Review of The Last House on the Left (1972) by Carree T — 05 Jan 2009

In this movie about creepy, perverted killers and silly girls who (deserve?) to die, we see a lot of obvious foreshadowing into what will happen after 2 young girls decide to buy some drugs in the big blue violence, AKA New York City. In the beginning we are introduced to Mari, who is hot, yes, and apparently likes to speak crudely to her parents about breasts and Blood Lust, an apparent band that she was supposed to see performing with her friend, instead (of course) the two girls run into a gang of criminals who have just that sort of lust. There is also a song in the beginning with an amazing line "and the road leads to nowhere". Which is how I feel about Upstate new york, and how I'm sure the girls felt as they were trying to escape those lunatics. Actually, I feel there is an intelligence that goes with being a lunatic, and that clan didn't have it. This movie has it's moments of unpredictability, but as a whole I was not satisfied with it. Surprising was the fact that one of the gang of four (three men and one woman) was a father, who got his son addicted to heroin on purpose, so he could control the boy. The fact that the boy is gentler than the rest does not excuse his inaction until the end of the movie. All the characters were appalling, and it was insane that the mother orally pleased that guy and then you see her ripping hi piece apart with her teeth, that was when I knew she didn't waste time like the father.

I'm getting ahead of myself: the two girls were tricked by the junkie in the city, whom they thought was a drug dealer, into going into an apartment that had the other 3 assholes in it. Instead f killing the girls there because it would get the floor dirty, the girls were thrown into the trunk of a car and driven UPSTATE (note- I already have biases against upstate new york and movies like this don't help). The stronger of the girls tried to make a run for it so Mari could escape, but was stabbed multiple times and seen getting her stomached opened and her intestines fingered. Mari is raped later soon after and, for a moment it seems her killers are going to let her walk away. It seems like she was going to walk straight into a lake and kill herself, but they shoot her 3 or 4 times to make sure she is dead, then wind up crashing at her parents house (not knowing they were Mari's parents until they saw photos of her). The parents realize that they were their daughter;s murderers when the mother saw the necklace they had given Mari in the beginning of the film (a peace sign "for good luck" aka tragic foreshadowing) on the neck of the young junkie. The parents decide to set traps and eventually kill them all. The ending montage was hilariously inappropriate, as was the tie it took the father to kill one guy, versus the two the mother killed.

I saw this because I heard about it a few times in the past, and have an appreciation for movies that are very clearly of their time period. This is distinctly 70s. It was interesting to see a film go this far pre-Quinton T, if you know what I mean.