Don't Go In The House (1979)

I decided to start from the beginning with the Don't... movies. They are a famous figure in the exploitation genre, and if the first installment is anything to go by, the titles offer rather irrelevant advice to potential victims. And for once, we find ourselves concurring with the taglines...'don't say we didn't warn you...' I mean, for God's sake, people: the title told you not to, and yet on you waltz into the house! Don't you know you're in the middle of a slasher movie?! Imaginative viewers have paid far more attention to the assertion of the movie's title than its characters do, and have suggested alternatives. A few of my own might include Don't Hitch Rides With Weirdos, Don't Snoop Around Weirdos' Houses and Don't Piss Off Child Abuse Victims. Any one of these could have served more suitably as the 'warning' of the story. 'Don't Go In The House!'? But all my stuff is in there!

Donny Kohler (Dan Grimaldi) is a quiet, weird guy who looks like a less-striking David Hess and works at an incinerator plant. He is obsessed with fire, thanks to his abusive mother's fanatical religiously-based abuse of him during which she'd 'burn the evil out' of him. So, you may say, 'Good on ya, Donny -- ya landed ya dream job!' But with fire being top of his Christmas list, he is less than responsive in fire-related health and safety situations. The opening scene sees one of Donny's colleagues fishing around an incinerator for an aerosol can. Now, I'm no Incineratory Technician, but I know that where there's a furnace and there's a metallic container of compressed gas, I'm not gonna be around to see out the consequences. So, the can goes boom and all the other guys scramble to put out their professional friend who doesn't seem to know the words Stop, Drop and Roll, while Donny stares on hazily.

The guys get mad at little ol' Donny for being fucking useless in a crisis situation, and he runs off home. The first second you get a glimpse of the Kohler place, you practically see 'Bates' written all over it. The obvious inspiration for this crooked mansion atop a hill sets the ball rolling for several other allusions to predecessors of the horror genre. Now if you thought Donny was having a bad day, you should see the look on his face when he finds his mother at home dead. How awful! But, oh wait, Donny's mother was a maniacal child-abuser. After an initial burst of rage at the cold and pale (yet still visibly breathing) mother, he recognises his newfound freedom, and so decides to live the good life: he turns up his records and swings back on the chair. He even smokes a cigarette!

But now for the real fun... to pretend his mother is still alive, not show up for work for a week, and lure gorgeous ladies back to his house for a little hot stuff. First up is a snotty florist (Johanna Brushay), whom Donny offers a ride home. Then he pulls that classic "I just gotta swing by my place for a minute -- it's right on the way" thing. Donny is no slobbering hick with an eyepatch; in fact he looks deceptively friendly, so when he is the only person around to give a lift, politeness indicates that there is little room for hesitation on this request. But then when they get there, Donny insists she come in and meet Mother Kohler. The girl seems to be with us in imagining that any guy who brings a random stranger in to meet his mother probably has some kind of issue, but it would just be plain rude to refuse, right?

The exteriors of the house are completely Hitchcockean, and the interiors have a real Carrie feel to them, with the long cavernous stairwells and gloomy woodwork. It is, as a drunken victim later comments, in dire need of a paint job. One room in particular is quite the spectacle. Once the girl is knocked out (as was imminent -- these buggers are never man enough to just drag a conscious person off against their will, are they?), she wakes up naked, chained to the floor by her feet and her hands to the ceiling of a steel-lined room, and Donny comes storming in menacingly in his full work uniform. Sure hope he noted the extra hours he put in at home down on his time sheet.

The death of Donny's first victim is apparently what most of the fuss was about, and what landed the movie in hot water with the Daily Mail's dumbass scaremongering campaign. The poor girl is doused in petrol and set ablaze with a flamethrower. My initial thought whilst watching this sequence was that its state-of-the-art CGI (Highlander style) were far more than I ever expected from a picture like Don't Go In The House. And I suppose it is quite horrific. But then, I'd recall the death of Delecroix in The Green Mile as far more painful to watch in comparison. I would say the more disturbing aspect of the scene is the mechanical, laborious manner in which Donny carries it out. Albeit a little batty, so far he has come across as a relatively meek fellow, but the way he torches the girl like he does every day at work...it feels as meaningless as a porn actor having sex with his wife at night.

Donny starts hearing voices. Encouraging him to burn the evil out of others. Seems like the Old Lady is getting bored and jealous out there on th'other side. He collects a couple more victims, and chars his mother's body, and arranges them in a macabre Texas Chainsaw Massacre-style family. Now a colleague, Bobby (Robert Osth), calls to see what has kept Donny from work for a week. He invites him out with suggested hooker arrangements made. Hesitant at first, Donny agrees, and hits the clothing store to purchase some disco-worthy gladrags. There he is served by a hilarious camp salesman, who kits him up in a surprisingly plain suit, so when he rolls up to the disco he feels kind of uncomfortable.

Well, it's uncertain whether the promise of whores is really fulfilled. It seems more like Bobby has met two young women who agreed to go out for the night, and he... filled in the gaps, so to speak. They seem nice. Not really whore material. Everyone is eager to dance except our valiant hero, and the poor girl who gets foisted upon him makes the mistake of being a bit too insistent with a secret psycho. Hey -- easy thing to do. As he is sat at a candlelit table, the girl grabs his hands and tries to pull him towards the dancefloor, rather carelessly holding his bare arms over the flame. *Momma Flashback* Cue the publicly alarming episodes which finally draw outside attention to Donny's shenanigans. He freaks out and throws the flame in the girl's face, setting her hair alight and promptly legging it.

During his workless week, Donny anxiously consulted with Father Gerrity (Ralph D. Bowman), telling him of the abuse he suffered at the hands of his mother, and of his murderous tendencies as a result. Gerrity advises that Donny forget it all and move on, that what's in the past can't hurt him. So Donny tried this, but as the little incident in the nightclub demonstrates, it's not had the greatest success rate. So along with the alarmed Bobby, who is left to deal with two girls whose night has been little of what was promised, Donny also has Gerrity looking for him.

He has meanwhile picked up a couple of drunk chicks looking for a ride to the nearest available booze-jockey. Having developed something of a flair for bringing chicks home, he offers them a much better night at his house. They're drunk, and dumb (deadly combo) so gladly accept and start obnoxiously snooping around once they get to the Kohler place, as dumbass victims often do. To be honest, if I invited a new 'friend' to my house, went to get drinks, and came back to find them snooping through my bedroom, I'd be pretty pissed too.

The Priest-Whoremonger duo descend upon Donny's house, freeing the drunk girls from their topless captivity, and taking on the Fire Demon. Donny suits up, and tries to barbecue Gerrity, who is rescued by Bobby, prompting the psycho to barricade himself in his creepy Family Den. Now here's the cool ending I didn't see coming... the Mother-shaped jerky and her poor companions start to creak to life and edge menacingly towards him. I wonder if perhaps the ending sequence of Tony Scott's wicked The Hunger was inspired by this far less stylish example. But dontcha love it when the Insanity card is played throughout, only for the Supernatural card to be suddenly whipped out like a Thai bride's cock at last minute?! What a riot!

