The Last House on the Left (1972) on Netflix
For her 17th birthday, Mari Collingwood and her friend Phyllis Stone drive into the city for a rock concert. Seeking marijuana, they meet Junior, who leads them to a gang of fugitives.
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- Netflix3.0/5
- IMDb5.8/1042,882 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes63%
Trailer
Plot summary
Mari Collingwood is about to turn seventeen, and her parents, Estelle and John, are wary of her friendship with Phyllis Stone, though they let the two go into the city for a rock concert and give Mari a peace symbol necklace. On the road, the girls hear a news report about a prison escape. Krug Stillo, a sadistic rapist, is on the loose with his heroin-addicted son Junior, the sadist Sadie and the child molester Fred "Weasel" Podowski. Before the concert, Mari and Phyllis try to buy marijuana and fall in with Junior, who takes them to an apartment where the others are waiting. Back home, Estelle and John prepare a surprise birthday party for their daughter.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Last House on the Left (1972)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- On set, Marc Sheffler, who played Junior, threatened to push Sandra Peabody over a cliff if she failed to hit her marks, and David Hess admitted to Vanity Fair in 2008 that he warned Peabody during the rape scene: "I'm really going to fuck you if you don't behave yourself."
- UK distributor Blue Underground refused the BBFC's demand for 16 seconds of cuts to scenes of sexual violence, and the video was rejected; on appeal to the Video Appeals Committee, critic Kermode was called as a horror expert to argue the film's historical importance, but the committee upheld the cuts.
- British film archivist John Saco said American projectionists were so offended by the film that they would cut up the prints while watching them, and theater owners would compare how heavily cut their versions were.
- For the scene in which Phyllis is disemboweled, Lincoln helped craft fake intestines out of condoms filled with fake blood and sand, part of the film's largely practical effects.
- Craven wrote the original 1971 script as a graphic "hardcore" film; Jeramie Rain and Sandra Peabody both objected to it at their auditions and were assured it would be changed.
- Producer Sean S. Cunningham called the shoot "guerrilla-style": the crew filmed spontaneously at locations and was forced to leave because it had no permits, and in retrospect Lincoln said "nobody knew what [they] were doing."
- Jeramie Rain was 21 and playing Manson family killer Susan Atkins Off-Broadway when she was cast as Sadie, even though the original script called for an actress in her 40s.
- The score was deliberately written to break with conventional horror film music, mixing 1960s folk rock and bluegrass, and during some of the film's most violent scenes the music is completely at odds with the images on screen.
