User Reviews

It's Mari Collingwood's 17th birthday. She and her friend Phyllis Stone go to NYC for a concert. They try to buy some weed but are kidnapped and raped by a gang of criminals. They are stuff in the car trunk and driven to the woods near Mari's home. The girls are tortured and killed. The gang ends up coincidentally at the Collingwood home while the bumbling local cops struggle to track the gang down.

This is definitely an exploitation film. I'm sure it was derided by the critics at the time. Some of those exploitation parts are actually the best parts of the movie. Being forced to pee in her pants is a compelling scene. The rest of the movie is amateurish, silly and simply bad. The comic stuff with the cops is groan-worthy. The coincidence of running into the Collingwood home is ridiculous and unnecessary. The gang could have gotten the address from Mari. The overall need to create a peaceful happy tone while counteracting it with the brutal violence does not come off well. Then there is the killing of the girls which splits the movie in two. The second half fades and the intensity never fully recovers. It's one of Wes Craven's first and it's at the level of a good student film.

"Night of the Living Dead" and "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" are two films that received a unanimous critical bashing when they were first released, but are now looked upon as ground-breaking horror masterpieces. That is also a classification that could be used to describe Wes Craven's "Last House on the Left", but after 27 years, the film still hasn't quite gotten the respect it deserves, and its greatness only seems to be recognized primarily among horror fans. While it is certainly not Craven's most polished film, I still consider it to be his best, and indeed, Craven has acknowledged many times that he doesn't even want to ATTEMPT to equal it. "Last House" was the first movie that aimed to show an audience what the REAL effects of violence were and the low-budget, documentary-like realism that Craven brought to the proceedings allows it to pack a bigger punch than a thousand professional studio films ever could. Yes, the movie has more than its fair share of flaws, but it is a measure of the film's power that one can easily overlook them. The most flawed masterpiece of all time may be a strange way to describe a film, but that would be an accurate way to describe "Last House on the Left".

As virtually everyone knows, the basic plotline is a reworking of Ingmar Bergman's "Virgin Spring", but Craven does a superb job of translating the story's details to a 1970s setting. Two teenage girls, Mari (Sandra Cassel) and Phyllis (Lucy Grantham) go into the big city for a rock concert, only to encounter three of the most memorable villiains in film history: Krug (David Hess), Weasel (Fred Lincoln) and Sadie (Jeramie Rain), who are also accompanied by Krug's heroin-addicted, guilt-ridden son, Junior (Marc Sheffler). The gang of escaped convicts kidnap the girls and proceed to rape and murder them, but when they seek shelter at the nearest house, they are stunned to find that their hosts just happen to be Mari's parents - who unleash violent tendencies that they would have never thought possible once they discover that they are housing their daughter's killers.

The long, painful section of the film where the killers torture and murder the girls is where "Last House on the Left" impresses the most. Before these scenes, the villains have been presented as normal, funny, almost likable individuals, which makes their despicable actions all the more shocking. Craven shoots the scenes of degradation with the raw feel of a documentary, and while this is mostly due to his minuscule budget and lack of filmmaking experience, it lends an uncomfortable air of authenticity to the events. He also demonstrates his ability to toy with the audience's emotions by intercutting the horror with slapstick scenes involving two inept cops who run into all sorts of misadventures while searching for Krug and his gang. While the idea of mixing the violence with humour is an effective one (and works well during some of his climactic scenes), the cop scenes are done in such broad, over-the-top fashion that they provide way too much of a contrast with the film's disturbing moments. However, when the girls' death scenes do occur, they are protracted and extremely intense, and during the rape and murder of Mari, the killers actually give off expressions of shock and remorse for what they have done. Back in 1972, this approach to screen violence was unheard-of.