I mean, that's assuming that this isn't just another manifestation of Donny's increasingly menacing psyche. If nothing else, Don't Go In The House lends an ear to the lonely, abused souls who suffer pain and degradation. Donny's seeking of redemption in the form of Gerrity demonstrates his ultimately good nature, and he is clearly a tortured man. But what could be learnt from the movie? I suppose, the only lesson the duration of this pretty decent horror teaches can be best summed up by its title, or better by some of my own suggestions. The aim of Don't Go In The House is to warn audiences Don't Piss Off Child Abuse Victims. 

ON THE LIST: I Spit On Your Grave (1978)

Its titlecard is inappropriately similar to that of Deep Throat, isn't it? I mean for what is infamously a real torturefest, it conjures some rather unwelcome erotic connotations, doesn't it? But anyhow... I Spit On Your Grave was probably the first Nasty I ever saw, and I can't quite remember how I first came across it. Possibly my dad. But either way, I read up, added it to my LoveFilm list and got the DVD through the mail. I remember being unimpressed in terms of production, and overwhelmed by just how much rape you can fit into a single scene. Nowadays, I own the double DVD set with the unsettling remake attached, which I will probably review separately for this page at some point. So I have seen the movie a few times since, and with my later-gained film knowledge and admiration for Ebert's work, I look at it similarly, yet in more detail.

In my research, I found an amazing fact out. Director Meir Zarchi was once driving by a park in NY at night when a girl came running out of the bushes bloodied and naked. Zarchi helped her by seeking police and medical assistance, later receiving a thank-you letter and offer of reward (which Zarchi declined) from the girl's father. So what inspired thing did Zarchi decide to do in response? Sponsor a rape charity? Get involved with some kind of rehabilitation centre for sexual assault victims? Nah. He made I Spit On Your Grave. If you've read this far and still have no knowledge of the movie, continue and see why this seems like such an inappropriate decision.

Jennifer Hills (Camille Keaton) is an author who has rented a pretty stonking 'cabin' in the woods, where she plans to pen her novel in peace. But unfortunately she stops at the Wrong Gas Station that Roger Ebert so wonderfully summarised. It is occupied by weirdo hicks, including one simpleton who works as the bicycle delivery boy. Jennifer stupidly tells the strangers where she is staying, and the delivery boy Matthew (Richard Pace) is ordered up to deliver some groceries. He seems harmless enough, but his three buddies take a pervy liking to Jennifer, and kidnap her boat when she's sunbathing in it later. With their speedboat, they tow her to shore where they proceed to gang rape her in the woods.

It's long and painful to watch. It goes on for ages, and I seriously mean ages. Minute after minute. When it is finally, mercifully over, Jennifer drags herself back to the cabin. She grabs the phone...BAM! The fellas are all there before her. And they start to gang rape her again, this time forcing Matthew to join in. Yep, seriously. These two barely separated sequences make up some 25-odd minutes of solid rape. While cruel and gratuitous, it also just gets ridiculous. They beat the hell out of her and leave her for dead.


But Jennifer gets up again, and takes bloody revenge on all the guys, including poor Matthew, who expresses simple and confused remorse, and was definitely bullied into it. Ebert expertly says that the guys treat Matthew as "their pet retard". The revenge is silly and largely unexciting and lacking in mayhem. One part also relies on one of the guys being seduced by the girl he repeatedly raped and left for dead, without for a second hesitating due to her supposedly being dead and yet actually being alive to tell the tale. In any case, he gets what he deserves. So by the end, Jennifer has been lengthily and repeatedly sexually and physically assaulted, but emerges somewhat 'victorious' with all the guys dead. The end.

There are reports of real rowdy catcalls from audiences back when the movie opened. Apparently men would shout encouragement at the men during the rape scenes, and women would should encouragement at Jennifer during the revenge scenes. Ebert speculated as to what each group of hecklers thought about the portion of the movie for which they were silent. This movie is definitely brutal and distasteful, mostly for its ridiculously lengthy rape. People are still divided as to whether the movie is misogynist or feminist. If Zarchi's sentiments are to be believed, he intended it as something of a feminist movie. But the product is most definitely questionable. I mean, at the very least, if the suffering is meant to be equaled out by the end, each man should have received a 25-odd minute torture.

I Spit On Your Grave is pretty terrible on all levels. Camera work is minimal, sound quality is crap, acting and dialogue is wooden, and the entire scenario seems to me a really shitty way of responding to such a traumatic event as stumbling across a rape victim. It's a crappy product, and unlike most of the other overhyped titles, very much deserved its place on the ridiculous result of media sensationalisation that was the Video Nasty list.

ON THE LIST: The Driller Killer (1979)

...so we are informed in the opening seconds of Abel Ferarra's notorious The Driller Killer. I upped it as far as I dared, for I feared that my parent-of-two neighbour may well re-enact the movie's conclusion should I subject him to its repetitive Punk Rock soundtrack. Goddamn paper-thin walls. But I really liked this titlecard. 'Blah blah blah actual events blah blah suspects still at large blah blah' has been as inappropriately used as Macaulay Culkin's childhood bank account. 'This film should be played LOUD' not only acknowledges the movie's fictitious nature, but braces us for a thrill ride. I like its style.

Reno Miller (Ferarra under pseudonym Jimmy Laine) is an artist living in a squalid apartment in the city with his girlfriend Carol (Carolyn Marz) and dopey friend Pamela (Baybi Day). He is busy obsessing over his latest piece, which he has promised will be his best ever. But the girls have been racking up the phone bill, rent is months overdue and a large ensemble punk band have just moved into the building, screaming and thrashing out bass chords at 2am. The financial and artistic pressure starts to render him insane, and he starts off on impulsive drill attacks on hobos.
Of course, nowadays the Driller Killer would be fine in terms of tools, as efficient battery-pack drills are commonplace. But in 1979 when, apparently, drills were all mains-powered, he had no outlet for his creative massacring until the Porto-Pack belt is invented, allowing him to carry his power supply around with him. Neat, what this technology stuff can do!

If I'm honest, that's about all there is to it. Having said that, Driller Killer comes as one of very few titles to grace the list that is a fully realised picture. I would, of course, also mention Last House on the Left and Cannibal Holocaust in the same vein. I say this because despite its rather amateurish camera work, the dialogue, sets, editing, sound, score and lighting all really come together beautifully. It is perfectly usual in the Nasty/Exploitation genre for movies to be made for the sake of it, and thrown together in the most graceless manner. It inspires much confidence when all the elements are recognised and utilised.

There are several sequences which stand out, my favourite (in spite of its gruesomeness) is one in which Reno slices up a butchered rabbit his agent gave him. He then starts to repeatedly stab the head of the carcass. Cut into this are scenes shot from below of people dancing at a gig, with pinky red lights reflecting off of the shimmering lycra and glitter. Each time it cuts back, we are unsure for a second whether we are looking at mangled giblets or writhing dancers. It's quite mesmerising.

