The Last House On The Left (Wes Craven, 1972)

A film notorious for its repulsive violence and gruesome scenes, The Last House On The Left is one of the first attempts to picture ugliness without a sign of censorship. A very simple story, a story of torture and then blind revenge, is been made to a movie, inspired by The Virgin Spring by Ingmar Bergman, and it is interesting to see that the film has a flavour, a touch of exploitation movies. It is been made in a very "amateur" way, a way that looks like the director wasn't paying any attention to manipulate the audience with his filming style, but more to really shock the spectator and make him feel really bad. The Last House On The Left is a movie that really gives a taste of the futility of life. In this movie life and existence doesn't worth shit. Teenage girls, beautiful and sexy, are been tortured and killed for no reason really. We don't seem to understand where all this violence comes from. We don't see any background of the victimizers, we don't see something that gives them any kind of reason for their heinous behaviour. The movie is ugliness pictured in the most realistic, unspoiled way you can think of. There are no winners in this film, there is no sense of justice, there is no meaning in all this, there is no bright day coming. The film is profoundly bleak, dark, morbid and sick. And no matter the fact that this is a movie that has a very specific audience, many people will stay away from it, as much as possible, The Last House On The Left is a movie that really questions and tests the limits of the spectator, making him really wonder what is this thing that is called life and how wrong and ugly can it really become. Apart from anything else the movie is an experiment, a try, an opinion in how violence can be pictured in cinema in a most pure way. The Last House On The Left is a film that it will make you feel terrible, but thinking about it afterwards you will definitely say and admit that it was worth the emotional torture that you had endured. It is an ugly experiment. And for that reason only is a film that has a very specific and important place in cinema history.