You would not necessarily believe it, but Wes Craven, once a literary professor, took inspiration for his 1972 shocker, The Last House on the Left, from Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring, which itself was based on a medieval ballad.
It details the rape and murder of a wealthy landowner’s daughter and the subsequent revenge the father takes on the perpetrators.
Craven’s film was ultra-violent but somehow not particularly shocking, as it dealt more with blood and gore than with the psychological aspects of the story.
This version from Dennis Iliadis, produced at a time when almost anything gets past the censors, begins with a grisly murder during which the dying victim is shown pictures of his children.
It ends with the chief villain having his head blown off in a microwave.
I don’t know whether this will put you off seeing the film or encourage you to rush off and watch it.
I have to report, however, that Iliadis is a competent director and, thanks to a decent screenplay, his actors seem a good deal more real than is usual in this sort of entertainment.
The result is ghoulishly watchable as Sara Paxton (Mari Collingwood) is anally raped and left for dead but somehow manages to crawl to her parents’ holiday house.
The nasties have gone there too, to shelter from the storm — and Mum and Dad (Monica Potter and Tony Goldwyn) decide that it is either kill or be killed.
While I have doubts that you can blow a man’s head off in an open microwave, there’s no question that Garret Dillahunt makes a frightening psychopath and the whole vicious business is much better handled than most of its ilk.
Spare me, though, from any more movies like this for a spell.
The Last House On The Left
Cert: 18