Use of darkness and shadow is great, the soundtrack is really very catchy, and the use of sound is also used very successfully. An entire funky feel of late '70s punk mayhem is about the picture, effortlessly evoked by Ferarra, who although scary-psychotic at times, doesn't handle his everyday dialogue too naturally. He is good at his crazed and raging monologues but terribly unconvincing when ranting about the phone bill. Unsurprisingly he made his name behind the camera as a director, famously helming Bad Lieutenant.

It's certain that The Driller Killer only gained the notoriety that it did because of the still used as its release cover taken from the scene of the hobo getting drilled in the head. That is probably the most violent scene in the movie; it doesn't seem a particularly explicit movie in any respect. Not much blood, barely any sex or nudity despite the rampant threesomes the friends' living arrangement surely facilitates. But it is a good movie, funky and underground and dingy. It's pretty cool.

ON THE LIST: House On The Edge Of The Park

Two of the major associates of House On The Edge Of The Park had previously found notoriety, and placement on the Video Nasty list before this 1980 collaboration. Director Ruggero Deodato rose to infamy with his previous film Cannibal Holocaust, not only paving the way for the torrent of 'found footage' horrors we face today, but creating such a convincing film that he was formally charged with murdering his actors, and was forced to bring them to court to prove they were still alive! Star David Hess launched his acting career as Krug Stillo in Wes Craven's Last House On The Left. In fact, after Deodato watched Last House, he was so desperate to team up with Hess that he offered him half of all the movie's takings. Regardless of whether or not this happened, the two made their first of an eventual six collaborations, and started a lifelong friendship.

House On The Edge Of The Park is very different to Cannibal Holocaust and Last House, except for the kind of violence it portrays. The plot hangs on a revelation at the end. For this reason, I shall hereby declare a ***SPOILER ALERT***. The movie begins on a bold note,  with scatty cuts between the New York City skyline and lead antagonist Alex (David Hess) driving at night. He eyes up a young woman driving alongside him (Karoline Mardeck - Hess' wife under a pseudonym) and runs her off the road before raping and strangling her. This sort of sets the mood for the rest of the movie, and is the vital key to the remainder of the story.

Sometime after (we find out later a year has passed), Alex is in the garage he works in with his buddy Ricky, who is played with such fluency by Giovanni Lombardo Radice that we don't need to guess if he's all there in the head. This actor has quite extraordinary eyes, which are pivotal to us interpreting Ricky. He looks at times quite vacant, with a sideways expression, but when he straightens up and looks dead on, he is very engaging and unsettling. Alex is shutting up shop and dressing in a way-too-tight yellow suit to 'go boogyin'', when a young rich couple, Tom and Lisa (Christian Borromeo and Annie Belle) roll up with a false complaint of car trouble. Alex wants to boogie, and the couple are on their way to a get-together, so Alex basically invites himself along, and the couple are hardly resistent.

The running theme of class conflict is introduced quite early on, with Lisa condescendingly asking Alex about his living. When they get to the gorgeous pad where the party's at, Howard (Gabriele Di Giulio), Gloria (Lorraine De Selle) and Glenda (Marie Claude Joseph) are waiting. They, too, are unperturbed by the unexpected presence of Alex and Ricky, and everyone starts off having a swell time. Ricky is eager to demonstrate his dance skills, much to the odd enjoyment of the young rich folk, who laugh and yell things like 'Hot diggity!' and 'Strip! Strip!' Ricky's easy coercion by the latter exclamation displeases Alex, who grabs his friends and demands that he stops humiliating himself for the enjoyment of the rich bastards.

So instead they suggest a Poker game. While Ricky is busy getting his ass kicked and his money taken, Alex quickly pursues the sly smiles and batting eyes of Lisa, who pointedly informs him that she's off for a shower. Right at the beginning of a party. OK... She teases him into the shower with her, before making a quick exit and angering him greatly. This puts Alex's real character into motion, and where we may have first assumed that Deodato cast Hess for an effective reprisal of Krug, Alex is quite different. Hess himself noted the intelligence levels of the two characters: while Krug is very cunning and controlled, Alex is childish, stroppy and loud when he doesn't get his own way.

When he returns downstairs and realises Ricky is being cheated in the Poker game, out comes the razor blade Alex decidedly took with him from the garage, and the party turns into a violent home invasion/hostage situation. This part lasts a long time, and sees every member of the 'Young Rich' players being either beaten, threatened or sort-of raped. The rape is the difficult bit, and not really because it is very upsetting, but because it is difficult to class as 'rape'. Two of the three women seem to show some sort of genuine sexual interest in the men - Gloria to Ricky and Lisa to Alex - and when these two couples each eventually have sex, it plays out in quite a passionate and pleasing manner. Lisa having spent a good time being a serious cocktease, Alex feels entitled to payout from her, and although she hesitantly undresses, she soon appears perfectly consensual. Gloria and Ricky share a very sensual scene out in the garden.

Anyway, after Alex and Ricky have had their fill of the present guests, the doorbell rings, and gorgeous young Cindy (Brigitte Petronio) from across the street is here. Where the others take one or another opportunity to manipulate or attack the fellas, Cindy takes none, or rather doesn't get the opportunity. She is stripped naked and slashed up by Alex, in the scene most often noted in 'censorship'-related writings. Her role is not an active one; perhaps it only exists to emphasise Alex's callous cruelty. But - in another touch I'm sure Hess himself added - Alex leers over the girl, extensively, grimly singing a lullaby to her, and it is unnervingly menacing.


But while all this is going on, Tom (who looks strikingly like River Phoenix) finally reaches the gun in the drawer, and Alex having accidentally stabbed Ricky in a fit of juvenile rage, the tables most definitely turn. Ricky is bleeding out, and Alex is at gun point, and Tom drops the bomb...the girl at the beginning of the movie was his sister, and this whole night was a set-up on their part. Wow...so taking in this shocking piece of information, let us reassess everything we have just seen. As a precursor to the revenge of the rape of one girl, six people allow themselves to be beaten, humiliated and sexually assaulted. Some may say that's a little nonsensical or counterproductive. They could be right. Or we just imagine that they are hardcore yuppies who know that two dead street guys in their palatial house would spell one thing to the police: self-defense during break-in. These guys really fight hard for their cause.

Well, after all the havoc he's caused, it's only right that Alex gets a quick, painless execution shot to the forehead, right? Nah, these guys are hardcore remember? So after no less than three bullets to the torso, the youngsters do the unthinkable...BULLET TO THE DICK! This is my absolute favourite sequence in the movie. Because immediately the film cuts to Alex's face in slow-mo, from the moment of impact throughout the recognition of pain, and the effects of this on face and voice are tremendously heightened by the dragging pace. It is true, that as well as being very creative and effective, this sequence is easy to laugh about. I wonder if that is a trick by Deodato, that after such ceaseless aggression and intimidation by Alex, we are finally in a position to laugh at him, to mock him. It carries out upon the audience the same mental switch of dominance that the characters themselves feel.

