Wes Craven's Last House on the Left could be described as the definition of a sick and depraved film. It is not a film that is easy to watch. It is not a happy film. It will not make you feel good after watching it. It will disturb you and make you feel dirty. What else is a film that depicts rape, murder, and revenge supposed to make you feel like? It is, by far, the most disturbing film I have ever seen. It is nothing less than an assault on the mind.
If you are still reading this, you must be thinking what I was thinking when someone told me that description. "Oh, come on. It can't be that bad. I can handle any film. It's just a movie." If you are thinking that, then by all means, rent the film (the original, not the remake) and watch it. Just remember that you were warned.
Last House on the Left was released to a unprepared audience in 1972. The film begins as a story about Mari Collingwood and her friend Phyllis Stone, two country girls who make a trip in to the big city to attend a concert. When they arrive, they decide that they want to buy some weed. They meet Junior who leads them back to his apartment where 3 wanted criminals quickly kidnap them. All the while, Mari's parents are planning a suprise birthday party for Mari. They are concerned when she doesn't come home and contact the police. The criminals, Krug, his son Junior, Sadie, and Weasel lock Mari and Phyllis int he trunk of their car and drive out into the country. They experience car trouble and happen to break down directly in front of Mari's house as they are talking to police about Mari's disappearance. What happens next is the descent into hell.
Mari and Phyllis are dragged into the woods where they are tortured, humiliated, forced into sexual actions, raped, and murdered in very horrible ways. What makes this section very hard to watch is that it consumes 45 minutes of the film's run time. However, what happens in that 45 minutes makes the end of the movie that much more gratifying.
Krug and his group then make it to Mari's parents house where they try to seek assistance with their broken down car. They are unaware that it is the house of the girl they just murdered. Eventually, the parents find out that they killed their daughter and they go on a sadistic cycle of revenge on each member of the group. At this point of the movie, you are cheering for the parents as they brutally avenge their daughter's death.
My description of the film was brief and kind of vague for a reason. I don't want to give too much away, but I guess you could say that I did minus the gory details. This is a film that you have to experience, not just read about, in order to fully understand it. This film works because of it's gritty realism. You feel as if it is almost a snuff film the way that it is filmed in places.
What could be the redeeming quality of this movie, you ask? Why would a film like this be considered an important piece of American cinema? That is an answer I received fairly recently from the 2000 IFC documentary, American Nightmares which was a look at horror cinema from the 1960's and 1970's. LHOTL, like with many extreme horror films, is a response to something that permeated the late 60's and early 70's. Television and news programs were inundated with graphic and uncensored images from the atrocities of the Vietnam war. Men, women, and children were seeing images of villages being napalmed, children burnt to death, people being shot in the head, and gruesome scenes of the dead laying everywhere with all of the blood, body pieces, and brains splattered everywhere. In many ways, LHOTL was a cinematic response to the public saying, "You want to see horrifying? I'll show you horrifying!"
While that description of the films unspoken purpose may not change people's minds about it, LHOTL should still be considered an important film. Is it a good film? Yes. Did I enjoy it? Hell no. It left me with a plethora of emotions that I didn't know how to deal with. I felt dirty, ashamed, depressed, and exhausted to the point that I couldn't talk. For a horror film to do that to me is quite an accomplishment. I have seen some of the most twisted crap there is, and this still shook me to my core. To me, this film made other disturbing films like Seven and 8mm look like Mr. Rodger's Neighborhood.
If you still choose to watch this film, by all means, do. But please proceed with caution. If you would like to see the original trailer, click on the title of this post. It is not a good trailer by today's standards, but it will give you a general feel of the film.
