Review of The Last House on the Left (1972) by Melvin W — 21 Apr 2012

Krug Stillo: Listen to daddy. I want you to take the gun, and I want you to put it in your mouth, and I want you to turn around and blow your brains out. Blow your brains out, BLOW YOUR BRAINS OUT! .

"Mari, 17, is dying. Even for her, the worst is yet to come.".

I've seen Wes Craven's The Last House on the Left, three times now. Despite, its classification as a classic of the horror genre, I really don't care for it. Forty years after its release, this just doesn't have the same effect on people that it did when it came out. Upon release, it was a controversial shocker. Now, it is just a badly acted exploitation film that has dated horribly and features some of the most godawful music I have ever heard in a movie. Nothing really fits together. Craven is making a sadistic shocker, but misses out on some key elements he needed. The tone is all wrong for a film like this and everything is overblown to the point of ridiculousness. Such as Krug's crime that originally landed him in prison. He had killed a priest and two nuns, and now he has his son hooked on heroin so he can control him. Craven wants to make us fear these characters, but all we can do is laugh at them because they are so terribly written. .

This isn't the horror classic some describe it as. It's early Wes Craven and it has the same look and feeling of his The Hills Have Eyes movies. Neither of which do I like either. I like the remake of The Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes much, much more than Craven's original. This is do mainly to the fact that they make things more serious and achieve a much heavier and more terrifying tone. Carven's initial thought with The Last House on the Left had a lot of potential. It all just went downhill with all the lousy dialogue and characters. .

Sadistic movies have definitely came worse than this one, though. It isn't the worst movie of its kind that you could watch, but the classic status it has received is annoying and unwarranted. All it is, is a movie that pissed a lot of people off in 1972, that looks like a cheap and poorly made exploitation film. There's hundreds of those and they don't get this classic status. You may feel you need to watch this one, especially if you are a horror fan, but there is really no need. .