So after the brutal shot to the shlong, Alex falls back into the swimming pool, and Howard stalks the water's edge, finding himself in a position Alex was in earlier, in which he continually kicked Howard back into the water, and pissed on his head. Howard drags Alex out of the water, offering help. Alex, finally looking like the child he acts, gazes up at his rescuer, wrapping his arms around his neck. He is finally helpless. Howard then throws him back into the pool, where Tom and Lisa take turns in shooting him finally dead, leaving his body floating on the water. I really like the ending of House on the Edge of the Park for the dauntless way in which it reaps what it sows. David Hess' sinister onscreen presence often allows little room for sympathy (except for the beautiful Remorse sequence in Last House), but with Alex he boldly tapped into a vulnerability that we somehow felt was always there, waiting to be provoked, which he responds to with cynicism and violence.

ON THE LIST: Cannibal Ferox (1981)

Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust set a whole flesh-eating trend in motion back in the early '80s, being one of six titles on the Video Nasty list to feature the word 'cannibal'. Many quite correct allusions have been drawn between Holocaust and Ferox, with a particularly blinding one that is handled totally incorrectly in the latter. But there are also some quite major differences between the two that make Ferox a viewing experience dissimilar to Holocaust.

Ferox starts off, as Holocaust does, in New York City, on a bright sunny day, following a funky lookin' cat with a funky disco soundtrack. He goes to an apartment looking for his smack dealer Mike, only to be confronted by two other, dodgier lookin' fellas, also looking for Mike as he owes them $100,000. They shoot the guy dead in the apartment. Then we cut to Paraguay, where siblings Rudy (Danilo Mattei) and Gloria (Lorraine de Selle) begin to believe they have made a mistake by bringing their 'insecure' friend Pat (Zora Kerova) on their vacation with them. Well, hardly a vacation. Gloria is writing her PhD anthropology dissertation, and intends to prove that 'cannibalism as an organised practise of human society does not and never has existed.' This should already strike the average viewer as a bit of a long shot, so why an anthropologist would believe this enough to trek out into the wilderness is perhaps a little beyond us. But we'll go with the flow.

After Pat has taken part in a very metaphorical 'shower' with the local authority, the trio pack their things onto a rickety ferry (including an abysmally parked Jeep) and are off into the jungle. Genius Rudy manages to sink the Jeep in muddy bogs twice in no more than two minutes, the second time rendering the vehicle useless. So they abandon the expensive mobile quite happily and continue on foot. In the jungle they very soon come across their first live native, nonchalantly noshing on bugs, and then their first dead native, with one impaled and a second wedged between a tree and a giant spiked ball. In a crucially different way to the young film crew in Holocaust, the friends show disgust and horror at their findings, and immediately try to help the two victims, despite the futility. These three are seemingly decent human beings, with all their moral and sympathetic tendencies in order.

Then, somewhat unexpectedly, they run into two American guys, Joe (Walter Lucchini) and Mike (Giovanni Lombardo Radice). Joe is injured and traumatised, and Mike is a tough-talking cokehead, with a pouch of his poison hanging around his neck. This little trinket immediately draws Pat's interest. Well, it's a safe bet that this cokehead Mike is the same dealer Mike those guys in NY were after. Mike tells a tale of horror: he, Joe and their Portugese guide were captured and tortured by a local tribe, who apparently took enough of a disliking to the guide to castrate him and eat his genitals. They supposedly got away with the help of two locals - the very ones the trio found dead earlier. But immediately we know something's not right. Joe is visibly distressed, and keeps interrupting Mike's storytelling, insisting that 'that's enough' and 'they don't wanna hear that.'

At first everybody gets along just fine, but the next morning Gloria is missing, and is eventually found in one of those hole-in-the-ground traps. In there with her is a pig. Mike remorselessly butchers the poor creature with a knife, much to Gloria's horror. He is increasingly aggressive, and quite obviously a raging coke fiend. Meanwhile, Rudy and Joe have ventured to the tribe's village looking for Gloria, and come across the charred remains of what is believed to be the Portugese guide. But again, Joe acts shifty, and begs that they go back. Something's definitely not right. Especially seeing as the elderly and youths of the tribe who remain after the supposed ordeal with Mike and Joe, do not seem threatening in the slightest, but actually very afraid of the now five-strong group.


Joe's injury becomes infected and he quickly turns sickly and delirious. In his fever, he confesses to Rudy and Gloria what really happened to them, or rather what they caused. Turns out the fellas came to the jungle to prospect emeralds, and take advantage of local coke supplies, but when a week of work turned out not a single gem, Mike got sniffed out of his head and castrated, tortured and killed the guide. I guess here would be a good point to talk about Lombardo Radice. Due to his use of pseudonym John Morghen, I didn't realise while watching the movie that it was none other than simple-minded Ricky from Deodato's House on the Edge of the Park, making this a reunion between Lombardo Radice and De Selle. Ricky was a rather pitiful character, whose childish trust found him almost coerced into cruelty. Mike needs to such motivation. He seems to think solely in terms of violence, which he proves once the tables have turned, and he is still yelling death threats at the natives.

Poor Joe dies, and Gloria and Rudy decide that the tribe will seek retribution from all of them, not just their aggressors (which seems stupid and illogical, but apparently true), and when they find Pat and Mike have run away with all their equipment and supplies, decide now's the time to make a run for it. But they are caught, reunited with the also captive Pat and Mike, and given front row seats to the matinee performance of Mike's Comeuppance. Unfortunately they don't seem to have anticipated this performance as highly as we have and it is met with mixed to negative reviews. I, however, enjoyed it immensely. It's fair to say that after Mike's shenanigans, a good old revenge castration was in order. But rather than let him bleed out, they take the time to cauterise the wound.How thoughtful. Until my partner pointed out: his urethra is now sealed off too. His bladder's gonna blow up like a blueberry! Ouch.


The group are then taken to another village for the suffering to continue. The girls are shoved down a hole, Rudy is shot and killed with a poisoned dart, and Mike has more to come...obviously! Whilst down the hole, Pat is well and truly freaking out, while Gloria is perhaps not freaking out enough. She suggests they sing to demonstrate their unity and courage, but also theorises with words what Cannibal Holocaust did with images: the tribes only became cannibalistic when threatened by outside forces, so who were the real barbarians? This was a very well illustrated idea in Holocaust, but it feels both too soon and too simple for such a message just a year after Deodato's movie.

I have just realised that my Video Nasty reviews are rather in-depth, and analyse most movies from beginning to end. Perhaps this is a good format, but perhaps a little long winded - I want you to be left with some things unexpected. So I'll now move on to the film's ending. We have one survivor, Gloria, who is seen being presented with her PhD, looking rather forlorn. It is revealed that her dissertation ended up covering the entire truth of cannibalism, presumably on the basis of what she said earlier to Pat. This revelation is somewhat destructive: Gloria's own brother was killed during the expedition, yet she feels it's better to lie to her parents (supposedly) about her brother's fate in order to save the tribe an undeserved reputation. For the greater good, maybe that's a good thing. But from a grieving parent's perspective, that's pretty shitty.

