Two teenage girls, Mari Collingwood (Sandra Cassel) and Phyllis Stone (Lucy Grantham) are on their way to a local rock concert and attempt to score some grass off a local (Marc Sheffler). He leads them upstairs to his skid-row apartment and the girls are soon caught by his "family"-a viscous gang of murderers, led by Krug Stillo (HOUSE BY THE EDGE OF THE PARK’s David Hess). Krug, a recently escaped mass murderer, employs the members of his gang, Sadie (Jeramie Rain) and Fred "Weasel" Podowski (Fred J. Lincoln) to rape and murder the teens in a nearby forest. Ironically, the designated location for their lascivious romp borders the home of one of the girls’ parents, and soon Krug Company will meet their fates via a bloody quid pro quo.

"Technically inept and really sick" cries movie critic Leonard Maltin. Maltin’s remark is a typical reaction among viewers who are rightfully repelled by the film. If they weren’t repelled, LAST HOUSE wouldn’t be the masterpiece it is. Many films of the period (1972) nearly granted a casual glance at inhumanity, while LAST HOUSE allots it a long, focused gaze. Largely responsible for the potent response it evokes among viewers is the film’s low budget, lending an essential, gritty atmosphere to the already repugnant subject matter. The low budget cements the cheerless, indispensable authenticity. It is as if one is watching their neighbor’s home movies gone horribly wrong and there are no exorbitant special effects to soften the viscera here. But apart from the more obvious constituents, why has LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT continued to persevere despite throngs of imitations and a new generation of shock-mongers eager to disturb?

To begin to answer the question, one must take a look at the climate of Western horror/drive in cinema. LAST HOUSE was a full two years before Tobe Hooper’s TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, and a full generation before other sobering meditations on depravity such as HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER. Sure, graphic gore and shocks were nothing new to the grindhouse/drive in circuit by 1972. H.G. Lewis had been painting the screen red since the 60’s with his infamous BLOOD TRILOGY, which led to innumerable bloody imitations. Harry Novak, Dave Friedman and others continued to churn out "roughie" films that combined sex and violence during the 60’s. But what all these films share is an atmosphere of tongue-in-cheek, of self-conscious exuberance. They had a gory showmanship where each film was a chance to top the gore of the last, and the audience was often in on this ploy, softening the squirmy impact. Even in Europe, style ruled over substance, which dampened the emotional sizzle of the wholesale murders onscreen. Mario Bava’s blood-spattered 1971 classic BAY OF BLOOD, with its numerous gory murders couldn’t hold a candle to LAST HOUSE, simply because it was devoid of the humanity (or lack thereof) of LAST HOUSE’s slayings.

Unlike the aforementioned films, LAST HOUSE was meticulously fabricated by a young Wes Craven (in his debut film) and producer Sean S. Cunningham to disturb. It eschews extrinsic details and flabby subplots. The bulk of the film consists of the rape, torture and murder of the two girls. This construction disallows one from closing their eyes for a short two-minute sequence. However, this lengthy, odious sequence would have none of its impact if the filmmakers didn’t have the savvy to warm the viewers up to the victims first. The film’s preliminary sequence introduces us to Mari and her conservative parents. Writer/director Wes Craven paints Mari as a typical teenage girl: she is fond of her friend (Phyllis Stone) and enjoys her independence by going to a rock concert. She has minor quarrels with her parents regarding her dress and her language. Even though the dialogue is overly cloying and the most dated component of the film, Craven does an excellent job of succinctly addressing to the audience just what type of person Mari is, in a modicum of time: she is a sunny, energetic and healthy young woman.

The following sequence where Mari and her friend Phyllis kick around the nearby forest serves the same purpose; Craven is constructing these two characters before tearing them down before our eyes. When Mari giddily comments on her growing breasts and excitedly remarks that she "feels like a woman" to Phyllis, we believe her. Again Craven is pre-loading our sympathy, but for a slightly more specific reason here: since we are aware of Mari’s burgeoning sexuality, it will be doubly painful to see it stolen from her when she is graphically violated by Krug’s gang.

