[yasr_overall_rating]
Two teenage girls head to a rock concert for one’s birthday. While trying to score marijuana in the city, they are kidnapped and brutalized by a gang of psychotic convicts.
When he died in 2015, legendary cinematic horror maestro Wes Craven left behind quite the legacy. A slew of his films have been remade into inferior sequels: “The Hills Have Eyes” (both parts), “A Nightmare on Elm Street” – but the most, for lack of a better word, “interesting” may be Dennis Iliadis’ revisiting of Craven’s debut, the still-quite-disturbing in its simplicity and lack of a moral compass “The Last House on the Left.” Stripping away the grime and Vietnam-era paranoia of the original, the glossy 2009 version contained some thrills and a particularly decent performance from Tony Goldwyn, but it failed to balance our sympathy for the characters with our predisposition to gape at all things grotesque. It sorta missed the point. In young Craven’s world, there was no empathy, no redeeming qualities to any of the characters, no happily-ever-after or hope for redemption – just a slow-burning unfurling of ultra-sadistic violence.
The director dared audiences to celebrate the barbarity that shaped them, claiming films at the time glamorized violence instead of depicting it in all its horrid details. “It rests on 13 acres of earth over the very center of hell!” proclaimed the film’s poster, referring its titular abode. “Mari, seventeen, is dying. Even for her, the worst is yet to come!” It can’t get more unapologetic than that, Craven emulating a snuff film to titillate and infuriate in equal measures. Made in 1972 on a shoestring budget, the film expectedly caused major controversy with its graphic portrayal of cruelty towards women and the almost-gleeful way with which it was presented. The male actors in the film stayed in character throughout the shoot, allegedly traumatizing the lead actress, Sandra Peabody (who went by Sandra Cassell at the time).
As a result, despite being banned in the UK and unreleased in Australia, the film proved to be a major success, scoring over 100 times its minuscule $90K budget. Whether that – and the consequent spawning of hundreds of snuff-like films that capitalized on the public’s penchant for sadism – is a reflection of this country’s inherent penchant for violence is a topic for another essay. The more pertinent question is: Does the film still shock and provoke over four decades after its release? Are its messages – or nihilistic lack thereof – still relevant today, when every other film in the multiplex is a Blumhouse version of a Craven film?
The answer is a resounding… “kind of.” As Craven himself warns in the film’s introduction, “Prepare yourself.” From the get-go, there’s blatant navel-gazing of our heroine, Mari (Peabody), in the shower – as if Craven is leading us on, saying, “You like this naked flesh? Watch it get mutilated later.” Mari proceeds to head out to a concert of a band ominously called Bloodlust, despite her parents’ concerns. “Mari, no bra?” her father asks. “Oh Dad, no one wears those anymore,” she says. (Is Craven suggesting she is asking for it?) Mari’s friend Phyllis (Lucy Grantham) joins – and off they go, taking a shortcut through the woods. David Hess twangs away folky ballads on the soundtrack, as the girls wander the iridescent forest and talk about their breasts “filling out.”
The very same Hess shows up as Krug Stillo, leader of a reprehensible gang of rapists, child molesters, and anarchists: Weasel (Fred J. Lincoln), Junior (Marc Sheffler) – and Sadie (Jeramie Rain), the sole female member of the gang who kicks dogs to death. Mari and Phyllis run into them looking to “buy some grass” – and before the girls know it, they are locked up. Psychological abuse and threats quickly turn to physical torture and rape. After stuffing Mari and Phyllis into the trunk of their Cadillac convertible, the gang drives back to the forest, while having sex and smoking cigars. The same woods that welcomed the girls earlier turn sinister and claustrophobic, as the torture, rape, and humiliation continue. A prolonged chase sequence ensues. Let’s just say, it doesn’t end well for the girls.
