Culture

Directed by Wes Craven
Just like most video nasties, The Last House on the Left didn’t deserve to be banned for thirty odd years in the UK or wherever. It’s a fantastic piece of low budget horror filmmaking in which raw production values add gritty realism to a tale of rape and revenge. Roger Ebert wasn’t wrong when he defended its artistic value; Craven’s directorial debut supports a fine script, makes clever use of montage, there are some natural performances and some hammy ones which only add to the style, and there’s a typically early Seventies folk rock soundtrack. Pseudo-music videos are one of my favourite parts of late Sixties/early Seventies counter-culture filmmaking, and are often the most interesting aspect of horror/exploitation outings.

The rape scenes aren’t pleasant but are dealt with in a way that never revels in the cruelty and humiliation of the act. It’s not far from Bergman, Virgin Spring being the direct inspiration for the script, and it abounds with references to other films of a similar theme such as A Clockwork Orange (listen out for “Singing in the Rain”), which has long been hailed as a masterpiece. That brings us back to the age-old question, why is one art and the other trash? But we’ll leave that debate for some other time.

If you can forgive the film’s sometimes slow pace, and frequently z-grade production values, then you’ll be rewarded with a smart and inventive thriller. The film’s ending in particular makes the harrowing ride worthwhile as the unremorseful parents of victim Mari, having discoveredtheir guests to be their daughter’s murderers, evoke their unremorseful revenge on the criminals. The scene plays out like a graphically violent version of Home Alone, as the father goes all Vietnam on their asses. Shotguns, chainsaws and bloody blow jobs sound out the finely executed finale in this most pivotal of early Seventies American exploitation cinema.