Last House On The Left: Collector's Edition 2/24/09

[manicsounds]

The UK recently got a nice 3-disc set of Wes Craven's debut recently. Now, MGM US is going to release this in R1 again. Awaiting specs....

[Person]

If any film from the 70s deserves lavish treatment over and over again... this ain't it. Horrible, banal, aggravating film.

[colinr0380]

If any film from the 70s deserves lavish treatment over and over again... this ain't it. Horrible, banal, aggravating film.

True but this is the first uncut UK release of the film, which is probably the cause for all the fuss.

Mark Kermode on campaigning for the film's uncut release.

[Person]

If any film from the 70s deserves lavish treatment over and over again... this ain't it. Horrible, banal, aggravating film.

True but this is the first uncut UK release of the film, which is probably the cause for all the fuss.

Mark Kermode on campaigning for the film's uncut release.

It's amazing what people today fuss over. Has culture in Britain been on hold, awaiting the image of a hippy girl being forced to urinate in her pants? The Berlin Wall of our times!

[Mr Sausage]

If any film from the 70s deserves lavish treatment over and over again... this ain't it. Horrible, banal, aggravating film.

True but this is the first uncut UK release of the film, which is probably the cause for all the fuss.

Mark Kermode on campaigning for the film's uncut release.

It's amazing what people today fuss over. Has culture in Britain been on hold, awaiting the image of a hippy girl being forced to urinate in her pants? The Berlin Wall of our times!

It's amazing that people are making a fuss over finally being able to see a film they like in its complete form?

[colinr0380]

It's amazing what people today fuss over. Has culture in Britain been on hold, awaiting the image of a hippy girl being forced to urinate in her pants? The Berlin Wall of our times!

No, it hasn't been on hold, which just made the petty snipping of footage from the film in order to make it 'acceptable' seem more and more ludicrous - as with The Evil Dead, The Last House On The Left likely took longer to receive an uncut release in Britain less because of its content and more because of the 'recognisability' of the title to the general public as being an infamous so called video nasty.

As I mentioned in the comment I made below that linked video, I was able to pick up a copy of David A. Szulkin's fully illustrated book on the making of the film on a trip to Sheffield around the year 2000, while the film was still ostensibly banned! It just seemed to point up the absurdity of censorship that exactly the same material was acceptable and available to purchase in one form and yet banned in another! (and in a sense the material is much more graphic in still image and description form than when it passes by in the flow of the film itself - for example the name being carved into one of the girl's chests was for me far more potent and disturbing as an image forever paused in mid-act and posed for the camera)

I'm not a huge fan of the film either - it has a rough and amateurish look that sometimes works (the early scenes and the attack on the girls) and sometimes doesn't (the revenge section and the 'comic relief' stuff with the cops) and a rather difficult set of values (there have been suggestions of a 'fear of the semitic' subtext to the film and its attacks on the wholesome rural WASP-ish family after the girls transgress safe boundaries to do drugs and see a rock band in a dark, dank urban area and from there run into the gang).

However if I wanted to get rid of material that I considered disgusting, or stupid, or difficult to digest by banning it I would end up doing myself a disservice. As much as I might want to do us all a favour and try and wipe out the whole Michael Bay catalogue, or all the recent hamfisted and point-missing remakes of 70s horror films from cinematic history that would do nothing more than allow me to live in blissful ignorance rather than actually tackling why I don't like those films, or why I feel most of them only capture the tiniest fraction of the power of their more famous predecessors despite (or perhaps because) of their gloss. If modern films like these were banned their unattainability would add to a sense of dangerous mystique (something which many of the original video nasty films unjustly received due to their banning) when a better approach would be to make them available to stand or fall on their own merits, or lack thereof.

I think in comparison to a film like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre that Last House On The Left does come up short, and it probably has received a lot more attention in the UK than it likely would have deserved simply because of the length of its ban, a director and producer who would go on to successful mainstream horror careers, and its famous title. (Not to mention support from people like Mark Kermode keeping its profile up!) In that sense making the film available finally allows it to be assessed by a wider audience and let them decide on whether they think it has its merits or just got lucky through a combination of circumstances. Also even not liking a film like this for its over gratuitous peeing or disembowling scenes can also help us to appreciate even more the implied violence of TCM, or debate the ways that this rougher, more extreme and degrading version of The Virgin Spring acts as a kind of balance to the lyricism, beauty and redemption Bergman finds in his telling of the story.

Just by getting us to consider such ideas, even if we still reject the film, might suggest that Craven's film has some worth - even if that still only would place it in the same company as something like the ludicrous Dawn of the Dead remake making me appreciate Romero's film even more in comparison!