The Last House on the Left
by Wes Craven
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DVD details
Actor: David Hess, Fred J. Lincoln, Jeramie Rain, Lucy Grantham, Sandra PeabodyDirector: Wes Craven
Brand: Metro Goldwyn Mayer DVD
Cinematographer: Victor Hurwitz
Editor: Wes Craven
Writer: Wes Craven
Producer: Katherine D'Amato
Producer: Sean S. Cunningham
Writer: Ulla Isaksson
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Unknown
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 84 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2002-08-27
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
DVD Reviews of The Last House on the Left
DVD Review: Surprise! This is a complicated, metaphorical work of art.
Summary: 3 Stars
My first reaction to this film was to want to puke. I have seen pretty bad horror stuff but this one was filmed in such a deliberately believable/documentary style with a chillingly believable premise. There is something about this film that is just wrong.
At the same time, if you read this review carefully you'll hopefully see that this film is more complicated and metaphorical than one would give it credit for. For example, notice that:
SADI(e/st) is appropriately named.
Some have remarked the soundtrack seems out of place, but the soundtrack matches perfectly with the scenery and with Mari herself; it all represents beauty and innocence, or being carefree. The soundtrack NEVER plays while the girls are in Manhattan; the city represents dirtiness. Later, natural and lyrical beauty is chillingly juxaposed with the most evil violence possible.
When the girls are together drinking wine Mari is talking about the onset of winter and her breasts filling out. This is a scene of dark foreboding, though we won't realize it in the first viewing. Winter is the season of death, and Man's fall from grace in the discovery of sexuality (depicted here as Mari's womanhood) is a well known theme from the Biblical the Book of Genesis.
The lines "and the road leads to nowhere" plays by itself at one point while the girls are driving into the city. The road to nowhere is the road to the city, the city is "nowhere" (when the gang's car breaks down one of them sighs, "Great. We're a million miles from NOWHERE, too"). Alternately, "nowhere" symbolizes death (the line is playing again when the parents are running down the road to the lake).
When Krug sticks out the revolver for the first time to shoot Mari, there is one arm shot which is an exact imitation of the infamous 1968 photo of a South Vietnamese officer executing a Viet Cong. The gun used is the exact same type of gun. If you think I'm overanalyzing watch the Vietnam video or look at the photo in contrast to the scene; you'll understand.
When he shoots Mari, she turns around to look exactly like Ophelia drowning from Hamlet, especially as depicted in Harold Copping's and John Everett Millais's famous paintings. She has long brown hair just like Ophelia's. If you don't believe me Google the paintings, especially Copping's. She's even facing in the same direction.
Sadie is the only one to go entirely into the lake to wash herself out after the killings, afterwards she reaches her hand out and says "Help me out" because she can't get out of the water. Later she dies in just the same way. This symbolizes the inability to truly escape from the crime.
When the criminals are eating at the parents' house, the red wine symbolizes blood while the meatballs and spaghetti symbolize blood and flesh. It shows them cutting and drinking heavily.
When the mother asks Phyllis what her parents do, she says they are in "the Iron and Steel business," the mother replies sarcastically "Iron and Steel together, how unusual" and she explains it stupidly as "My mother irons and my father STEALS."
Later when the father asks the criminals later what sort of business they are in, one says "plumbing" and the other says "insurance" and Sadie explains it that they sell insurance to the plumbing companies, adding stupidly, "You know, in case they STEAL some toilets or something."
This parallel is significant because both Phyllis and the criminals later represent "Trojan horses", harmful people from the inner city intruding on the pure rural home in the guise of respectability.
At the beginning of the movie Mari is debating the band "Bloodlust" with her parents, her father asks "Don't you feel sorry for the chickens?" and Mari replies sarcastically, "I couldn't tell you the nights I cried myself to sleep over that CHICKEN (emphasis Mari's)"
Later, in the scene immediately after Mari's death, the police officers cannot get a ride on the black woman's truck because she's got "11 crates of chickens."
The semi-toothed black woman's plot role is as a target of impatience/resentment here. It is just after the worst killing and the viewer is emotionally most upset, the last thing we want to see is someone laughing at the incompetence of the police. We desperately want people to respect and help the police so they can do their job and bring these bastards to justice. There's a similiar scene just before the killings where some hippies scream "We hate cops!" and give them the finger instead of giving them a lift. But it's the viewer who hates the hippies and their attitude. After all there is a girl being raped!
Most controversially perhaps I will claim that there is a definite hard-right political edge running through this film. Besides the overarching vigilante theme (which is consistent with the backlash against crime more openly portrayed in films such as Dirty Harry (1971) or Death Wish (1973)), targets of impatience/resentment or symbols of foolishness include hippies, the city, a black woman, a drug addict, and most of all the rebellious daughters themselves. The police are also objects of derirsion but it's because they don't take crime seriously enough, they aren't hard enough on crime. Phyllis is punished for her rebelliousness wanting to buy marijuana and biting Krug when he opens the trunk (otherwise the cops would have found them), and Mari is punished for being with Phyllis and defending her against her parents' wishes. But Mari's death is more dignified in that she is spared the disemboweling. By saying the Lord's prayer she has cleansed herself of the rebelliousness displayed in the opening act.
But the only unblemished dignity for most of the film is found in the conservative parents, representing traditional family values. In the end they are driven to craziness by the craziness around them... Much as American society is driven to the craziness of making films such as LOHTL as a response to the spiraling crime of the 1970's (The theme of vigilantism and the descent into insanity shows up in other works of this period, such as the much more appreciated Taxi Driver (1976)). Society was breaking down in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Everything previously taken for granted was being ripped into a million pieces. It's impossible for this movie not to reflect that, and perhaps not to be a part of the violent backlash. Later this quintessential model would be made more acceptable and repackaged, sparking off the 1980's horror genre, a kind of mass social therapy provided by Hollywood.
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