Sunday 1 February 2009

Review: The Last House on the Left (1972)

Before Halloween created a genre called slasher,
before Wes Craven give us Freddy and A Nightmare on Elm Street,
before Sean S Cunningham present us Friday The 13th,
Craven and Cunningham first torture us with The Last House On The Left...

The trailer:



It is a story about naive and stupidity. It is a reflection of how violence and horrible of the contemporary and current social problem it. It shows us, sometimes, it is better to take the law in our own hand.

Do not expect the usual genre convention of slasher film in this. This is really a very very low budget film. You will know it from the camera shots, the composition in a frame. Maybe because of this kind of raw feel, the violence has a greater impact.

It has no lousy Hollywood shock-effect kind of horror. The horror is the blunt portrayal of physical and psychological violence. In news, in the paper physical and psychological violence just comes in two words - rape and murder. We never get to know how horrible it is. This film will let you know.

The girls are raped, molested, and force to pee in the pant, and ultimately killed and gutted. To revenge, the mum bite off a the bad guy's penis when pretending giving him a blow job. She also slit the throat of the only female member of the evil gang, while the father chainsaw the leader to death.

While nowadays slasher ends with the virgin and the pretty boy reluctantly pull the trigger of a revolver to the killer, this we have uncle and aunty executing the revenge ten times crazy and satisfying.

Downloaded this film. Although pacing and acting wise may not suit the current taste, but if you can endure it to the end, you will find this classic lovable!


P/S: I think the remake is coming out this year...hopefully it won't tarnish the reputation of the original.

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