The outstanding work of the unknown cast is what makes the film as effective as it is. Cassel and Grantham make extremely believable and sympathetic victims, though the real acting honours go to the villains. Hess (who also composed the film's dated but often effective score) is truly remarkable in his role, making Krug into one of the most unforgettable screen psychopaths, and he is almost matched by veteran porn director Lincoln's surprisingly effective turn as Weasel, presenting him as a humorous, laid-back character that is capable of shocking, cold-blooded violence. But while the film is often quite disturbing, it also has plenty of entertainment value. When the violence is not being displayed, the tone is very tongue-in-cheek, as Craven provides plenty of sharp dialogue and effective bits of black humour. In particular, the infamous scene where Weasel meets his painful revenge from Mari's mother, and the dynamite dream sequence that precedes it, manage to be both shocking and oddly entertaining at the same time. But it is the film's anti-violence statement that makes "Last House" so memorable, as Craven does not allow his characters to feel any satisfaction for their vicious actions. This is easily one of the ten most important horror films of all time, and a real personal favourite of mine. It demands to finally be recognized as the true groundbreaking achievement that it is.

The problem with movies these days is that the majority of them are so slick, they never allow you to forget that it's a movie. Every last person from the school teacher to the garbage man is exceptionally good-looking, truck stop waitresses have nicer clothes and apartments and better teeth than you do, and people get the crap beat out of them without messing up their hair or tearing their designer threads. People even look great when when they're lying in their hospital deathbed or bleeding by the gallon in an alley. What's to be scared of? We know this isn't our world.

That's why looking back at 'Last House on the Left' is such an excruciating shock, especially comparing it to any one of Wes Craven's latter films. It is alternately graphic and discreet, perfect in it's imperfection. When Phyllis Stone (Lucy Grantham)is beset from all sides getting stabbed by Krug and his cronies, her mouth drops open, her eyes roll back in her head, her knees give out; it is only her attackers holding her up that keeps her from crumbling.Stabbed repeatedly in the abdomen,her pants start to fall off; her goofy-looking underwear are a droopy fit, and you can see a faint trace of an unshaved bikini area. Her body is every bit as realistic as her response. It also isn't clear at what point she actually dies, and it seems like you can almost feel her pain. The whole way through, it all seems very much like what really happens in a crime of this sort, and how it would feel to actually be there.

Part of this effect is due to the camera angle; not enough credit is given to how much cinematography dictates the narrative. Most movies have either an omniscient viewpoint, where the viewer seems to be on the inside looking out, or from the vantage point of one particular character, or alternating between different character's eye view. LHOL positions you on the outside looking in, like an unnoticed interloper. You can see what's happening and yet are helpless to act.

Another element that makes the film so tremblingly smart is the characterization of the killers themselves- as normal people who just happen to be extremely violent, and you have no idea why. If you were to meet them, it seems, you wouldn't like them, but it probably wouldn't occur to you to be scared of them, either;they just seem like a bunch of goofy punks. That is, except, for David A. Hess's Krug Stillo, who comes of as just about the nastiest, most vile- and undoubtedly REAL- villain ever, with a certain crude, smirking animal sexiness that only serves to make him that much more threatening. (Hess, in fact, probably makes the movie).

Although this film could have been done better- get rid of some of the cornier tunes and the lame comedy sequences with the bumbling, stupidly unfunny cops- it still manages to accomplish exactly what it was going for, which is more than can be said for about 80% of the films that have ever been made. Lets just hope that some starved-for-original-ideas horror pimp doesn't ruin a good thing by trying to remake it; cross your fingers.

I had never seen this movie before but was watching a "best horror movies of all time" thing on TV and it was in there so I thought I'd check it out. Now looking back, how this was included in a best of is beyond me. This has got to be one of the worst films of all time. It is so cheaply made and not in the least bit scary. I would not even categorize this as horror, it's so pathetically poor I was crying, should be in the violent comedy section at Blockbuster. To believe A Clockwork Orange came out a year before and this was all the creativity Wes Craven could come up with. The acting (if you can call it that) is non-existent, the effects are so laughable, the villains are stupid jerks who are not at all threatening, and why the hell is it even called TLHOTL? Looks like it was shot in someones back yard on a budget of six bucks. Halloween is everything this movie wanted to be and even that's very dated. Frighteningly bad.

A bizarrely stupid mess. Edited for comedy, not horror. Extremely inappropriate comical music throughout. Yes, straightforward depictions of violence against captive women, but done in amateurish fashion with unintentionally ridiculous actors. After the last victim is dispatched, the film disintegrates into absurd foolishness, reminiscent of an early Woody Allen film. Seems like it was done on a shoestring budget with only one shoestring. How Wes Craven found work after this debacle is beyond reason. It seems as if a few friends got together one Saturday with a video camera, had a few beers, had people in it who never acted before, and had a good time. Pure trash.

