Alternate Takes 03.14.09: Last House on the Left

Posted by Shawn S. Lealos on 03.14.2009

Alternate Takes looks at the latest remake of a classic horror film and traces its roots from Ingmar Bergman to Wes Craven



Welcome to Week 43 of Alternate Takes. My name is Shawn S. Lealos and I will be taking you on a little trip down to the Last House on the Left.

Before I get started this week I want to invite you to follow me on Twitter and Facebook where you can follow all my reviews, columns and what kind on cheesburger I ate last night.

With all the recent remakes of horror films by Platinum Dunes you may have become numb to the idea of an old horror flick made new. In response to the success of the Friday the 13th reboot brings news that a new Nightmare on Elm Street remake is getting fast tracked. It isn't the first time an old Wes Craven flick is dusted off and released as something new. Platinum Dunes already went to the Craven crypt once when they reintroduced The Hills Have Eyes to a new generation of kids. However, one remake of an old Wes Craven film might have been overlooked in the clutter of rehashes and will be released this weekend.



Wes Craven began his filmmaking career in 1972 with Last House on the Left. It was banned in Britain, labeled as one of the Video Nasties which led to the 1984 Video Recordings Act. Craven didn't even pick up filmmaking until after his thirtieth birthday, following a successful academic career. He spent much of his early career fighting censors trying to subdue what he wanted to show audiences.

Craven was born in 1939 to a strict, working class Baptist family. "I don't feel very comfortable with [my family history]," Craven said. "I was raised under a very spiritual environment. A great amount of time, energy and study was spent on things other than the physical or material reality of this world. That sort of stuck with me. Much of that fundamentalist world is concerned with good and evil. As I worked my way out of that, spirituality and intellectually, into whatever world I'm in now, I nonetheless was set on that path of examining things in the largest scenario possible quite early."

Craven did everything he could to build a career in film, quitting his job teaching and moving to New York taking any job in a film he could find to gain experience. These jobs were never enough to pay the bills and, his marriage dissolving due to his financial collapse with two kids to support, he was about ready to give up. His career was saved thanks to a meeting with aspiring film producer Sean S. Cunningham. He started work synching up dailies for a feature [Together] and that led to an offer to write, direct and edit a film of his own. That film was The Last House on the Left.

When Together turned into a great financial success for The Hallmark Releasing Corporation, they went to Cunningham and Craven, who had positioned himself as Associate Producer thanks to his hard work on the film, and asked for something new. This time they wanted something more violent, a straight horror film that could be used as drive-in material. Cunningham asked Craven if he would write and direct it, so Craven figured he would give it a shot.

"It was written in a week," Craven admitted. That script, sixty pages of unformatted story was revised and rewritten into what the film would become. The original idea, called Sex Crime of the Century was described as even more gruesome and sadistic then what was finally made. Last House on the Left was heavily influenced by the Ingmar Bergman classic The Virgin Spring. The two films share many of the same plot points, almost making the original Last House on the Left just as much a remake as the current iteration.

The Virgin Spring introduces us to a fractured family split down the middle religiously. Tore (Von Sydow) is the father, a man faltering in his faith, while his wife Mareta is a devout believer, praying constantly for the family. They have two daughters, the bright virgin Karin and the pregnant Ingeri. Ingeri has been shunned by her shamed mother and remains envious of the beautiful Karin. She invokes a pagan curse to the god Odin against her sister in a fit of anger as Karin leaves to deliver candles to the church.

The two sisters leave on the trip together but, after an argument, split up and go their separate ways. Karin comes across a group of two herdsmen and their young brother and, after showing kindness by sharing her lunch with them, is brutally raped and murdered, all while her sister watches fearfully from the distance. In a strange twist of fate, the herdsmen come across Karin's home and seek shelter for the night.

Karin's parents discover that the herdsmen murdered their daughter and, after locking them in a chamber, Tore approaches them and brutally murders all three, including the young boy, in a fit of rage. The vengeance goes too far with Tore's violent execution of the young boy proof that, when pushed, even the sane can be driven to animalistic levels.

Bergman has never acknowledged The Virgin Spring as a major achievement. It is barely mentioned in his autobiographies The Magic Lantern and Images. Despite his dismissal of the movie, it won him an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and helped his career from a financial point of view. Part of the reason might be the film is one of the few that Bergman directed from a screenplay written by someone else (author Ulla Isaksson), based on a 13th century Swedish ballad called Tores dotter i Wange.

The movie was controversial upon its release, in much the same way as Last House on the Left would be years later. When The Virgin Spring debuted in the United States censors were appalled at the rape scenes. In New York, twenty-four seconds were ordered removed by the state's Division of Motion Pictures. Much of the anger was towards a shot where one of the herdsmen pushed up her dress, exposing her thighs while another herdsmen moves in between her legs. Ingmar Bergman fought for his film to no avail.

