With no apologies to fans of Scream, The Last House on the Left is Wes Craven’s second best, a masterpiece that’s a cut below the all-time great A Nightmare on Elm Street because of the latter’s sublime creativity.
This one’s a gut-punch, as unrelenting and uncompromising as they come. And one of the more harrowing viewing experiences, which can only be compared to the very best of the French new wave (or worst, however you see it) or exploitation fare by Ruggero Deodato or Jorg Buttgereit.
The story is simple: two teen pals are off to a music festival. The answer to the question, ‘what could possibly go wrong there?’ in real life, was answered on October 7 by Islamist s*it bags but in the movie, evil is in the form of a foursome.
Escaped cons, the subject of an emergency radio bulletin, are led by Krug (played by a menacing David Hess, who essential reprised the role for The House on the Edge of the Park, a de facto Italian remake of LHOTL). They kidnap/trap the weed-seeking would-be concertgoers inside a seedy Brooklyn apartment and drive them out into the Connecticut woods.
As Norm MacDonald quipped, in his outstanding 12-minute joke, “Oh fuck, not the woods! Nothing good ever happens in the woods.”
And this 1972 effort proves as much.
The psychopaths eventually get their comeuppance when they stumble upon a farm house, whose occupants – Good Samaritans a doc and his wife – invite them inside and turn out to be formidable adversaries.
The coda is a barnburner, but the whole thing is as bleak and as terrifying as any horror ever committed to celluloid. Right out of the gate you get a Texas Chainsaw Massacre-esque crawler, about how the events you are about to witness are real.
And they might as well be, what with the cinema verite feel, exploited in every sense of the word, in films like Cannibal Ferox.
Craven’s directorial debut plays to his strengths as a neophyte filmmaker. The shots are simple and effect, absent unnecessary frills. The camera just gazes at the gruesome proceedings.
**** (out of 5)
[Fans of this site can check out the Really Awful Movies Podcast discussion of The Last House on the Left].
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