Cannibal Ferox must be compared with Cannibal Holocaust. One striking thing about Ferox is that the actual on-screen violence is far more scarce. The aftermath, like severed penises and skewered breasts, is shown, but the piercings and severings not so much. In fact, there is more infamous animal violence visible than simulated human violence. Ferox for some reason carries on Holocaust's detested tradition of live animal killings on-screen, but the majority of it is actually inflicted on animals by other animals. It's obviously set-up nature is no less disturbing, and we even get a brand new Turtle Death, which plays out in a very similar way to Holocaust. But I've already been there, done it and regretted it, so I actually averted my gaze when it came.

It is filmed and narrated in a typical movie style, with an invisible camera crew following a bunch of characters from all angles who can't see them. It's far more of an action picture than Holocaust as it lacks the documentary-style realism. That may be one reason why it's not so effective. It may also be that we've seen a very similar scenario before, and done better. It's an entertaining enough watch for something of its genre, but far more put-together than Holocaust. The dialogue is rather scripted, the incidents similarly. The one thing that struck me as unexpected was actually the appearance of Mike and Joe early on. It feels lacking in a sense of dread and cruelty which was so prevalent in Holocaust. It is cleaner and far more produced, and feels rather like it was riding on the back of Holocaust's infamy. But it is good, and must be credited for its horror star cast.

ON THE LIST: Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

Quite possibly the most infamous title on the list, Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust took filmmaking, exploitation and suspension of disbelief to a whole other level. I sought out a DVD copy at the age of fifteen (what a rebel!) having heard of it on a Top Scary Movies list, and apparently being on some hardcore teenage horror-high at the time, was glad I'd watched the movie, but didn't see it as anything insanely upsetting. In the seven years that have since passed, I have continued to study film, and gone on to write about it a whole bunch. And the launch of my Video Nasty page was the perfect excuse to revisit Cannibal Holocaust. This time around, it affected me in an entirely different way.

Not only was I veritably disturbed by its content, I also found myself pondering its ideas and motives and themes. There's no doubt that Deodato has always been something of a sensationalist in his work, and so I'm sure at least a fraction of his reason for making Cannibal Holocaust was essentially to be gross. But, it addresses other matters, and at least he does gross with utter conviction, and never stops short. He also managed to find himself a cast who evidently had few inhibitions and were suitable for manifesting the material. As a now serious observer of film, I saw this movie in a new light - one which I'm sure echoes, in part, what audiences in 1980 saw too.

Cannibal Holocaust is staged in two acts: Act 1 introduces us to Dr Harold Monroe, a New York anthropologist who leads a rescue mission into the Amazonian rainforest in hopes of finding a young film crew, missing in action. The crew went to film a documentary about an indigenous tribe of cannibals, and never returned. Although their expedition involves gruelling on-screen animal killing for food, Monroe's motives are ultimately peaceful, and when they reach the tribe's camp, he makes peace with the people. He then finds an altar made of human corpses and decorated with film reels. Bingo.

The reels are brought back to NY, where a guy from a broadcasting company wants to make the footage into a documentary. However, Monroe has already examined the films himself, and knows what horrors they contain. He insists on showing the reels, to prove just how unwatchable they are. The footage of the young film crew is Act 2, and is disgusting, reviling and quite brilliant. An absolute shining example of cinematic realism. The oldies are usually the goodies, but I don't think even Blair Witch captured such mind-bending horror from a handheld camera perspective. The continuous use of only two separate perspectives at any given time is a tough trick to keep up realistically, and Deodato pulls it off with utter fluency, to the point where it surely cannot be just a film.

Upon this second viewing, it became utterly apparent to me just why Deodato was formally charged with the murder of his cast members. Act 2 is a parallel universe to Act 1 in terms of behaviour. In his trip, Monroe makes a sign of peace by stripping naked and bathing in the river, which attracts the friendly attention of a group of naked native ladies. He integrates himself into their society, even reluctantly accepting their offering of human meat. He quickly succeeds in his mission by doing so and gets home to New York alive. The filmmaking gang are director Alan Yates, his girlfriend Faye and cameramen Jack and Mark. They all quickly succeed in proving themselves utterly depraved assholes with out of control sadistic tendencies. They start off by herding a tribe into a straw hut and setting it on fire, they then take turns in raping a local woman while Faye stands by and yells about wasting film.

The crew's treatment of the tribes is senseless and utterly cruel, and so one really wonders what they imagined would occur as a result of their behaviour. This is perhaps where the theme of media cruelty hits home the hardest: the crew film all of their shenanigans, with the aim of editing it all to look like warfare between two opposing tribes. One need only glance at any Daily Mail Online article to see not only atrociously below-standard spelling and grammar, but also ridiculous sensationalism created out of deliberate distortion of source material. An actress exits a restaurant with a suitably full belly, and suddenly she's 'fuelling pregnancy rumours'. A musician is  photoed looking 'worryingly thin' despite the warped coffee table and wine glass courtesy of Photoshop. The media is increasingly deceptive in its depictions of everything, and often unethical in its methods. This is clearly a theme constant throughout Cannibal Holocaust.

Act 2, or rather, the film crew it follows, goes wild in its depravity. Firstly, their guide Felipe is bitten by a snake, and in an almost seamless sequence, his leg is hurriedly amputated and cauterised against his will by the crew, and the snake hacked up. The intense mixture of fiction and reality worked into the production of each scene is what makes the lines eerily blur. The amputation, even by today's standards, is entirely convincing effects-wise, and so quickly followed by the obviously real footage of a snake being cut up, there's little in our subconscious to convince us that any of it is faked. The documentary-style shooting only heightens this.

The crew continue to slaughter animals (again, for real) and people for seemingly no other reason than to have fun and assert their dominance. They come strutting into the village with guns over their shoulders like rockstars walking onstage, so full of their own perfection. When a neighbouring tribe launch attack on the crew, they are soon made to look very foolish. It is admittedly good to see comeuppance for these degenerates. Cameraman Jack is impaled with a spear, and ringleader Alan barely hesitates to shoot him dead, so that they can film the tribe ripping him apart. There's team spirit for ya! This is one of those really exceptional sequences that I cannot figure out no matter how much I think. The tribe grab Jack's body, face still partially visible, and cut off his penis. I think I remember reading somewhere a theory that the body of a recently-killed cyclist was used. It doesn't really seem beyond any of them, all things considered. But looking closely at the still (the shot is continuous), that does not look like a prosthetic, especially by 1980 standards:

The now hysterical Faye is captured, gang raped and decapitated, while her loving caring boyfriend Alan looks on, filming the whole thing from behind the trees. The entire cast must have had it rough out in the jungle, but all the dragging around and struggling entirely naked through mud and forest must have been an absolute nightmare on many levels. I bet a long hot bath was in order when they each got back home. Having had their way with Faye, the cannibals see the fellas, advance, and we are given our first ever, in the history of cinema, 'camera lands in front of fallen cameraman' shot...

Back in the reality of NY, the thoroughly disturbed broadcaster people concede and Monroe orders the footage burned. End of movie.

