Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19825 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-05-26
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 2
• Formats: Box set, PAL, Widescreen, Colour
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 84 minutes

Special Features
1.85 Wide Screen
16:9 Wide Screen
English
Region 2
Dolby Digital 5.1 English\DTS English
Dolby Digital 5.1
DTS
Audio Commentary With Writer And Director And Producer
Cast Audio Commentary
Featurette Celluloid Crime Of The Century
Featurette Scoring Last House
Documentary Krug Conquers England
Outtakes And Dailies
US Theatrical Trailer
German Theatrical Trailer
TV Spots
Radio Spots
Collectors Booklet
Poster And Stills Gallery
Talent Biographies
Tales That Will Tear Your Heart Feature
Krug And Company Alternate Film Cut

Synopsis
Two teenage girls head to a concert for a birthday celebration that is brutally interrupted when they are kidnapped, raped, and murdered by three sadistic escaped convicts. However, the killers stumble in the home of one of the girls, and the parents take the opportunity to gain violent revenge for their daughter's deaths. Wes Craven assumed sole directorial control for the first time on LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, creating a cult horror favourite in the genre he would come to master with A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET series and reinvent with SCREAM. Making a virtue of the small budget, Craven creates a shocking and realistic spectacle that gains impact through deployment of handheld cameras and the absence of effects.

Channel4.com
One of the true classics of modern horror cinema ... a nihilistic howl of rage

Customer Reviews

Low budget, ageing, but still with cult status
The film which brought Wes Craven to the attention of the horror movie world, "Last House on the Left" (originally "Night of Vengeance") is an enigmatically titled reworking of Ingmar Bergman's classic "The Virgin Spring" - for 'reworking' read 'dumbed down'.

In its day (released in 1972, shot earlier), it was seen as a horrific gore fest and was denounced as un-American. As has been frequently pointed out, the visceral images from the film were hardly as disturbing as the daily diet of television news from Vietnam which the American public were then watching. For some reason it was seen as going too far, as being too violent for its time ... and the notoriety meant it sold and sold and earned a cult reputation which can appear a little surprising by contemporary standards.

Originally envisaged as a hard-core porn movie which would push the boundaries, "Last House on the Left" evolved into purist horror during the shooting (or maybe the editing). It presents two young women heading off from rural Connecticut into New York city to watch a band called 'Blood Lust'. It's Mary's 17th birthday, she's lovely and innocent, and this is her first real excursion to the big city. Her friend, and obviously a corrupting influence, leads her astray ... and they find themselves kidnapped by a couple of guys newly escaped from prison ... or rather, by a couple of guys and their two hangers on.

The gang take the girls back to Connecticut, coincidentally parking up outside Mary's home, and take the girls for a walk in the woods. I use 'walk in the woods' euphemistically. Mary's parents will stumble on what has happened and exact their own, gory retribution.

Frankly, it's dreadful. The acting is atrocious - the lassie who played Mary was apparently terrified out of her skull that they really were going to kill her. The actors are completely over the top when they're not actually wooden. They improvise - sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It looks like all the best bits were just kept in, edited to fit - so you get incongruous moments of light relief which contrast with the narrative needs of the plot. You sense that, at one point, it was going to be a comic horror ... you sense that this is a film which underwent several incarnations before achieving its final form.

Lighting and direction are amateurish - and there are some comments on the DVD extras which present this as exciting and new, and a lot of comments which admit that no one making the film had any previous experience and that they were making it up as they went along. It shows. Picture and sound quality are poor. The editing can be haphazard and a touch self-conscious - perhaps reflecting an absence of script and narrative control.

There is some coy nudity, some gore, but this is a black and white movie. The images are, quite frankly, tame. The violence is amateurish. Overall, it looks very dated. Craven and company couldn't find a market for it until some advertising executive decided to re-title it "Last House on the Left" - for no obvious reason - and market it with the now infamous "it's only a movie" epithet.

It's interesting, it's worth watching as a piece of history and as a landmark in American horror, but it has a cult reputation which far exceeds both its artistic and its horror quality. And I would seriously recommend buying this as part of "The Wes Craven Collection", where it is packaged with three other films and some interesting extras, and you get a real sense of the development of Craven's style and sophistication compared to this first offering.

Someone tell the BBFC � Its only a movie!
Infamous for having been banned in the UK for many years, Last House on the Left is still a vicious little film. As might be expected, Wes Craven's first film has production values so low they are barely there, but the lack of polish makes this seem a much more grainy and real film - this is a million miles away from the slick horror of A Nightmare on Elm Street, instead seeming more like an early template for the sadistic horror of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The story is presented as a collision between two families - one a normal conservative suburban family, the other a drug-crazed psychotic Charles Manson-type Family. The first half of the film - while crude - shows flashes of genius, and the fate of the two girls the Family come across is both shocking (convention leads us to expect at least one of these girls to survive to become the heroine of the film) and brilliantly acted and filmed (witness the dead-eyed girls post-rape walk into the river). Unfortunately the second half of the film doesn't quite convince - the actors playing one of the girls parents are dire, and if two parents found out their daughters killers were in the house I would expect them to attack them without thinking, not potter around laying traps. The film as a whole deals with an incredibly dark subject matters, but Craven unwisely tries to inject some comedy interludes with a couple of bungling policemen - while not completely without merit these inserts clash horribly with the tone of the rest of the picture. The music score is also utterly bizarre, with someone playing an acoustic guitar and singing along songs about the characters in the film over the action, but somehow this works well in highlighting the mood, and becomes one of this films most distinctive and quirky delights. Last House on the Left is certainly uncomfortable viewing, but for every moment of ineptness there's a moment of brilliance - this is an important film for fans of modern horror, laying the groundwork for the genre pinnacle of Texas Chainsaw, but it's not exactly pleasant viewing.

NB. Unfortunately while no longer banned, the draconian British Board of Film Censors STILL wont let this film be released without cutting it - according to them as a mature adult you are still deemed to be just to idiotic to be able to differentiate between fantasy and reality, and are expected to turn into a psychotic killer rapist after viewing this film (did it happen to any of them I wonder?), so if you want to see the film as intended you'll need to import the uncut American version.

It took 31 years, but it's finally here
Well, it's here to buy at last, and they've released Last House On The Left in a format to be proud of. This 2 DVD set containing a plethora of documentaries, features and commentaries certainly does justice to one of the most maligned films ever made by a mainstream director (Wes Craven, before he made the likes of Nightmare On Elm Street and Scream). The plot, based as it is on Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring, has two girls being kidnapped whilst trying to hitch-hike, then being raped, tortured, degraded and murdered by a recently escaped gang of criminals. The gang hide out at one of the girls' house, but her parents figure out what has happened and take their revenge in a particularly Old Testament style.
Despite the film being over thirty years old, the BBFC have not relented in their decision to insist on over thirty second of cuts. Having seen the uncut version, I can say I am slightly surprised, as the material removed is no worse than that which is left in, but the law is the law. In fact, the whole film does not really justify the reputation which it finds itself saddled with, of being one of the nastiest pieces of cinema ever filmed, though time has slightly dented its impact, and I do speak from the viewpoint of a cynical, seen-it-all-before gore lover.
This film's stature amongst horror fans is legendary, and rightly so. If you're not too easily shocked or upset, and you want to see one of the most influential and talked about horror films of all time, you can finally do so having to buy it from Holland as I was initially forced to do, and you also get hours of extras thrown in for the same price. An essential purchase for fans of horror.