. At various points of the rape, the dizzying camera effects show what is happening from Sarah's first person view as she lays helpless beneath her attacker. When one of the men hesitates to join in, his buddies taunt him, saying they'll tell everyone he is a homosexual if he doesn't rape her. And just when it seems like one of the men might actually help Sarah by pulling the second attacker off of her, it turns out that same man was just actually moving the second attacker out of the way so he could force himself on her next. It takes Sarah having to bite one of her attackers on the thumb for her to finally escape. Of all the men connected to Sarah's gang rape, the one college man in the crowd that doesn't rape Sarah or cheer on her attackers could only watch and do nothing. The worst part is that nobody else in the bar knows what is going on as they're all too busy watching a sports game on a loud television that drowns out the noise of the gang rape.
The Accused enjoys a reputation as the first mainstream Hollywood film to examine rape as its main subject matter and to depict it in a brutally realistic manner. The infamous exploitation film I Spit on Your Grave had a similar graphic gang rape and An Aesop about the topic, being released ten years earlier in 1978. That said, the similarities end there, as I Spit on Your Grave is an ultra-violent Rape and Revenge flick, while The Accused is a serious legal drama.note A lot of people have also criticized the way rape is dealt with in I Spit on Your Grave, with it being argued it comes off as needlessly graphic and long-winded (it goes on for twenty minutes) to the point of being exploitative (it's also mostly used as an excuse for further violence, this time against the rapists). While the rape scene in The Accused is graphic and harrowing, the subject is dealt with in more nuanced and realistic way, including examining how society and the justice system treat victims of sexual violence
Five years earlier in 1983, Sudden Impact was another Hollywood film that dealt with the subject of rape, the emotional/psychological toll on victims and the justice system's failures to adequately deal with sexual violence. Again though, this one is an action-heavy revenge movie rather than a more grounded drama like The Accused.
Signature Scene: Likely because of how shocking it is, whenever someone brings this film up they are most likely to talk about the scene of Sarah getting raped on top of a pinball machine.
Squick: The third attacker lubes himself up with his own spit before raping Sarah.
Strawman Has a Point: The Chief D.A. tries to stop Murphy from prosecuting the spectators by pointing out that Murphy feels guilty ("I owe her") about failing to put the actual rapists away for a long time. Ditto: "You don't get to use this office to pay your debts!". He also doesn't want to waste taxpayer's money on a "sure loser". All of which seem like good reasons. When he threatens to fire her for, well, ignoring her boss, she threatens to sue the D.A.'s office, making her look even more like a "vengeful bitch" (quoting the film here) on a personal vendetta (prosecutors also cannot be sued for decisions like these).
Suspiciously Similar Song: "I'm Talking Love" (the song Sarah dances to before the rape) sounds like Prince's "Kiss." In the booklet for the soundtrack albumnote released in 2018 on La-La Land Records it's explained; the song Foster danced to during filming of the scene (which Foster herself chose) couldn't be licenced for use in the finished film because the artist involved (unnamed in the booklet) didn't want his music associated with rape. The film's composer Brad Fiedel and regular colleague Ross Levinson had to write a song in the same vein. "I'm Talking Love" sung by Vanessa Anderson. "Kiss"
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: While the film does examine the classism Sarah has to face, the fact that they Race Lifted the real-life victim from a Portuguese-American means that it doesn't get to examine that the incident actually increased discrimination against immigrants in the area.
Values Resonance: The issues the film deals with, how rape victims are treated by the justice system and anyone who isn't considered an acceptable victim is dismissed, are just as relevant decades on as they were at the time.
" sung by Vanessa Anderson. "Kiss