Wes Craven Versus Remake

The Last House on the Left (1972; one and a half stars total) claims on its opening credits to be based on a true story: "The names have been changed to protect those still living." The girl at the video store told me it's based on Ingmar Bergman's arthouse cinema classic, The Virgin Spring (1960). Turns out even that movie was based on the 13th century Swedish ballad "Töres dotter i Wänge." So truth or fiction, poetic justice has been and will always be relevant in the collective conscience, and as The Last House on the Left and its remake show (see below), it will continue to get uglier with "evolving standards of decency." If I'm beginning to sound preachy, I'm just mimicking the movie's beginning, when a teenage hippie argues with her mother about foul language and the women's liberation movement. The moral to the story is obviously to listen to your parents and watch who you hang around, but the worst horrors don't happen on the wrong side of the tracks. That's why I think the title should have been changed from The Last House on the Left to Right Outside Your Door. (Another title could have been A Game of Cat and Mouse, suggesting a debate over which characters are cats and which are mice.) I always thought the infamous rape and murder scene in the woods happened at night, but no, it happens in broad daylight, complemented by a goofy but very '70s banjo and kazoo soundtrack. Until one of the girls arrives at a cemetery, there's nothing to let on that you're watching a horror movie. The look and sound is more like Easy Rider (1969) or TV's Dukes of Hazzard (1979). It actually works as a perfect transition between Deliverance (1972), released a month earlier, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), which I believe may have been partly inspired, or at least made possible by The Last House on the Last Left.

The Last House on the Left (2008; three and a half stars total) Newer ain't always better, but in this case it was. The title makes more sense to the story because it's the directions a family uses to get to their vacation home, then later it's the directions the family's daughter, Mari, gives to her kidnappers to get herself that much closer to home. The tone is established right from the opening night scene by a dirty joke between two cops, who are killed minutes later, after a jump scene and some taunting about being one of the them being a family man. That is the last time the bad guys are shown joking around with their victims. From that point on they're strictly business, angrily dealing with being sidetracked by some teenage girls who actually look like teenage girls this time around. You may recognize the actresses playing Mari and Paige from Aquamarine (2006) and Superbad (2007), respectively. The Last House on the Left remake has less exploitation and more tension. The shower scene gets traded for a pool scene. The mom's seduction of one of the bad guys gets traded for garbage disposal entrapment. The dad's chainsaw gets traded for surgical paralysis (oh, and a microwave). The first half of the movie still takes place in broad daylight but it gets darker as things get worse, ending in a rainstorm with thunder for a soundtrack and flashes of lightning to see what's going on. The characters are updated by more than cell phones and political correctness, although it is interesting to note that the lesbian from the original, shown on the same level as ex-cons, is missing from the remake. I couldn't believe that Mari's character would follow a drug dealer into a shady apartment building like before but now it's noble when she gets out of the car to check on a friend. Her update as a swim champ gives her jumping into the lake more meaning. The updated reason the kidnappers look for help is because they're hurt, not because they're stranded, and then Mari's dad being an M.D. becomes more meaningful also. The reason the kidnapper's son gets sick has nothing to do with drug withdrawal (although there are drugs in the movie), but from his realization of who's house he's in. The reason Mari's parents bring her body in on the couch has more meaning because has to do with the best plot twist ever. Finally, the remake has NO BOOBY TRAPS.