With the benefit of a half-century of hindsight, it’s clear that the end of the 1960s acted as a brutal and distressing coming of age for the United States. Even though the country had been involved in scandals and atrocities before, the first half of the 20th century had seen such a successful repression of many truths—that justice would not always be done, that politicians did not uphold the best interests of the people, that violence lurked inside your neighbor as well as yourself—that the country underwent a rude cultural awakening.
One man who knew from repression was Wes Craven. Raised in a strict Baptist household, Craven hadn’t seen many films (beyond a few Disney movies) by the time he was a humanities professor at a New York University in the mid-’60s, thanks to his upbringing. While attending a nearby arthouse theater, Craven got a crash course in international cinema that included the works of Ingmar Bergman. One Bergman film in particular, 1960’s The Virgin Spring (based on a 13th-century Swedish ballad) stuck with Craven, so much so that years later, when the one-time professor turned counter-culture leftist film editor got the opportunity from friend and producer Sean S. Cunningham to write and direct a horror feature, he took the bones of the Bergman film and made it into his own transgressive, still-disturbing debut: The Last House on the Left.
In adapting the ancient tale in a bracingly modern fashion, Craven was exorcising his own repressed thoughts as well as America’s. The story concerns a young girl, Mari (Sandra Peabody) and her friend Phyllis (Lucy Grantham) who are raped and murdered by a roving gang of criminals (David A. Hess, Fred Lincoln, and Jeramie Rain). When the criminals seek shelter near the scene of their crime, they happen upon Mari’s home, where her parents (Cynthia Carr and Gaylord St. James) discover their daughter’s fate and decide to enact their own brand of justice.
Originally intended as a triple-X hardcore horror-porno, Craven pared back the explicit sexual content through talks with the actors (many of whom had connections to porn films, and used aliases in their on-screen credits), taking away any possible titillation but leaving all of the provocation. Each of the film’s groups act as stand-ins for the social subsets of the early ‘70s: the gang led by Hess’ Krug are akin to Charles Manson and his ilk, Mari and Phyllis are naive flower-children, and Mari’s conservative parents consider themselves open-minded and highly civilized. All of them undergo a kind of coming of age, learning lessons about the horrors of the real world—and themselves—the hard way.
The film is Craven’s coming of age as a filmmaker, too. Undeniably amateurish in its craft, Last House makes up for the director’s untrained skill with its unflinching camera—Craven wants his message to be deeply felt by the audience, and isn’t interested in playing anything safe. Several of the director’s future hallmarks can be seen here in nascent form: meditations on the morality of violence (especially revenge) and the humanity of those who commit evil deeds, characters improvising booby traps, family units with overbearing father figures who mirror and comment on each other, someone reciting the Lord’s Prayer, and hey, there’s even a nightmare sequence!
Perhaps the most off-putting element of the film is its broad, almost slapstick comedy. It’s a jarring aspect that is usually dismissed as evidence of Craven’s filmmaking immaturity, yet it deserves a closer look: after all, the majority of these bits revolve around two bumbling local cops (played by Marshall Anker and Martin Kove) who are completely moronic and useless, thus removing the semblance of safety from the other characters and the audience. There’s also the matter of the film’s seemingly incongruous musical score, a blend of folk-rock jams, tender ballads, and even a kazoo-led jaunt for the Krug gang’s theme tune. The score seems somewhat out of place until one realizes that it’s composed and performed by the man playing Krug: David A. Hess. Thus, the score is one more meta-layer of meanness, a sick joke on the audience as Hess—or is it Krug?—sings tenderly about being “all alone.”
The bracing truth of The Last House on the Left is that none of us are alone in the actions, ideas and emotions depicted on screen;we’re all responsible in some fashion, even if it’s only that we merely possess the potential for violence, apathy, or ineptitude. While Craven may not have yet had the tools to best communicate his themes, he certainly had the raw talent and the boldness required—even 50 years on, Last House remains a difficult watch, and while the director’s blending of horror and comedy would continue and improve (witness the Scream franchise), his films were arguably never as shocking as this one. Among the deluge of master horror directors that appeared during the 70s, Craven stands apart as a filmmaker who continually examined the function of horror movies, their legitimacy, and their relationship to the audience. Last House is where his masters-level thesis on the genre begins, and, contrary to what the film’s infamous ad campaign states, it’s more than “only a movie.”
“The Last House on the Left” is streaming on Prime Video, Tubi, and Pluto TV, is available for digital rental or purchase, and is also available on Blu-Ray from Arrow Video.