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Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: Pre-owned
Maybe not so shocking now but a collector of relevant films should have this in their collection.the way it's shot and put together paved the way for others to follow.
Verified purchase: No
I first became aware of "Last House On The Left" when it was included on the feature length documentary "The American Nightmare". During the course of this documentary many classic horror films of the 70's and 80's are discussed with clips shown and contributions from the directors. I was familiar with most of the films shown, "Dawn Of The Dead", Halloween, Shivers..., but when Director Wes Craven started talking about his film "Last House On The Left", a film I'd not seen, I decided to buy it. Last House is not your average horror film, there's no supernatural element to the story, it just deals with the horrors of human nature and revenge. The movie depicts the brutal abduction, rape and murder of two teenage girls, whose murderers then make the mistake of staying the night at one of the girls homes. When the girls parents realize that there childs killers are sleeping under there roof they exact there bloody revenge. It would seem to big a coincidence that the house the murderers stop at is the home of there victim but as the film opens you are told that the events of this movie actually happened, and that names and places have been changed to protect the identities of those involved. Although Last House is a good film, it looks dated (although it is currently being remade), the upbeat music doesn't suit the morbid content, there's bad acting throughout especially from the two inept policemen that add some ill advised "humour" to the sombre proceedings. Although banned for many years, it's not really that graphic or shocking anymore, although it's subject matter is still disturbing. I bought "Last House On The Left" for under £5 on the high street, so I'm sure it can be purchased for only a couple of quid on eBay. "last House On The Left" is apparently a remake of the 1960 swedish film "Jungfrukällan", but as I havn't seen this original I don't know how the two compare.Read full review
Before you read any further, the UK DVD is cut. Badly. The BBFC still will not grant it to be released un-cut. Wow. Two teenage girls go to the big city to see a rock band in concert, and on the way home get kidnapped by a trio of convicts, driven to the woods by the girls houses (small world,eh?) and raped and killed. The parents get wind of this and exact revenge on the killers. Wes Cravens' infamous debut finally made it in to my household last year, and like all these type of films, your imagination is far worse than anything shown on screen. I have to say, I was dissapointed. I'm a masive horror fan, so I had high hopes of a nasty little shocker, and while the ideas in the story are brutal and savage, how they are executed on screen are not. The actors, all amateurs struggle with an akward script that is a little on the long side, even at 90 minutes. And the music. The soundtrack is an accoustic hippie-fest, which figures, i guess. The movie was made in the late sixties, but not released till the early seventies,so that type of music was still popular - but it kills any sense of impending terror or the desperation of the situation. A girl running through the woods in fear of her life, while a hippie with his guitar is singing in the background. It ruins the movie for me. Also, the impact of these horrible crimes is dented by the cutting of them to point where you can't tell whats happening. She was raped? Really? I didn't see it! The gang do horrid things to the girls? Where? I didn't see it. To be honest, It's pointless seing this film in it's cut state, as your just left with a badly dated, crudely acted yawn-fest. Sorry. Get the Un-cut Region 1 version instead.Read full review
Similarly to other films reviewed/watched recently, Last House on the Left were one that i'd heard much fuss about, but didn't know what or why there were so much fuss; and so decided to grab a copy for myself to find out. The plot-line described in the information leaflet (very lengthy!) inside seemed to give a good basis for an outstanding film ..or sick and twisted proportions; albeit still intriguing at the same time. Unfortunately, the awareness of the aforementioned use of chopping scenes (by the BBFC, not actual 'chopping' scenes!) out, were all too apparent, as some of the time, the story seemed to jump or shift without reason, or at least, a vague and un-clear one anyway. That said, the pace of the film were reasonable, given the time of filming and how things were filmed back then (style wise). The only distracting thing was that there seemed to be a heavy-use of censorship (similar to that used in Hostel films - the first one more so - especially; but the difference being is that Hostel intended to 'get the viewer using their imagination, by not quite being able to see what/where/how were being hacked to pieces off screen, whereas 'LHOTL' just chopped (unfortunately, all too literal..) the body chopping, mutilation and 'lustful violation' (!) scenes out completely, to a point that what was left, were some sometimes poor/dodgy acting, and little 'blood and gore' to be seen. As for the 'last house on the left' part, it seemed to take on too much significance, especially in order for it to even be considered 'film title worthy' anyway, as the 'last house..' hardly features heavily as a focus point for the film - yeah sure, it's the location for the finally, but it seems more by chance then by organisation, that they decided to use that as a location, rather than pre-planning it as it should really of been, by giving it more emphasis and focus.. reasoning for it being the location point would of been a good idea too; but then we can't really tell Wes Craven how to do his job now, can we? ;) All in all, i'd recommend it for mild viewing of a small amount of 'nostalgic gore', with little else to it - a mild part of nudity, swearing and well.. 'bad dress sense (ahem..)' just about covers it all. Don't go all out expecting a blood bath, or else you'll be sorely disappointed. I'd give it an overall score of 5.5/10; which isn't bad for one of Wes Craven's 'earlier' (he's done so many!!) efforts.Read full review
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