13 Nights of Shocktober: The Last House on the Left

by A.J.

This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the month long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. There are a lot of horror movies out there, but as a genre, horror is still looked down upon by some mainstream critics and moviegoers. It doesn’t help that, admittedly, there are so few quality horror movies made but, like comedy, it’s a very difficult and subjective genre. So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some recommendations for scary movies to help you celebrate Shocktober.

Night 4: Wes Craven Memorial Night, “All that blood and violence. I thought you were supposed to be the love generation.” 

The Last House on the Left 

Like many movie lovers, I was deeply saddened by the recent passing of Wes Craven, one of the true masters of horror. He had a long and impressive career, and while he had mediocre films and misses, when his films hit they hit hard. The Last House on the Left is Wes Craven’s first film, made in 1972, but it comes across as having been made by a skilled and seasoned filmmaker. The movie has the look of a low budget exploitation movie, but there are no cheap thrills to be found here. This is an intense, visceral thriller about the cruelty and violence of which human beings are capable. The horror in The Last House on the Left has nothing to do with the supernatural, it comes from the uncomfortable realism of the horrible, violent acts we see.

The first time I saw this movie was purely by chance. I was in college and my roommate and I were sent out by our friends to Blockbuster to pick some horror movies for the group to watch. It was Halloween night, so the horror section was well picked over. My roommate picked up the case for The Last House on the Left; neither of us had heard of it before, but it was directed by Wes Craven and the box had a quote from Roger Ebert: “sheer and unexpected terror.” I can’t remember the other movie we rented or if we even watched it. All I remember is how we all squirmed and turned our faces and swore at the TV. I remember one girl got up and left the room. I remember becoming mildly obsessed with the movie and reading as much as I could find on the film. I’ve only seen it one time since then and that was a week ago to prepare for this blog.

The Last House on the Left says it is inspired by true events, but it is actually a loose remake of Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring. The plot follows two young girls from the country that go into the city for a concert, but are kidnapped by a gang of ruthlessly cruel criminals. The girls are sadistically tortured, raped, and murdered. Then, by sheer coincidence, the criminals seek shelter for the night with the parents of one of the girls. When the parents find out, they unleash their own brand of revenge. The Last House on the Left was meant to be an exploitation film, loaded with violence and sex to sell tickets. It was produced by Sean S.Cunningham, who would go on to direct Friday the 13^th in 1980, a movie primarily concerned with kills and special effects. There’s certainly nothing wrong with slasher films like Friday the 13^th and its many sequels that revel in gory moments and nudity, as long as they still entertain and commit to their lack of substance. The Last House on the Left certainly has all the elements of a sleazy, low budget exploitation film, but in going from script to screen it became something substantial and frightening.

The Last House on the Left has a grainy, unglamorous look and a cast of unfamiliar faces that give it a feeling of realism that becomes uncomfortable as the film unfolds. This is a violent film and though the gore we see is nothing when compared to modern horror films, it is far more effective, awful, and terrifying. When one of the girls is being stabbed we don’t see the knife stabbing her, instead there are sharp, quick musical cues which somehow make the stabbing worse. One of the criminals is aware that what they are doing to these girls is absolutely wrong, but he’s helpless to stop the others. Afterwards, there is a scene where a quiet moment passes among the criminals as they seem to realize the deep cruelty of what they’ve done. It was a scene that Craven says audiences hated because it humanized the killers. I think that humanization, slight as it is, is important because it forces the audience to accept that human beings, not monsters or devils, did these horrible things.

Watching The Last House on the Left is a tough experience. There are other horror movies with more blood, more gore, and more death that are easier to watch. The Last House on the Left, unlike slasher movies, takes no joy in the death scenes. Even when the parents exact their revenge, it’s not as victorious a moment as audiences would expect. Craven does not shy away from showing us what we already know but don’t consciously think about: it is a horrible, terrible thing to kill another human being. Craven has said in interviews that he is fascinated by what can come out of ourselves. He says that the Vietnam War was a big influence on The Last House on the Left. During that time it became normal to see dead bodies and lists of dead American soldiers on TV, and to see photos of, or hear about, atrocities committed by Americans. It’s never good when any of that becomes normal.

Just after Wes Craven passed, NPR’s Fresh Air re-aired a series of interviews in which Terry Gross asks him about The Last House on the Left. I always enjoy watching or hearing interviews with Wes Craven because he comes off as such genial, normal, and even shy person that knows a great deal about films and filmmaking. He tells a story of when he was a young boy and had a bow and arrow. He would go hunting for rats and usually never found any, until he did and shot one with his arrow. The arrow hit but did not kill the rat. It let out a horrible scream and bled and thrashed. It fought so hard for its life but it was wounded mortally, and the young Craven was forced to put it out of its misery. If that rat fought so hard for its life, Craven thought, then surely it deserved to live and if rats deserve to live unharmed then so do people. The Last House on the Left is so intense and disturbing because it has a message, and it is a simple one that Craven does not hit us over the head with or bury in symbolism. He lays it out plainly resting just below those moving images: human life is precious and we should all act accordingly, otherwise violence begets more violence and there is no victory for anyone in that.