Another reviewer (see Dan Grant, below) has already vividly described the effect of seeing this film for the first time. There is no doubt that Last House on the Left is one of the most affecting films I have ever seen. However, integrity demands I shave off a number of points simply because the film doesn't entirely overcome the obstacles presented by a very low budget and a callow director.

I saw this exploitation flick while working the graveyard shift in a home for retarded adults. I'm not sure why I watched it all the way through since splatter movies are not my cup of tea -- maybe I was ready for a change from late-80s MTV or maybe something in the film itself held me, but for most of the time I was watching it, I was thinking: this is the worst film I've ever seen (hadn't yet seen Plan 9).

Then, when the action came to its climax it hit me that this movie is actually a re-make of one of Ingmar Bergman's black-and white religious films. I was stunned! I found it hard to believe Craven had even seen any film before, let alone based one on a work by perhaps the greatest master of world cinema.

But Last House stayed with me. Not a year goes by that some unbidden image doesn't pop into my head while I'm driving or trying to fall asleep. Wes Craven, despite having made this movie with little money and less experience, hit on some awful truth that for the longest time was nameless for me.

Now, of course, I realize that the truth is simply one of Evil, American style. While Bergman spent perhaps three minutes total screen time on the violence in his narrative, with the rest of the movie involving the characters' inner landscapes, Craven spends MOST of the film on acts of violence (both physical and psychical, to quote Bergman) using them as windows into his characters' interiors.And the evil we see, especially that of the film's sociopaths, is pure.

Yes, we know there are folks out there without a shred of mercy, who would do to us or our children the things done in the film, just for a lark. We read about them in the newspaper. But knowing something and seeing exactly what it would look like are two different things entirely.

That is why I was wrong at first about this movie. More than any other film I've seen, this one brought home to me the vulnerability of my all-too-human flesh and civilized thought-patterns. I (and probably you) would be no match for the life-sized evil encountered in this film -- evil that's so much easier to believe in than the over-blown monsters Craven served up to us later.

If you like horror flicks, don't miss this one. If you don't, check out the Bergman inspiration (look it up -- I promised no spoilers). Either way, you'll be hit with a truth you need to know about.

Wes Craven's THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT was one of the first in a very long tradition of exploitive films that were labeled as horror but weren't. This film is not particularly exploitive (at least when compared to later examples of the genre), but it isn't scary either. I'm not a huge fan of horror, but this fails as a film for any genre (or none).

-POSSIBLE SPOILERS-

This really doesn't even pretend to be a horror film. It's a very dated tragedy/drama about two girls who are kidnapped, abused, and murdered by a group of criminals who are eventually murdered by the parents of the victims.

-END SPOILERS-

Throughout the film, there are no shocks, no creepy music or photography, nothing even resembling horror. What the viewer gets instead is nudity, blood, sadism, dismemberment, violence, and a soundtrack composed entirely of really bad folkish 70s songs. THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT was cheaply made, so it's lacking in the technical aspects and does no wonders in the artistic ones.

It was based on THE VIRGIN SPRING by Ingmar Bergman, which I haven't seen, but it's got to be better than this. This is a drama about senseless murder that isn't character oriented enough to justify its approach and is simply too exploitive to be taken seriously. The conclusion is gory stuff, but it isn't enough to turn this into the "horror classic" it's been hailed as.

I don't know how Wes Craven ever managed to have a career after this. A semi-sequel called THE HOUSE ON THE EDGE OF THE PARK was made six years later with one of the same actors and is actually slightly better than this. If you want to see an early Wes Craven film, THE HILLS HAVE EYES is better than this (don't expect THE GODFATHER, though). If you want good horror, don't see this. THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT is no more than a weepy video-nasty with a bad score.

Spoilers!! "Last House On The Left" is best described as inconsistent. The movie is based on an incredibly ambitious and intellectual idea (which is quite amazing if you consider the background of it) but it can't quite deliver on that promise. I think in many ways it has more in common with psychological drama than horror movies and if I had to think of a movie "The Last House On The Left" reminds me of I have to say Clockwork Orange comes up in my mind, not "Nightmare On Elm Street" or other famous horror movies. Alex and his gang never got up to acts of violence quite as depraved as those acted out by Krug and his gang but both gangs share this anarchic sense of vicious brutality for the sake of it. Of course TLHOTL is not nearly as good a movie as the Clockwork Orange, in fact, TLHOTL is a rather badly crafted movie. But nevertheless both are pieces of the very specific "Zeitgeist" of the early 70s.

