It is impossible to talk about Umbrella Entertainment’s recent release of the uncut version of Wes Craven’s notorious rape-revenge shocker, Last House on the Left (1972), without mentioning that it had previously been banned in Australia, and those lucky enough to get a copy would often have found it was heavily censored. Last House on the Left was made in the 70’s when horror films tested the very limits of the viewers themselves, and when each new picture tried to pioneer new ways to shock us. It is possible to question the value of further writing about a film like Last House on the Left. In the past, anyone in Australia interested in this film could read detailed descriptions of scenes on the Net or see stills on fan sites. Now that the opportunity exists to view this film and see what all the fuss was about, it would seem that the only activity that really makes sense is to watch it. But watching a film with such a precisely shaped history presents its own challenges. The infamy that has surrounded it directs the viewers attention and interest towards an anticipation of imminent violence, especially the torture and rape of Mari (Sandra Cassel) and Phyllis (Lucy Grantham) by three lunatics, Krug (David Hess), Sadie (Jeramie Rain) and Weasel (Fred J. Lincoln), and a dope fiend, Junior (Marc Sheffler). And violence is a significant element of this film. The two girls are repeatedly stabbed, beaten, humiliated, made to urinate on themselves, etc, and this verbal description hardly hints at what it is like to actually watch Craven’s mutely brutal orchestration of all this. I use the word ‘mutely’ quite consciously as it describes, at least for me, what seems to be an intrinsic quality of Craven’s representation of violence, a quality that is inherent both in the insensitivity of the attackers and the powerlessness of the victims. It’s a quality which is capable of insinuating itself deeply into our emotions and unsettling us. It is not a quality that I believe that censors responds to or even perceive. Censorship tends to view violence mostly in terms of graphicness and censors consistently seem to feel most uncomfortable with graphic scenes of sexualized violence, (and this is probably why they have so much trouble with films like Salò [1976] and The New York Ripper [1982], both still banned in Australia), which they see as promoting the degradation of human beings.

Wes Craven wasn’t particularly interested in using violence in this film to make socio-political statements, though he did insert a few references through the dialogue to the dying hippie movement and the growing Women’s Lib movement. Most mainstream viewers find graphic violence easier to stomach when it’s used to make a statement about the current geo-political situation, (such as John Malkovich’s look at terrorism as used by social revolutionaries in South American in The Dancer Upstairs [2002]). They can stomach violence in these films precisely because the political statements allow them to justify the filmmakers need to use graphic violence. Hardcore horror fans, however, approach violence from a different angle altogether. They enjoy watching violence and gore in itself, and it is an essential and irreplaceable part of the films they view. But Last House on the Left doesn’t even appeal to that crowd. Craven’s presentation of violence resists situating it within a larger socio-political trend, and strives to make it unenjoyable to watch. But what is more often overlooked in Last House is that Craven is using the violence to make a comment on human nature. He wants, quite simply, to express the idea that no-one is immune to brutality or abuse. He shows violence as something which can affect anyone, and as something which anyone can carry out. This conceptual thread comes out most strongly towards the end of the film, when Mari’s parents discover the identity of their daughter’s killers and exact a bloody revenge. And even though we understand why Mari’s parents do this, their violence still seems to well-up from some dark place inside them whose existence they had never suspected until Mari’s rape-murder. It could be argued that many American action films, whilst not overly graphic, present life as cheap and killing as fun. And though Last House on the Left is definitely graphic, Craven does not glamorize violence, but uses it to show that life is irreplaceable and death is final.

I watched this film twice before reviewing it, the second time with Wes Craven and producer Sean S. Cunningham’s commentary. But even with Craven and Cunningham’s constant talk over the film, its impact wasn’t dulled. There is such sadness in the girls’ deaths. Particularly in Mari’s. After her rape, having lost any hope of escape and having resigned herself to her own death, she crouches in the grass and in a hushed voice begins to recite a childhood prayer, “And now I lay me down to sleep, and pray the Lord my soul to keep ... if I should die before I wake, I pray the lord my soul to take”. A country ballad plays on the soundtrack. Mari gets up, almost in a trance, walks out to the middle of a lake, and slowly wades through the water before we see her shot twice in the head by one of her attackers. Strangely, it was this scene of Mari wading out to the middle of the lake as her final living act, and not one of the scenes of graphic violence, which remained most vividly in my mind. Towards the end of his commentary, Craven poses a question regarding Last House and its depictions of sexualized sadistic violence: "Was it right to put this on film? ... Did I do something bad?" He answers with an open-ended, "I don’t know..." It would seem that even for this film’s director it has become impossible to think about Last House without focusing on its violence to the exclusion of almost everything else the film is expressing.

To buy this film from Umbrella Entertainment click here