The second half of the film gets weirder. Krug’s gang heads over to Mari’s parents’ house. Under the pretense of being lost plumbers (don’t ask), they stay over for dinner. The parents, seemingly unconcerned about Mari’s disappearance, even go so far as to invite this shady-looking crew into their guest bedroom. That is until one of the gang members starts going through heavy bouts of remorse. Upon the discovery of their murdered daughter, Mom and Dad swiftly take matters – along with knives and chainsaws – into their own hands.
Predating Michael Haneke’s “Funny Games” by over two decades, Craven revels in the film’s nihilism – a criticism of America’s “pillage and enslave” foundation and the glamorization of celluloid violence. “What’s new in the outside world?” a character asks at one point in the film. “Same old stuff,” comes the reply. “Murder and mayhem.” This subject still holds up well, Craven’s juxtaposition of horrific scenes with a jolly soundtrack, doses of humor with a permeating sadness, still quite chilling. There is even a thin veil of white privilege denunciation blanketing the film, a theme arguably as relevant today as it was back then. I mention Haneke, yet “The Last House on the Left” should be primarily credited – for better or worse – for birthing an endless series of torture-porn flicks, from Meir Zarchi’s “I Spit on Your Grave” to Srdjan Spasojevic’s “A Serbian Film” and Eli Roth’s “Hostel” series (I even referenced Craven’s “House” in my review of “Martyrs,” a brutal French masterpiece with definite allusions to Craven’s film.)
The rest of the film hasn’t aged as well, sadly. The low production values, while imbuing the film with that raw exploitation aesthetic, tend to distract from the narrative; Craven’s guerilla-style, pseudo-documentary filmmaking doesn’t so much lend verisimilitude as assault us with continuity issues and choppy editing. The film’s study of the sexualization of women is half-baked at best – one could argue it’s saying women are just as much to blame as their assaulters. The acting is mostly quite poor, especially from the two tortured female leads and Mari’s dumbfounded parents. The “doofus cops” subplot feels tonally off and generally unnecessary – though there are glimpses of “Scream”’s Deputy Dewey in the mannerisms of Martin Kove’s dummy deputy, who hears chickens everywhere (again, don’t ask).
Finally, despite the poster’s warnings – “To avoid fainting, keep repeating, it’s only a movie… only a movie… only a movie…” – “The Last House on the Left” barely qualifies as a horror flick. William Friedkin’s “The Exorcist” (released a year later), with its darkly religious imagery, slow-burning suspense, palpable sense of claustrophobia, satanic undertones and an all-too-real approach to a nuclear family coming apart, is a great example of a horror film. Nicholas Roeg’s painterly exploration of grief, “Don’t Look Now” (1973), is another instance of a director bending typical genre conventions – and yet it remains a horror film, with its prevalent hues of crimson-red, disorienting editing, nuanced acting and a shocker of a finale.
Real horror lies in the unknown, in the shadows of the human consciousness, behind closed doors, where one’s fantasy shapes monsters much more frightening than any director can actually visualize. In Craven’s “House,” its anti-war messages are buried beneath layers of savagery; we’re passive observers to gruesome sequences, and while many will find it difficult to watch due to its grotesqueness and shock value, the film’s palpable lack of suspense, jump scares, resounding psychological themes or an atmosphere of dread makes it difficult to describe as “horror” – just like “Cannibal Holocaust,” the “Saw” series and “The Human Centipede” are mere exercises in senseless savagery. Just because shit’s horrific on screen doesn’t mean we’re watching “horror.”
The director’s goal to titillate and infuriate may have been achieved, and some of the film’s themes hold up almost half-a-Century after its release. Its legacy, however, is questionable, as are its merits as an exploitation horror film – or as film, period. Craven was still honing his craft and if anything, “The Last House on the Left” led to classics like “A Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Scream.” The man seemed to have always been searching for inventive new ways to illustrate and satirize humanity’s ugliness, its restlessness. Hopefully he, unlike his fictional victims, is resting in peace.
Available on a 3-Disc Limited Edition Blu-ray July 3rd
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