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Together was a success, so the movie’s distributor offered Cunningham and Craven money to make a horror movie. Cunningham didn’t want to direct, so Craven was given his first opportunity to write and direct his own film. Going back to the discussion I had with my brother-in-law, I tried to explain the virtues of this movie and how I viewed it as a unique piece of art. His rebuttal was that the way I interpreted the film was not what Wes Craven intended. He said that unlike David Lynch’s love of stiff acting to emphasize banality and give scenes a dreamlike quality, the acting in Last House was just the result of incompetent actors and should be seen as such. Along the same lines, he said that while I may view the attempts at comedy as being surreal, they were, in fact, just poorly conceived ideas that didn’t belong in the film.
Assistant Director
Craven cut the film numerous times for the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) to rate it R. Internationally, the United Kingdom refused to certify the film for release, and while briefly released on home video in the 1980s, the "video nasty" scare led to the banning of the film until 2002. The Last House on the Left was released in the United States on August 30, 1972.
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Once filming began, the weight of the script’s contents began to dawn on the cast and crew. The hardcore sex in the script was eliminated because of concerns from cast members, but the violence stayed. Craven states on the commentary track for the home video release that the chaotic style of filming used in The Last House on the Left was meant to emulate the violent news footage coming out of the Vietnam War. People were being confronted with horrific images of war, and Craven thought most horror and action movies failed to confront violence in a way that came anywhere close to what was being shown on the nightly news. By exposing viewers to realistic violence in prolonged sequences, Craven ushered in a new standard of violence for horror and exploitation movies.
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The plot of The Last House on the Left is centered on the rape and murder of two teenage girls. What happens before, after, and especially during these vile acts outraged audiences. Wes Craven wanted to make a movie that didn’t flinch away from showing realistic violence.
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The consensus among critics at the time was that the film was just an ugly, violent exploitation movie, although Roger Ebert praised the film for its dramatic tension and scenes of unflinching terror. Modern reviews of the film usually give it high praise, with a few caveats. It’s not exactly what I would call an “enjoyable” movie in the same way that slashers like the Friday the 13th movies can be fun to watch. Rather than watching a hockey-masked killer stalk and kill a bunch of dumb teenagers, we are watching true evil. The violence that occurs in Last House (well at least during the first half) is a horror that is very real, something that happens in the world every day.
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Storyline
What most of them lacked was the more nuanced approach to characterization that Craven employed. The group of villains are vile and horrible to varying degrees, but they’re not always portrayed as pure evil. For example, after the frenzy of rape and murder that leads to the deaths of Mari and Phyllis, the trio of Krug, Sadie, and Weasel exchange glances of a detachment that may be something like remorse.
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I still remember that humid summer day when we sat in his house and watched the film. In addition, the movie gave us thrills that we didn’t even know we wanted (like the ending where Mrs. Collingwood bites off the penis of one of the antagonists…how often do you get to see that in a film, or anywhere for that matter?). After the movie ended, I convinced Ted to let me take the video home so I could watch it again late at night while my parents were asleep before returning it the next day.
Meanwhile, back in the United States, the wave gory and violent movies referred to as “torture porn” emerged. In a way similar to how Craven was affected by images of the Vietnam War when making The Last House on the Left, critics argue that graphic images of terrorism in a post-9/11 world directly led to the bloody movies of the 2000s. The majority of “torture porn” veers too far into splatter to really be seen as a direct descendent of The Last House on the Left, but the influence does come through occasionally. Specifically, Darren Lynn Bousman, director of multiple Saw sequels, has said The Last House on the Left is his favorite horror movie, showing that Craven’s influence lives on. While true transgression in popular horror cinema lay relatively dormant for many years in the 80s and 90s, France picked it back up with the New French Extremity movement that began in the late 90s and flourished in the 2000s.
Lake of Death: A Slow Burn Worthy of Supernatural Cult Status
One of the girls' parents, not content with turning to the law, set out to exact an equally brutal revenge on the vicious murderers, who are hiding out in the family's home. The rape and revenge aspect of The Last House on the Left was also a big contender for the most enraging part of the movie, and the attention it received was not lost on exploitation filmmakers. Though it wasn’t the first rape-revenge movie, a wave of films in the subgenre followed the success of The Last House on the Left. Beyond the obvious copycats, movies like Death Wish (1974), Act of Vengeance (1974), Trip With Teacher (1975), and I Spit on Your Grave (1978) took the format into different directions. Changes in social standards altered the rape-revenge movie throughout the following decades, but the subgenre has never really gone away.
Enraged, the father takes on the gang single-handedly and murders them. Setting aside the modern details, this is roughly the plot of Ingmar Bergman's "The Virgin Spring." Five decades ago, 144 House Republicans were less conservative than the most conservative Democrat, and 52 House Democrats were less liberal than the most liberal Republican, according to the analysis. But that zone of ideological overlap began to shrink, as conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans – increasingly out of step with their caucuses and their constituents – either retired, lost reelection bids or, in a few cases, switched parties.
One of the harshest rebukes of The Last House on the Left came from the United Kingdom. It was refused certification in the United Kingdom in 1974, barring it from being shown in theaters. The movie slipped through the cracks on VHS in the early 1980s, but shortly after it was once again banned during the “video nasty” moral panic. It wasn’t until 2008 that the uncut version of The Last House on the Left finally received a classification for release by the British Board of Film Classification. But once again, controversy led to a notoriety that has stuck with the film for half a century.
Many years later, I had an intelligent discussion about the film with my brother-in-law and it opened my eyes as to what I saw in the movie that others missed, and that’s what I’m going to expand upon in this article. Written and directed by one of horror’s most masterful filmmakers, Wes Craven, the film is exploitation cinema at its most raw and unforgiving. Should a director’s intent have any bearing on how a viewer experiences a film? There are some people who believe that Tommy Wiseau’s The Room is a bizarre, hilarious work of art.
Wes Craven later used the name, KRUG in "A Nightmare On Elm Street" for the films villain, "Freddy KRUEGer. Both of which in films are teenager murderers. "Last House on the Left" is a tough, bitter little sleeper of a movie that's about four times as good as you'd expect. There is a moment of such sheer and unexpected terror that it beats anything in the heart-in-the-mouth line since Alan Arkin jumped out of the darkness at Audrey Hepburn in "Wait Until Dark." Estelle and her husband rush into the woods, where they find Mari's body and decide to take revenge. Estelle pretends to seduce Weasel, bites off his penis, and leaves him to bleed to death. Krug escapes into the living room and overpowers John before manipulating Junior into killing himself.
Indeed, a Pew Research Center analysis finds that, on average, Democrats and Republicans are farther apart ideologically today than at any time in the past 50 years. Get our newsletter and join our community powered by horror fans like you. This article takes a brief look at The Last House on the Left, focusing on the intention, influence, and legacy of one of the most transgressive movies of the 1970s. Its visceral brutality is more repulsive than engrossing, but The Last House on the Left nevertheless introduces director Wes Craven as a distinctive voice in horror.
In the 2010s and beyond, horror movies with overt political and social statements began to catch on with mainstream audiences. Horror has a long history of incorporating political and social themes into its stories (just like Craven did in 1972), but a new generation of fans began discovering that fact with movies like Get Out (2018) and Black Christmas (2019). In the 2020s, with social changes being a hot topic of debate and mainstream horror feeling somewhat safe, the environment feels ready for an explosive change just like in the early 1970s. Whether or not the dark magic of Wes Craven’s crude masterpiece can be replicated remains to be seen.
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