Craven first begins to manipulate our sympathies when the girls are first captured. As soon as it dawns on them that all is not well, Craven cuts to Mari’s parents, festively preparing a banner and birthday cake for her. Craven continually switches between the girls’ inexorable doom and the parents’ gleeful celebration. The irony here is painful: ignorance truly proves to be blissful, as the parents have no idea of the horrible fate that will befall their daughter and the audience collectively bites their lip.

Thankfully, Craven doesn’t blow it when the key torture scene arrives. In the hands of a lesser director, this crucial scene would be a ripe opportunity for hammy exploitation. Here we also realize how perfect the casting is. Hess is spot-on as the head loon (so perfect, in fact, his subsequent acting career would be comprised of similarly deranged typecast roles) and he oozes a sleazy aura as he forces the girls to humiliate themselves, including wetting themselves and giving his gang a private stripshow. During these perverted sequences we witness the young girls’ budding sexuality being snuffed out. Equally shattering is Phyllis’ attempted escape. She almost reaches freedom: we see the open road straight ahead of her. Tragically, Krug and gang catch up to her and she is gruesomely tortured in one of the film’s most harrowing sequences in which they repeatedly stab her and pull out her intestines. Steve Chapin’s sparse electronic score complements the shocking sequence, which is so tacky it lends the sequence a homemade, snuff quality.

Mari’s demise is equally sorrowful. The ultimate irony of the situation is that Mari is to die in the same location she grew up in. The sequence where Krug carves his name in her quivering chest is nearly unbearable. However, the ultimate violation is yet to come: Krug mounts her bloodied body and proceeds to rape her, his spit sticking to her cheek. The subsequent sequence of her shamefully rising to her feet and looking her captors in the eye is undeniably one of the most powerful movie images of the decade.

Aside from the shocks, Craven lends interesting commentary on the small town’s ineptitude in handling the situation. The sole source of comic relief-two bumbling cops on the case (Marshall Anker and Martin Kove)-are tragically maladroit in finding the killers in time. In one painful sequence, they drive by Hess’ car, missing the opportunity to save the girls.

The final act of the film is the hardest to swallow, but still manages to work well enough thanks to Craven’s crafty "pre-loading" technique during the previous segments of the film. The act concerns the arrival of Krug and his gang at the door of Mari’s parents. The irony is obvious and effective here as the parent’s unwittingly welcome their daughter’s killers into their home. Once the killers are privy as to whose home it is, their recent killing seems nothing but a distant memory. Of course it is only a matter of time before the parents discover the horrible secret, and Craven uses this opportunity to again pull on our collective heartstrings. The parents find Mari’s slaughtered corpse, but it is too late. "Oh John, isn’t there anything we can do?" asks the wife of her husband. Here Craven presses every parent’s worst nightmare to celluloid: a parent completely powerless to protect his or her child’s safety. However, the following revenge sequence is where the film’s credibility wobbles. The parents soon take justice into their own hands, which is plausible enough, but do so in such an elaborate (the father constructs intricate booby traps throughout the house, while armed with a shotgun that could certainly do the job) or uncharacteristically savage (the restrained mother seduces one of them and bites his penis off) that missteps the film’s credibility. The chainsaw finale between Krug and Mari’s father also seems incongruously bravura.

This minor cavil aside, LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT is an exemplary low-budget gut punch. It still remains a real kick in the chops to this day, for few films so passionately show what happens when luck runs out and how awful life can really be. Like many truly upsetting horror films, LAST HOUSE unflinchingly exposes mankind’s ugliness, and is still more entertaining and profound in its 90 minutes than 1000 minutes of today’s low-budget garbage or greasy spoon drive-in films of the era. LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT is simultaneously the nadir and apex of graphic horror: it showcases the grimiest depravity with such subtle brilliance that Craven would never be able to top it for sheer intensity, purity, and honesty.