The movie is not nearly as good as it could or maybe even should be though. Mainly because it is, as said at the beginning, quite inconsistent.

The movie can be easily divided into three sections, the beginning which sets up the events to follow by displaying the "peaceful suburban lives" of the victims and also the crude existences of Krug and his gang. The beginning is unfortunately marred by bad editing and a bad script which leads to two things: 1) you dont really get to know the girls and the family of Mari well enough to really create conventional drama in the rest of the movie 2)it actually does help in setting up the criminals to be quite weird oddballs which is in my view helping the realism of the movie's middle part quite a bit.

The middle part is the strong point of the movie and it's here where the movie earns its accolades. This middle part begins with the two girls falling into the hands of the Krug gang in New York City and depicts the humiliation, psychological and physical torture, raping and eventual killing and mutilating of the girls in woods which are located near the house of one of the victims. This part is quite disturbing to watch as it lets you take a rather good peek into the abyss of human cruelty. Even the often maligned score can be creepily effective here as the soft sound of an acoustic guitar accompanies scenes of human tragedy. I have to say this part is by far the most chilling depiction of sex crimes I have seen yet in movies.

The thugs arent in any way depicted as special, clever, tough or crafty, they are shown as lowlife failures, clumsy and simple, their viciousness shown only by their actions not their pose. The movie spends quite a lot of time with them, the focus is as much on them as it is on the victims which gives us a sense of disgusting intimacy with the killers. The movie offers us no real motivation for the acts of the killers, their crimes are commited for no specific reason or rather reasons deeply embedded in their disturbed psyches which arent shared with the viewers. This look on the killers is more realistic and more disturbing than the super killers we usually are confronted with in horror movies and thrillers. The victims are portrayed fairly well too. Phylis is the "rough girl" of the two and consequently follows one path possible to victims of such a crime - defiance and resistance. Mari, the daughter of our avengers-to-be, is the "soft innocent girl" and generally acts more submissively and mostly pleads to the criminals. The victims arent particularly smart or strong, they arent depicted as overly weak or stupid either, they just act as one could reasonably expect normal girls to act in such a terrible situation. The suffering of the victims is depicted as intimately and harshly as the behavior of the killer. Everything here feels very immediate and I think it's that and the realism provided by the banal way in which both killers and victims are portrayed what makes this part so disturbing to watch. Dont expect cinematography at its best here either though, it's a sloppily made movie throughout and while interestingly and possibly unintentionally it adds a lot to this part, it also subtracts a lot from the movie as a whole.

The end depicts the gang of killers ending up at the home of Mari's parents who unsuspectingly let them in thinking they are salespeople. The parents discover what happened to their daughter and her friend and extract revenge on the killers and kill them in grotesque fashion (one gang member has his penis bitten off by the mother of the victim, Krug is killed by the father with a chainsaw, the female gang member's throat is slit by the mother,the demented junior member of the gang is forced to commit suicide by Krug in a rather bizarre twist). Being the ending this obviously is a core of the supposed message of the movie but one has to admit that it's butchered by a horrible script and it has to be said that this movie would probably make a better impression if it ended once Mari has been killed. The actions of the parents and their motivations are badly explained and generally the movie is just going through the motions here to get to an end, there is little drama, little psychology and, as a total contrast to the middle part, very little intimacy in this part. This is a part of the movie where a better script could've worked wonders and you can see that Craven didnt really think of it as a potential masterpiece or even a proper drama at any point (or else he would have given this part more attention when writing the script). This ending however is at least honest to its intentions as it does not glorify these revenge killings in any way, the viewer is not inclined at all to cheer for the parents on their revenge killing spree. However it also totally fails in depicting the process of law-abiding good-natured citizens turning into brutal killers which is somewhat essential to make the story work.