"For me, the rape scene has an ethical significance," Bergman wrote in a letter to the film commissions. "It shows the crime in its naked atrocity, forcing us, in shocked desperation, to leave aesthetic enjoyment of a work of art for passionate involvement in a human drama of crime that breeds new crime, of guilt and grace. I should like to point out that the rape sequence, in its mercilessness and detailed objectivity, corresponds to Master Tore's administrating of justice to the two malefactors, as well as - and this is of primary importance - to his bestial murder of the little boy. We must, in our very bowels and apart from all aesthetic judgment, take part in the two herdsmen's crime, but we must also, in despair, witness the father's evil deed. We must not hesitate in our portrayal of human degradation, even if, in our demand for truth, we must violate certain taboos."

It would not matter to certain communities. Fort Worth, Texas banned showings of the movie and in a court case with Janus Films (1962) the Texas Supreme Court upheld the ban. Last House on the Left received the same treatment over ten years later, ironically being hit hardest not in the United States but in the United Kingdom.

Last House on the Left was refused a certificate for cinema release by the BBFC in 1974 due to the scenes of sadism and violence. During the early eighties it was released on video uncut and untouched until the Video Recordings Act 1984 which in turn banned the film as one of the Department of Public Prosecutions list of "video nasties." It shows the film's teenagers abducted, tortured, humiliated and then killed in long, drawn-out detail, something not seen before. The violence, while much of it happens off screen, is extremely visceral and shocking. You are not allowed to look away as the drama unfolds, taking you deeper and deeper into the horrible events.

"I felt so strongly and I needed to get it out of my system," Craven said. "I've never felt the need to go and have quite the same depictions in a film again. I went on to do films about other things, [but] even though they may contain scenes of violence I never felt it was necessary to make that explicit statement about violence again. I mean, I could only watch that picture a few times. It's not a picture to be looked at over and over again and enjoyed."

The most impactful part of the film might be when the family of the murdered girls becomes even more animalistic than the killers themselves. When Phyllis, the toughest of the gang, is dying, she gets up and starts to crawl away and the mother goes after her. As the original killers grow repulsed by the violence, the movie turns into something completely different. The killers become almost more conservative while the family becomes vicious and you start to fear for the antagonists. This is the same twist Craven used in his next film, The Hills Have Eyes.

The Hills Have Eyes tells the story of a vacationing family, stranded in their RV in the southwestern desert. They are then terrorized by a cannibalistic hillbilly family. The hillbillies kill the grandparents and then kidnap the grandbaby. The survivors are then forced to defend themselves against the cannibals in the desolate desert. What makes The Hills Have Eyes work so well is the twist at the end. The crazed hillbilly cannibals attack and murder various members of the family. When the end came, and the surviving family members became more animalistic than the surviving cannibals, the movie reaches a deeper level that was evident from the start.

Whether it is The Virgin Spring, Last House on the Left or The Hills Have Eyes, the films are about stepping over the line and becoming as evil as the original antagonists. In The Virgin Spring, the father of the dead girl viciously murders the herders who killed her and then in a fit of rage kills a young boy innocent of any wrongdoing. As his wife cries over the body of the murdered boy, it is clear the father stepped over the line in his vengeance. Last House on the Left ends with the police arriving and begging the family to stop but the father and mother refuse, brutally murdering the final two killers in a fit of animalistic rage, finally standing among the slaughtered bodies in their home. The Hills Have Eyes ends with the survivors almost gleefully squealing in delight as they torture and kill the cannibal family. The final iconic shot shows the father of the kidnapped baby as he straddles on the final cannibal and stabs him over and over before finally sitting there as the screen fades to red.

Just as Last House on the Left was a lesser remake of The Virgin Spring, the remake of The Hills Have Eyes is missing the one element that made the original special.

The problem with The Hills Have Eyes remake is the ending. Much of the movie remains the same, with the old man at the gas station as well as the original trap, forcing the vacationing family to end up as sitting ducks for the mutants. This 2006 film, directed by Alexandre Aja (Haute Tension) and produced by Wes Craven, is much more violent than the original. While much of the original's violence took place off screen, the remake amps up the gore. Much of the film feels more like Texas Chainsaw Massacre then The Hills Have Eyes. However, the end removes the role reversal of the original. There is one point where vengeance can be taken against a cannibal unable to defend himself but the film allows the dog to dispose of that individual - off screen. At the point where the survivor in the original film loses control and kills the man threatening his baby, it is the mutant cannibal daughter who saves him in the remake, sacrificing her own life to do so. When the surviving family members reunite at the climax, it completely ruins what made the original so great.

That is a fear for this weekend's Last House on the Left. There will be gruesome and gory scenes and I assuredly the murders of the killers will be horrendous and inventive. That is the results of the torture porn craze of recent years. However, if the end of this movie lacks the same role reversal that made the original so great, it will deny audiences what made the original film unique. Luckily, regardless of the outcome, these originals remain to fall back on.