This is definitely, alongside Last House On The Left, the most provocative and well made picture to grace the Video Nasty list. It is probably the nastiest too. In many of the other titles, my pre-imagined versions of infamous scenarios I'd heard of turned out to be far scarier than anything I eventually saw in the actual movies. Cannibal Holocaust is just as grizzly as it promises to be. It is totally there, in your face, inescapably real and brutal. The movie also caused a probably record-breaking plethora of controversy, firstly over the frequent animal cruelty, and secondly over the apparent torture and murder of an entire cast. People were convinced it was a snuff film, and Deodato was facing life imprisonment for the actors' deaths, and was forced to produce them all, alive and well, in court, as well as to reproduce several special effects, such as the infamous Impalement, to prove it had been faked.

The movie remains banned or heavily censored in some countries, and the wide outrage and trauma the movie caused is definitely testament to its effectiveness. And thankfully, the population of intellectuals out there recognised the film's social commentary. Monroe concludes, 'Who are the real cannibals?' All of the cruelty the crew filmed in order to edit into alternative narratives, incriminate them all as sadistic numbskulls with absolute lack of human emotion or empathy. Ironically, they went to the Amazon to document a supposedly cruel tribe of cannibals, who were backwards enough to kill and eat their own kind. But what does it say about three grown men from a civilised country, who laugh and holler while taking turns raping a girl, all whilst rolling around in the mud like animals? The very act plays out animalistically.

Monroe's initial visit to the forest demonstrated that peace is rewarded with peace. The crew's nihilistic cruelty was met with nihilistic cruelty. Cannibal Holocaust really examines the cycle of cruelty as human nature dictates it. Are the tribespeople the real enemies, or the real barbarians? It could be argued that the scariest thing about the movie is what the Everyman is capable of inflicting upon the innocent, and it is a bold move to cast the typical native antagonist in an anti-hero light.

Can I condone the animal cruelty? No, I just cannot. I spent all my teenage years as a strict vegetarian who once threw up after accidentally ingesting a gelatine-containing product, and I abhor animal cruelty in any form. That said, I do not spend my days and nights planning the hijacking of animal testing labs either. I have to say that every scene of animal killing in Cannibal Holocaust turned my stomach and unsettled me greatly. What especially struck me was how long the animals took to die. I don't know if this was recognised and used as some kind of metaphor, but it upset me greatly. Far more so than any scenario played out on humans. Probably because of the element of innocence in an animal, and perhaps that is another point to linger on. What we are to recognise is the senseless suffering of an innocent at the hands of a barbarian, and how (whether with animals or humans) once violence is initiated, it becomes a brutal cycle.

Cannibal Holocaust is a brilliant, pioneering and overwhelmingly effective film. Deodato cemented himself as a horror maker with real balls, and launched a horror subgenre that is now a well and truly flogged dead horse. His will always be the reigning supreme.

ON THE LIST: Anthropophagus The Beast (1980)

Boy, I had high hopes for this one. One of the most infamous Video Nasties, reviled worldwide for its 'foetus eating' scene, Anthropophagus The Beast really failed to deliver for me. Its cover-, and main star, George Eastman as cannibalistic serial killer Nikos, is quite terrifying. A sinister looking fellow with menacing eyes, towering at an incredible 6ft9", Eastman as himself is pretty scary. Add monstrous make up effects and he is terrifying. As it happens, Eastman was a frequent collaborator with veteran horror director Joe D'Amato, and co-wrote Anthropophagus. He's an amazing villain, but the story and set-up is slow and boring.

It pains me to say this. I am aware of director D'Amato's stellar cult horror status, and Anthropophagus has a lot of what it needs to be good, but it's just so goddamn boring. Set on a beautiful Greek island, which is creepily deserted, the movie gives us a bunch of friends who go to stay in one of the many lovely houses. Among their entourage is a heavily pregnant woman and a nutty new age woman who prattles on about how the Tarot cards say they shouldn't be there, and that they're going to die there, etc. The others aren't very memorable. 

They see some creepy figure skulking around the place and leaving messages on dusty windows, and they are, of course, undeterred by her obviously ghostly presence. They chase after her, certain she is a real person, inexplicably running from them on a mysteriously deserted island. Nothing up with that. They find a mutilated body, and then they run back to their boat, which is adrift, so they leave the pregnant woman out there by herself and sleep in the house.

In the house, they come across a blind woman, who is equally as crazy as the tarot woman, raving about the smell of blood and the like. Then Nikos (who I can't really help but refer to as Anthropophagus - isn't he the titular character anyhow?) shockingly appears behind the door. Wow, this guy kicks it old school. He was hiding behind the door. Still, he's very scary looking. From here, all hell breaks loose with the towering fiend taking out the boring bunch left, right and centre. I am writing this a few weeks after watching, but even this recently, much of the movie is lost on me. 

I admit, after an hour or so, I found myself just waiting for the foetus scene, as I had conceded that nothing else was going to be anywhere near as entertaining or shocking. I wasn't really wrong. This scene comes right at the very end of the movie, and it has unsurprisingly been rather jumped up by hearsay. It was pretty brutal, and visible enough to require the infamous skinned rabbit as a prop. But another real problem I have is that the characters don't seem to find their plight anywhere near as dreadful as we do as an audience. As the pregnant woman and whichever bloke is with her are cornered in a cave, with Nikos approaching them, they speak calmly, and seem surprised at the most. While the woman is having the skinned rabbit pulled from her innards, she just sort of moans in a high pitch. I don't think it even takes a woman to know that this ordeal would more likely result in ear-splitting screams of agony. 

Everything is very amateur and the acting is terrible. There are two--OK, three things that make this movie in any way memorable to me. 1) The foetus scene: D'Amato and Eastman came up with one gross gem, and it feels like they wrote the rest of the movie to accommodate it. 2) Shortly afterwards, the rest of the friends are at some mansion, and one of the women gets tripped into a noose, which sends her hurtling over a thirty-foot banister. That was pretty crazy. 3) Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr George Eastman. He is the star, the bearer, the objective of the movie, and it's a shame that the lagging plot development only leaves us with about 20 minutes of him. 

The closing minutes see the female remainder being pulled down and then chased back up a well by Nikos, in a sequence that is pretty close to being scary, but for the fact it seems to play out in slow-mo. With an unexciting Moog synth soundtrack and minutes of ridiculously slow grabbing, moaning and reaching, all tension is gone. And again, the female on the receiving end of this snail-paced terror addresses it with considerable nonchalance. The entire movie is played out far too casually, with the characters not seeming to recognise the situation they are in. But then where would we be in the horror world without award-winningly idiotic characters?

I wanted to like Anthropophagus, and when I researched it, and the backgrounds of its makers, D'Amato and Eastman in particular, I really wanted to like it. Alas, I really did not. Perhaps I'll have more luck with one of their alternative co-productions. Porno Holocaust, maybe.

Last House On The Left (1972)

This movie, in some weird way, changed my life. It overtook The Exorcist, Carrie and The Wicker Man as my favourite horror movie ever, and that's one tough call. They are all utter works of genius. But when I first watched Wes Craven's directorial debut Last House On The Left, I saw something like I'd never seen before. Because of my sheer admiration for this film and its merits, I will issue a **SPOILER ALERT** right here.

