"My objection to The Last House on the Left is not an objection to the graphic representations of violence per se, but to the fact that the movie celebrates violent acts, particularly adult male abuse of young women... I felt a professional obligation to stick around to see if there was any socially redeeming value in the remainder of the movie and found none."
-Gene Siskel
"This film does not exploit or objectify women in any way, if anything it makes people more aware of the horrors of life for our gender. That being said, I cannot give this a green light for this project. The reasons behind this are because of the blind hatred and understandable vengeance of the “heroes”. Unfortunately, that’s not a strength, it’s an impulse. This may be met with some objection, but I give this film a Red Light for the Feminist Slasher Project."
-Susan, Author of THE FEMINIST SLASHER PROJECT
this is undoubtedly a movie where the female perspective is far more interesting than my own, and i highly recommend checking out Susan's work on THE FEMINIST SLASHER PROJECT. i will leave a link here to the her blog, but in the meantime here's a nonbinary stoners view on this cult classic.
Teenagers Mari (Sandra Cassel) and Phyllis (Lucy Grantham) head to the city for a concert, then afterward go looking for drugs. Instead, they find a gang of escaped convicts who subject them to a night of torture and rape. The gang then kills the girls in the woods, not realizing they're near Mari's house. When they pose as salesmen and are taken in by Mari's mother (Cynthia Carr) and father (Gaylord St. James), it doesn't take the parents long to figure out their identities and plot revenge.
in 2013 the National Crime Victimization Survey turned up a remarkable statistic. In asking 40,000 households about rape and sexual violence, the survey uncovered that 38 percent of incidents were against men. The number seemed so high that it prompted researcher Lara Stemple to call the Bureau of Justice Statistics to see if it maybe it had made a mistake, or changed its terminology. After all, in years past men had accounted for somewhere between 5 and 14 percent of rape and sexual violence victims. But no, it wasn’t a mistake. Female rapists have been around as long as men and women, but its a subject that rightfully makes people (me included) squeamish 50 years after this movie came out. Rape will always be extremely difficult to watch and discuss, and for more on the subject of female female rapists i recommend checking out this article.
Now, for the things i can talk about. a large part of what makes this movie so hard to watch is the juxtaposition. the movie opens with a wonderfully believable and likeable family, to the point where if you stumbled upon this movie on late night TV you might think it was a teen comedy. the wacky and playful soundtrack only furthers the far to jovial tone. i would be far more forgiving if it was simply used to lure the audience into a false sense of security, but that comedic tone is constant. it often feels like the director wants you to like this murderous gaggle of ass hats, even after the extreme rape, torture, and murders we have been forced to sit through. its a real slap in the face to its audience, and untimely suggests to the audience that Craven is fine with using extreme sexual violence as a mere plot devise.
am i saying Craven has no respect for the lifelong suffering rape and torture causes? No
does this movie suggest that however? yes
besides a few interesting details like Willows character and the vengeful parents, this movie is pretty basic. the black comedy of it all works far better in act 2, but any joy tou can get out of this movie is permanently tainted by... oh ya know... the whole rape and torture thing. The directing is nothing special, the acting is just good enough not to complain about, and overall it blends in with a lot of other movies at the time.
the legacy of this movie is more so about the conversations it inspires than the movie itself, and I'm perfectly fine with that. although that toothy torture dream scene is pretty amazing.
maybe don't mix slapstick comedy with rape revenge EVER EVER EVER DEAR GOD WHY WOULD YOU EVEN ATTEMPT SUCH A YUCKY ACT OF CINEMA SIN
7/10
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