Before I come to a conclusion I may add that there are parts throughout this movie which show two bumbling cops blundering their way through the countryside. These parts are embarrassingly trying to be funny and it's incredibly difficult to see why they are in this movie at all. I do think the idea of depicting incompetent cops does have a potential role in the story. When cops are shown to be idiots then one layer of our traditional sense of security is removed, we realize that law and order are not factors we can count on in this scenario. However these cops here are portrayed in such a corny over the top way, one feels reminded of bad British slapstick comedy of the 60s which removes any sort of serious purpose these scenes could have and since they arent funny they dont work as "comic relief" either.

I shall conclude that "The Last House On The Left" supposedly tells us a story about the futility of violence and how violence itself has a dehumanizing effect on those who exert it. But I have to say that it fails in bringing that point across consistently and that's probably why you have to say the movie falls short of its ambitions. Much of the movie is incredibly corny, there is bad acting and a bad script. As a low-budget movie it's not overly well shot either. One has to say that as a "rape revenge" drama it is a failure as the revenge part is just bad. It works much better as a rape drama and indeed it is the disturbingly realistic depiction of the victims' humiliating ordeal starting with their apprehension in NYC and their brutal deaths in those woods which redeems this movie. It's a harsh and blunt look at the human abyss and as such it is not only disturbing but also valuable to those fascinated by human depravation (and I suppose judging by the popularity of books, shows and movies relating to serial killers and other psychopaths that basically means all of us).

I have seen a fair number of movies with unpleasant subject matter and repellent characters, but I have never despised any film as much as this one. I think it may be a perverse testament to its impact that even reminding myself " it's only a movie" doesn't help. I've read all the arguments in its favor and seen a TV interview with Wes Craven talking about the impact of the Vietnam war on his direction, and I still cannot think of one positive thing to say about it. I saw it once a few years ago and will never see it again. Even the equally vile I Spit On Your Grave wasn't as disturbing as this. For me, there is not one redeeming feature about this movie...zero. I'm sorry I ever saw it and can only say in conclusion that sometimes sheer curiosity about a movie isn't enough to justify subjecting yourself to it.

Wes Craven's first foray into the horror genre has been both praised and vilified with equal vehemence throughout the years. While it's way too crude and imperfect to qualify as a true masterpiece, it nonetheless has enough merits to ensure that it isn't a complete wash-out. Instead, this movie wavers betwixt and between being vile, crass, and revolting exploitation trash on one hand and having a relevant and provocative point to make about the intrinsic ugliness and barbarity of violence and how said violence scars, corrupts, and/or destroys all of those who either perpetuate it or are exposed to same. Craven deserves praise for his obdurate refusal to either sanitize or glamorize the unflinchingly graphic and sadistic violence shown herein; the protracted sequence with the two teenage girls being raped, tortured, humiliated, and murdered by the vicious criminal gang in the woods is every bit as horrible, unpleasant, and upsetting as it ought to be, with the single most devastating scene occurring when the gang suddenly realizes the ghastly enormity of what they've done after they kill the two girls. The acting is a decidedly mixed bag: David Hess as savage and sneering gang leader Krug Stillo, Fred Lincoln as the equally ferocious and depraved Fred "Weasel" Podowski, and Jeramie Rain as coarse and abrasive bisexual moll Sadie are all frightfully believable in their absolute baseness and wickedness, Marc Sheffler is genuinely pitiable as Krug's meek and browbeaten heroin addict illegitimate son Junior, Lucy Grantham as the sweet and naive Mari Collingwood and Sandra Cassell as Mari's sassy and more worldly friend Phyllis Stone are likewise credible and appealing, but Richard Towers and Cynthia Carr as Mari's straight-arrow parents both give terribly stiff and unpersuasive performances. Moreover, the clumsy moments of ill-judged humor are embarrassing and woefully out of place; the scene with the two bumbling cops (one of whom is played by future "Karate Kid" movie series regular Martin Kove!) and a toothless old black hag is downright painful to watch. Hess' alternately wonky and melodic score for the most part works; the folks songs in particular are lovely and poignant, but the happy and jaunty bluegrass music that plays during the abduction sequence comes across like a heavy-handed attempt at ironic counterpoint. Victor Hurwitz's rough and plain cinematography greatly adds to the overall gritty documentary-style cinema veritate realism. A severely flawed, but still pretty good and ultimately quite powerful and unsettling picture.