Geekshow

To Make Or Remake: The Last House On The Left

When I sat down to write this week’s article, the question of to make or remake The Last House On The Left was a rather dubious one.

A few weeks ago many of you will have noticed that the trailer for a remake was posted here on Geekshow Entertainment. My initial response was one of intrigue and excitement so I checked it out. I am afterall a big fan of Wes Craven, in particular from the Scream and Nightmare On Elm Street movies, and knew that it was his first film and the one that really put him out there. Beyond that, all I knew about The Last House On the Left was that it was supposedly a horror film. Oh how wrong I was, but I’ll get to that. 

So after watching the trailer for the remake and deciding it seemed ok, I thought I had better check out the original to get a better idea of what it was all about. It was sheer luck that I happened to locate the DVD on the shelf of my local rental place. There was nothing remarkable about the case at all. No pictures, no nothing, just text in a strange font and providing little explanation as to the film inside, other than that it was “previously banned in Australia”. Maybe that should have tipped me off. 

Now being that this was Wes’ first film my expectations weren’t all that high, but I did expect a little Craven magic, a little something that made this movie pop and stand out from the rest. It surely delivered. 

Here’s the plot: Two girls (Mari and Phyllis) go to a concert away from home and being typical teenagers get into trouble by asking the wrong guy to help them score some pot. The guy in question (Junior) takes them back to an apartment where his convict father (Krug) and two accomplices (Weasel and Sadie) are sleeping after having gone on the run from the police. The three of them are extremely dangerous and view the girls as pretty new playthings on which to enact their attempts to pull off the “greatest sex crime of the century”. Junior meanwhile is merely along for the ride as his addict behaviour has made him irrevocably tied to his sadistic father and his crew. 

The next morning, the group load the two girls into the boot of their car and attempt to flee the state. When their car breaks down they take the girls deep into the woods for some more violent behaviour including forcing them to urinate on themselves, have sex with each other and to have sex with different members of the group. Little do the thugs realise but they are actually not very far away from Mari’s own house where her anxious parents are being told by two dim-witted police officers that their daughter is probably fine. 

Phyllis, who is a little braver and more with it than Mari, whispers that she will make a run for it giving Mari the chance to escape and get help. While the girls attempt to escape in their own ways, the convicts foil them both. Weasel and Sadie stab and disembowel Phyllis while Krug sets about defiling Mari once more before shooting her until he thinks she is dead as she wades in the lake. 

The four then wash themselves of blood, return to their car for fresh clothes and head up to Mari’s parents’ house which one of them happened to spot somewhere through the woods. Pretending to have had car trouble the unknowing parents invite the strangers in to stay the night. 

All would be well for the convicts but Junior’s intense withdrawl symptoms reveal the secret of who they really are via a peace sign necklace that Mari gave him as a symbol of her trust, which was initially a gift from the parents at the start of the film. Fleeing into the woods, the couple locate their barely breathing and badly battered daughter and bring her almost dead body back to the house. Realising that they have the killers right in their own house they go about picking them off one by one as revenge for what they did to their daughter. 

Ok. Still with me? 

Now, there are a few things about The Last House On The Left that I have problems with. The biggest of these is the all too realistic violence so we may as well address that first. In fact, I think my other issues with the movie really stem from there outwards. 

Before I had seen it, I thought this movie was supposed to be a cult horror film. Having now sat thru it all I can say that I no longer believe this to be the case. Horror no. Horrific, however, an emphatic yes. In a great majority of the film the violence is just too much and too realistic. The tagline tells you that if you get scared you need to keep repeating to yourself that it’s only a movie, but the thing is that the scariness comes from the lack of movie-like aspects. These convicts are really depraved and sadistic and as a viewer you don’t just know this as a given fact of the movie’s internal law, but you see it as well, in all its gory and vulgar detail. 

So many of the good classic horror films from this period do so well I believe because they know how to balance the showing and not showing. Not seeing something is much more scary than actually seeing it. By showing so much, The Last House On The Left leaves you feeling queasy and ill, when they could have easily done so much more by not showing the violence and leaving it up to the viewer’s imagination. 

Another big problem I have is that the violence and depravity of the convicts simply goes on for so much of the film. Much more could have been made of the parents and their reactions and plans after they discover their near-dead daughter in the lake. Again I think that this is because they have shown too much from the convicts and then realised they were fast running out of screen time for them to reach their sticky demise. 

So coming full circle, I still think the trailer for the remake looks vaguely appealing. There certainly isn’t a trace of the extent to which the original movie sunk in its depictions of depravity and sadism. But then trailers don’t always tell you much. I like that it does seem to have a more modern feel to it and that the focus is on the life of the family unit and not the dysfunction of the convicts. Hopefully this will follow thru with more screen time given to the parents over the sick and twisted things that are done to the girls. 

I haven’t seen a release date yet for Australia so I’m assuming it will still be a long while before its released here. Hopefully that will give me enough time to mull over if I really want to go see the remake. There is a huge part of me that just wants to turn away but then I think that part will probably lose out to my curiosity. Because despite all the bad stuff, I think this story has the potential to be a really good movie, if done right and ironically, with less reality to it. Then again, without this movie we might not have had all the good horror films that Craven has brought us, having learnt from this bad one and improved on his style and techniques. 

Only time will tell if the new version of The Last House On The Left is any good. I’m hoping it will be, but given the original I won’t hold my breath. Maybe this is one that should have just been left alone to fade into obscurity.