Where to start with a movie I know inside out and back to front, from conception to aftermath? I suppose 1300s Sweden, in which a folk tale emerged, of a young girl who is raped and murdered in the woods by a gang of men, who then seek shelter at her parents' house. The parents realise who they are and what they have done, and kill them in revenge. But they also build a church to repent. This was the basis for Ingmar Bergman's Oscar Winning The Virgin Spring. And this was the basis for Last House On The Left.

In Craven's movie, we have beautiful young Mari Collingwood (Sandra Cassell), the daughter of a doctor celebrating her 17th birthday by going to the big city for a Bloodlust concert with her 'funky' friend Phyllis Stone (Lucy Grantham). An amusing opening scene introduces us to Mari, telling her parents about her plans for the night, and their reactions to her 'wild' ways. When Mari's father notices she's wearing no bra under her shirt, she giggles, 'Course not, nobody wears those things anymore!' Ahh, the good old days...Outraged by her bra-less cavorting, and her use of the word 'tits', old Doc Collingwood says, 'Tits?! What's this "tits" business? Sounds like I'm back in the barracks!' 




Mari and Phyllis, who is an iron and steel heiress ('My mother irons and my father steals!'), hit the town, looking for someone to buy some reefer from, and come across shaggy young Junior (Marc Sheffler), who they rather stupidly follow up to his apartment for an ounce o' the good stuff. However, through the earlier use of a local radio report, we have already been introduced to the crooks who lurk in said apartment: escaped convicted 'murderers, rapists and dope-pushers' Krug Stillo (David Hess) and Weasel Podowski (Fred Lincoln), and their cattish girlfriend Sadie (Jeramie Rain), who has demanded 'a couple more chicks' for 'equal representation'.

So the gang kidnap the girls, and next morning on their way out of town, break down right outside Mari's house, which is in the middle of the woods. So the gang drag the girls out into the forest for 'a little fun', and what follows is surely the most intense and affecting scene in the whole production. In a wicked game of Simon Says, the gang inflicts awful humiliation on the girls at knifepoint. With a move Craven used to indicate the beginning of a real emotionless horrorshow, Krug forces Phyllis to wet herself. Yes - shit just got real. Even nowadays, this is not your typical torture material, but the utter humiliation of it is probably all the more painful. In a feeble attempt to put a stop to the ordeal, a cluckin' Junior (who his own father hooked on heroin to control him) suggests that they instead force the girls to 'make it with each other'.

Warning: imminently ensuing is the most painful and memorable shot of the movie. Phyllis, worriedly trying to reassure her friend, pulls down Mari's underwear, while Krug leers over them, and Mari sobs uncontrollably, begging 'I can't, I can't'. Sandra Cassell, in her only post-LH interview with David Szulkin, maintained that much of the shoot was upsetting for her, and that David Hess was very frightening. This seems somewhat believable, for there is an incredible realism to her performance during these scenes. Many have drawn allusions to the death of Flower Power and the innocence of an era from this movie, and those were some of Craven's many lingering motivations in its making. This single shot of poor Mari, having her innocence quite literally stripped from her, as she helplessly begs for mercy, is utterly symbolic of the early '70s social and political upheaval.

But I digress, the girls are forced to 'make it', before Phyllis makes a run for it, distracting Sadie and Weasel. Mari meanwhile begs Junior to let her go, insisting her father can give him methadone, and gives him the peace-symbol necklace her father gave her earlier. It almost looks like the girls will make it. But Krug frightfully reappears each time (that was still a new and terrifying trick back then!), and Phyllis is disembowelled, then Mari is raped. This is another pivotal scene. Although reviled in its time, it does not linger, and it is not particularly violent. But Cassell's wild screams, and Hess' ingenious addition of drooling on his victim's cheek, give the final act of degradation its raw and disturbing effect.

Mari gets up and staggers away, as a haunting blues number 'Now You're All Alone' swells on the soundtrack. She vomits and prays, and then we look at Krug, Weasel and Sadie. Together, then individually, then together. They are silent, dumbfounded...remorseful? They stare blankly, alert suddenly to their actions, and the meaninglessness of it all. But they must finish what they started, and so as Mari wanders, in a trance, into the river, they dismally follow, and Krug shoots her. The suggestion of remorse follows on, as the gang submerge themselves in the river to wash the blood away, and put on new clothes.


The now very worried Doc and Mrs Collingwood are suddenly subjected to guests, as the gang roll up in their new clothes, seeking help with their busted car. At first unsuspecting, the Collingwoods cook dinner for them. '70s hospitality, lost but never forgotten. Later, his old man having deprived him of his fix, Junior is wretching his guts up in the bathroom, and Mrs Collingwood finds him, with Mari's necklace on. With the additional discovery of bloody clothes in their suitcase, she puts the pieces together, and the parents race down to the lake where they find Mari, and realise what has happened.

Back at the house, the crooks are asleep, and Doc starts laying traps throughout the house which incorporate shaving foam, trip wires, water and electricity. Meanwhile, Weasel wakes up from a brilliantly horrifying nightmare, and finds Mrs Collingwood downstairs. Thinking on her feet, she encourages his advances, and leads him outside. The lothario foolishly promises he can 'make love to a looker like you with my hands tied behind my back.' Famous last words. Mrs Collingwood really takes one for the team, and mid-fellatio bites Weasel's cock clean off. Oh yeeeaaah.

Unsurprisingly awoken by the former sexual predator's screams, Krug falls into Doc's various traps, before meeting him downstairs, where he is equipped with a chainsaw. And this was the year before Tobe Hooper did it. The fellas get into one hell of a scuffle, destroying all sorts of wooden living room furniture, when Junior reappears, hell bent on shooting Krug dead. But, the loving father that he is, Krug rages at Junior to 'take the gun, put it to your head and BLOW YOUR BRAINS OUT!' and the despairing youth finally obeys. Meanwhile, Sadie has made a run for it, and gets into the ultimate catfight with Mrs Collingwood, before taking a running jump into a surprise swimming pool. A swift razor to the neck for Sadie, and a far more jagged chainsaw for Krug, and the gang is history.

Now, as incidental threads throughout the movie, I must mention two other elements: the soundtrack, and the cops. David Hess was not only an incredibly gifted actor, creating one of the most menacing and unforgettable villains in cinema history, but his main occupation was songwriting. He wrote the entire soundtrack to Last House, and sang its vocals. The movie's 'theme song', repeated several times throughout, is a simple but haunting verse: 'And the road leads to nowhere / And the castle stays the same / And the father tells the mother / Wait for the rain.' 

During cut scenes of the Collingwoods setting up Mari's birthday party and baking her cake, a funky, upbeat piano and percussion number plays. During the scenes of molestation in the woods, an acoustic reprise of 'Now You're All Alone' strums softly, like a lullaby. The chase of Phyllis through the woods is a tense yet adventurous twangy guitar piece. Then, perhaps most memorably, is the Bonnie and Clyde style 'Baddies Theme', a banjo and piano song with amusing narrative lyrics. Behold:

 'Weasel and Junior, Sadie and Krug / Out for the day with the Collingwood broo-ood / Out for the day for some fresh air and sun / Let's have some fun with those two lovely children and off 'em as soon as we're dooo-ooone.' It gets better... 'Weasel and Sadie, Junkie and Dad / A quartet in harmony, barbershop baaa-aad / Cuttin' and stylin' to size and to shape / Krugsie ya know that this foolin' around isn't gettin' us outta the staaa-aaaate!' One more... 'Collingwood Manor is just out of reach / Phyllis is suckin' up sun on the beach / Mari and Junior are stuck in the rain / The local police force is lookin' for someone to get their car started agaaaa-aaaaiin!'

