Last House on the Left "I think there is something about the American dream, the sort of Disneyesque dream, if you will, of the beautifully trimmed front lawn, the white picket fence, mom and dad and their happy children, God-fearing and doing good whenever they can, and the flip side of it, the kind of anger and the sense of outrage that comes from discovering that that's not the truth of the matter, that gives American horror films, in some ways, kind of an additional rage-
--- Wes Craven in the horror documentary, American Nightmare.
The above quote of realistic cynicism not only accentuates what makes horror films tick, but is also a testament to both fright pictures as a means of pushing the envelope, and the genre serving as a window into the politics of any given era. The Last House On The Left, Craven's 1972 tale of two free-loving teens that come afoul on a group of convicts stirred up mainly a moral and vomit-induced reaction decades ago. Although the film may have faults in design (mostly in the form of plot contrivances often so beguilingly judged by its mostly point-missing detractors) and mood swings (off-kilter moments of comedic relief that actually let one breath, thus making the menacing aspects hit even harder) very few horror films since have displayed real-life terror as grim and effective as Craven's debut so depicted.
A year before this film, Sam Peckinpah's masterpiece Straw Dogs featured the still infamous fucked up scene of a woman quickly beginning to sexually enjoy herself in a rape. Both that scene and the rest of the movie served as a comment on both fascist and territorial ideas breed out of masculinity. Straw Dogs ends on a note that drives its themes home: any kind of violence leads those involved towards a disassociation with polite society. The Last House On The Left is equal if not more affecting to that film in terms of emotional turmoil, however, this disturbing tale takes on a much more cynical approach. In the film, both masculinity and violence is an absolute truth in humans, and while Straw Dogs feels feminist despite its coldness due to a moral dilemma, The Last House On The Left emotes both nihilistic and defeatist views.
The film is more ghastly than many films of its ilk and descendents, and this is mainly due to not only the way that it displays its mean streak more constrictively in its run time, but also how it is presented (as a documentary) and the way that it ends without a traditional epilogue: the sudden end credits following roughly 80 minutes of depraved behavior leaves one askew and on edge, even if the main plot points are all easily digested. Moreover, The Last House On The Left is filmmaking and horror as reaction, a conscious effort to throw the viewer into disarray, as there is a heavy subtext of politics, and even social commentary in the film.
The Last House On The Left was made by quasi-hippy filmmakers. The title of the film's theme song: "The Road Leads to Nowhere"--actually written by method-actor David Hess who plays the lead villain-- is often interpreted as openly questioning religious faith. That assumption is probably accurate, as there are many more attributes of a civil-rights actionist picture, not just in the liberated manner the violence and nudity is presented, but rather in its parallel to the Vietnam War and that era.
Since the central themes in Last House On The Left may be so subtle that they can actually boarder on elusiveness, yet when taken into context within the period, the film is just as much a direct commentary of its time, than it is a product of it. In many ways it is a parallel to the Vietnam War's depravity, as The Last House On The Left carries symbols prominent in its era (a hippy chain worn by one of the characters) as well as a sense of liberation from the nation's more conservative values of yesteryear: whether it is in the form of sexual liberation or adolescence-to-adulthood. Moreover, the film also pits the educated, working class against the crime-ridden lower class in a literal fight for survival. This can be read into as the pro-war beliefs of the traditionally 'morally' conservative suburbanites being challenged by the city dwellers, or those that would normally go to the battlefield in this day of the draft and student deferments.
This parallel is also shown in the way the father of one of the girls gibingly mentions that he feels, "Back at the barracks," in a conversation about his daughter's alluring clothes. Yet, in the film's following 2/3 it 'mostly' depicts man-versus-women. Then a social commentary arises in the final act of the picture when the viewer sees the characters stripped of both traditional gender roles as well as any sense of upper social class.
When the end credits role in and the screams subdue, one thing is certain in the viewer's mind: although the road may lead metaphorically to nowhere in The Last House On The Left, the film has picked up the tag of "masterpiece" along the way.
***** (5 Out of 5)
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