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- Verified Buyer
When LAST HOUSE first came out, back in 1972, it had people vomiting and fainting in the aisles. Now, a little over thirty years later, it has people asking why it still warrants our attention, when there are more slasher/splatter movies on a video rental store's shelves than there are cockroaches in a big-city apartment building. Hey, there's even been a major motion picture with a disemboweling -- HANNIBAL.Actually, there's some possibility that what we're seeing today isn't all of what they saw back in 1972. Although Wes Craven's introduction on this DVD says this is the most complete version available, there's some footage included as part of the extras that gives us a much more graphic, extended version of the disemboweling scene. It's unclear from the "making of" documentary whether this is actually what they saw back in 1972, but even if it isn't, the film still has power for other reasons.Part of this film's continued impact is historical. LAST HOUSE is the first significant achievement by Wes Craven, who has gone on to become a major figure in both film and television. It may also be that if it weren't for LAST HOUSE, there would be NO slasher/splatter movies on any video rental store's shelves, because LAST HOUSE was the movie that created the genre. Film scholars should also note that LAST HOUSE was based on the same 14th-century Swedish folktale as THE VIRGIN SPRING, and contains various allusions to the Bergman film.But it isn't just horror movie historians who believe LAST HOUSE still deserves public and critical attention. Many people, including yours truly, feel that even though it's no longer cutting edge, it still retains its original impact. Several good arguments have already been made, which I'll present along with my own.The most widely voiced argument seems to be that while other films have equaled or surpassed LAST HOUSE in the amount and explicitness of their violence, they don't measure up in credibility. This credibility comes partly from the context in which the violence occurs, and partly from the film's look and feel.Regarding context, any violent act is less disturbing if it either (a) seems totally removed from any life experience you can imagine getting into, and/or (b) happens to someone you can't see as a real person. Such is the case with so many movies that present contrived situations and victims who are little more than shooting gallery ducks.Such is not the case, however with LAST HOUSE. The two adolescent girls, Mari and Phyllis, could be people you went to school with, and their humiliation, torture, rape, murder, and mutilation is the end result of a mistake that's easy to imagine making -- letting your guard down because you were having fun and the excitement of the moment made you careless and overconfident. In this case, Mari and Phyllis are off to a rock concert to celebrate Mari's 16th birthday and want to score some weed. Unfortunately, they go off with the wrong guy and end up the captives of Krug Stillo, Fred "Weasel" Podowski, and Sadie -- three escaped convicts who have a very sadistic idea of fun. (The aforementioned wrong guy is Junior Stillo, Krug's illegitimate son, who is a reluctant participant.) When the girls try to resist and escape, the sadism degenerates into bestial rage. So much for the notion that if you stand up to the bullies, they'll back down.And here, I'd like to add one of my personal reasons for finding LAST HOUSE effective. Krug and Co. and the atrocities they committed against Mari and Phyllis seem all to believable to me because they remind me of several characters I had the misfortune to get mixed up with many years ago. The details wouldn't be germane to this review, but I think it's germane to say that there are probably many other folks who've been similarly -- if not quite so extremely -- victimized, and so can relate to the events in LAST HOUSE.Moving on to the look and feel issue, while we all appreciate the polished, slick look of a big-budget Hollywood film , that look makes it obvious you're watching a fabrication. But LAST HOUSE is a low-budget movie with with that grainy, washed-out low-budget look and slightly muffled low-budget sound. The filmmakers also deliberately used documentary-style shooting techniques, because their previous work had been largely in the area of documentary films. All of this combined creates the strong illusion that you're eavesdropping on real events.The second major argument concern the reaction of the killer to what they've done. Unlike Jason and other mindless killing machines, the killers are themselves shocked and horrified by their own acts, which forces the viewer to find those acts all the more shocking.Finally, I'd like to challenge one basic assumption made by those who claim LAST HOUSE no longer has any power -- that the ubiquity of graphic violence in the cinema must inevitably cause the general public to adopt a "So what else is new" attitude toward it. Granted, constant or repeated exposure to a particular stimulus tend to desensitize one to that stimulus. In fact, some groups of people, such as E.R. doctors, policemen, and social workers, MUST desensitize themselves to heinous and extreme acts of violence to do their jobs properly and stay sane. But we aren't all in those lines of work, and so don't all have to force or let ourselves ease to feel shock when something shocking happens. Even if you've seen every other slasher/splatter movie on your video rental store's shelves, you should still be able to get a shock from LAST HOUSE if your emotions are still alive.
