Wes Craven (The Hills Have Eyes, Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream) made his writing and directing debut in one of the films that shaped the horror genre for years to come. Arguably the first slasher movie, Last House on the Left is about two teenage girls, Mari and Phyllis, who go downtown for a rock concert against their parents' wishes. On the way, they ask a guy if he knows where they can find some weed, and he takes them into his apartment where he and his criminal friends kidnap the girls. The four psychopaths take the girls into the woods and rape and murder them. Then, the psychopaths wander down the street and stay the night at the last house on the left, which is where one of the girls' parents lives. The parents do some sleuthing and realize that these guys killed their daughter, so, spoiler alert, the parents kill the bad guys. One gets shot, one gets his penis bit off, one gets her throat slit, and one gets murdered in the face with a chainsaw.
I would imagine that a review isn't really necessary after a plot description like that. The story is stupid, the characters are totally flat, and the entire purpose of the film is to be shocking for the sake of shocking. Even though I'm not a big fan of slashers, I thought I would check this film out because it is considered one of the classics of the sub-genre, and there have been some more artful slasher films I've enjoyed (The Hills Have Eyes and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the 70s versions). But this film was not creative nor did it evoke any emotion besides disgust. The cinematography was really low-budget, which I suppose gives it a quality of realism, but with every other aspect of the film being so poorly done, it just added to the immature feel of the entire project. It's hard to believe that this is the same guy who made some of the best horror films of all time.
Worst of all is the awful comedy that cuts in between the disgusting and gratuitous rape scenes. After one particularly brutal scene, we have an even more pointless scene where two police officers meet up with the most racist and stereotypical depiction of a black Southern woman who won't give them a ride to the woods because her truck is weighed down with a bunch of chicken cages. Then we're back in the forest with the rape and the murder.
But despite how terrible the movie is, it may be worth watching from a historical perspective. It's interesting to see what kind of stuff people used to go see in B-movie theaters when the dark side of their consciousness would get the best of them. Plus, you can see how it laid the groundwork for a lot of campy horror that came after it. No monsters, no supernatural forces, no message to think about, just bad people doing bad things for no reason. Plus, the contrast between the mood of the last scene and the end credits is quite possibly the most ridiculous I have ever witnessed, and it could be worth watching just for that final "what the fuck" moment.
All in all, the stupidity of this movie left me baffled, and I can't say I really enjoyed it, but I felt like a more enlightened horror fan after viewing it, and found it interesting to delve into the history of a dark sub-genre.
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