I hope you could guess that each word like 'dooo-ooone' is sang by sliding down and then up in pitch. It's an amazing song. Hess' music, generally, serves as a counterpoint to what is onscreen. To soften the blow of the violence and molestation, the gentle lullaby and the funky piano tune. Hess was a very professional musician, and he understood exactly what a medium a soundtrack could be to a movie, and he used it to its fullest potential. 

But I suppose the final verse of 'Baddies Theme' is leaving you wondering about the cops. Well, in the same vein of 'softening the blow', Craven wrote in two dumb-ass cops, Sheriff (Marshall Anker) and Deputy (Martin Kove, of later Sensei Kreese in Karate Kid fame), who the Collingwoods call when Mari doesn't come home. They see Krug's broken down car,  but decide not to pursue it: 'That ain't gonna find us Mari Collingwood!' Then a police notice identifies the car they saw as that of escaped convicts, and so Sheriff and Deputy rush off to save the day. Unfortunately, the car runs outta gas a couple of miles down the road, and this is a small-town department in 1972. No radios, no phones, no back up. So they gotta walk, or try and hitch a ride. So who would be so kind? That car full of long-haired hippies? 'Naaaah! We hate cops!' they yell, cruisin' by. How about old Ada with her chicken truck? No such luck. 'I couldn't get another chicken on here without it stallin', and now you two's on here, and you ain't chickens!' Better luck next time, fellas. 


You may see why many thought the cops a questionable addition. This very definitely does not sound like material from one of the most controversial horrors of all time. Craven himself admits he would have omitted them had he made the movie again. But they serve their purpose, as comic relief in its most literal form. The audience needed, the crew decided, to have brief periods of relief between the scenes of horror, and so the cops and the soundtrack worked together - very successfully, in my opinion - to provide this.

Every element has been scrutinised and debated heavily over the years, and the individual components, as well as the movie as a whole, continue to divide opinions. I gave my sister, a fellow horror connoisseur, the DVD for Christmas, and we watched it with our brother and his wife, both Film graduates. They liked it, but thought it was weird. 'The weirdest soundtrack to a movie I've ever heard' my brother said. I happen to have the soundtrack on my playlists, and 'Baddies Theme' as my ring tone. Oh yeeeaaahh.

Anyone can agree, the makers being perfectly willing, that the movie is a very amateur production, made by a bunch of young hippies with no experience, a drip-fed investment and a 'fuck you, society' attitude. The crippling time and money restraints don't really show, or more don't need to, as the cheap, handheld technique with which the movie's made adds to its brimming realism, in a documentary style. 


Wes Craven wrote the original screenplay in a few days, as a semi-pornographic exploitation picture, with far more disturbing and macabre displays on the Baddies' part than those which survive in modern prints. The early script made a colleague exclaim, 'My God, a guy with a Masters' degree in Philosophy wrote this?!' The cast members who gradually signed on were promised that things would be changed, and subsequently, much of the dialogue was improvised. If you think about such things when watching a movie, this is probably noticeable, to a strongly realistic effect. I find the wit written into it very amusing. For instance, Sadie has a very funny speech about how Sigmund 'Frood' caused the sex crime of the century, because now everything is actually 'a giant puh-haylus'. The earlier mentioned 'tits business' and cop scenes are other examples. 

While the roles of the parents feel rather like they could have been played by anybody, every other character is played with brilliance. While some, like Method student David Hess, thought very seriously and extensively about their characters, others like Lucy Grantham and Jeramie Rain took a less guided approach. However, each one seems effortless and natural, and I love that you can never confuse characters. Too often in movies, we are bombarded with several similar looking and sounding characters who we struggle to distinguish. Last House has only the necessities present, and they are each very distinguished. 

David Hess is amazing, menacing and siiiinnnfully handsome, and this movie made him the go-to guy for Menacing Rapist/Murderer, just as Hugh Grant became the go-to guy for Bumbling Foul-Mouthed Posh Twat. Fred Lincoln is funny, scary and totally slimy as the chewin' cacklin' Weasel. Fred went on to a very successful career in porn directing and acting. Jeramie Rain has great attitude and charisma, and made two other movies before marrying Richard Dreyfuss. Marc Sheffler went on to directing and writing, quite prolifically, and was close friends with Hess until his death. Sandra Cassell caused much debate, with a few mysterious internet presences insisting LH was her only film, in the face of very obvious physical evidence in the form of...well, Sandra Cassell in other movies, and pretty kinky ones at that (see Voices of Desire and Teenage Hitchhikers). Some argue there was actual porn too, but that's believed to be a mix-up. However, she now teaches acting. Lucy Grantham made another film with Fred Lincoln and Harry Reems, as well as some boner-fide porn loops! But word has it she was heiress to Hersheys and that she eventually got a PhD.

Last House On The Left is really unlike anything else, despite the many later movies in a similar genre which tried to milk their predecessor's fame, such as Night Train Murders, Horrible House on the Hill and Last House on Dead End Street. It seems that they just struck lucky, right place, right time, with all the right people. With a complete cast and crew totalling a mere 26, it's a real case of quality over quantity. Its time relativity is perhaps what makes it roll off the backs of younger generations (though I'm only 22 as I write this). The aforementioned '70s hospitality is a long gone thing, and so some can't imagine a world where you wouldn't think it dangerous to go to a stranger's apartment, or allow them to stay in your home. 




The other thing is perhaps that it just isn't so violent as films inevitably have become. Last House was top of its game, disgusting-wise, with pretty much all but the mighty Ebert slating it as sickening trash. Ebert was one who recognised its aims and artistic merits, however simple. But take, for example, the obvious remake but totally not a remake by David DeFalco, Chaos (2005), which saw its first victim force fed her own nipple, before being repeatedly stabbed and her dying body being raped by two different men, and its second victim's two orifices being butchered into one. This comparison emphasises just how low-key Last House is by modern standards. 

However, its effortless realism is terrifying and heart-breaking, where later versions of the movie felt like a movie, or what a movie is expected to be now. Cardboard words that real people don't say, neatly-framed shots, endless protests of 'you sick motherfucker' towards the aggressors, rather than the far more likely hysterical begging and crying. Movies are seldom made with this degree of realism in mind. It is funny how an endless forest can seem like an inescapable fourth wall, and put us directly into the scene, but without the means of running. 

The List of Video Nasties was mostly bombarded with under-the-radar pictures with no real structure, talent, craft, or even plot, but plenty of too-bright-red blood and a lot of "tits business"!


The better-known gracers of the list were mostly never actually on the list, such as Texas Chainsaw Massacre and A Clockwork Orange, and having now seen approximately half of the listed pictures, I confidently declare that Last House On The Left is the best, most influential and important title on there.