Much has been said about the depiction of violence and the questionable morality of Wes Craven’s debut feature and its refusal of certification from the BBFC. Chelsey Burdon takes a closer look at the scandal that surrounded The Last House on the Left, its place within the history of censorship and the censors’ argument that, artistically, it lacked any redeeming features that might justify its more unpleasant scenes.
To Avoid Fainting, Keep Repeating, ‘It’s Only a Movie…’
The Last House on the Left came out of a turbulent time in American history, when violence, gore and the potential immorality of man was showcased daily in almost every living room. Americans were being exposed to real-life horrors like never before, yet the horror film genre was only just beginning to crawl out of the Gothic castles and the mad scientist’s labs, to boldly declare that horror was reality. Craven, who at the time of directing taught English at an American college, has said that he found the common depiction of death and violence in films to be dishonest and insulting. He wanted to show the genuine ugliness with which human beings can treat each other; he invented Krug and company, a new breed of villains whose lack of humanity was much scarier than the monstrosities that had previously terrorised horror fans.
In Last House, we meet street-wise Phyllis who is taking her naive, virginal friend, Mari, to a rock concert. After trying to score drugs, they are abducted by Krug and his gang. Recently escaped from prison, Krug, his love-interest Sadie and convicted rapist, Weasel, drive the girls to some woodland and proceed to torture, rape and kill them. Along for the ride is Krug’s illegitimate son, Junior, reportedly hooked on drugs at a young age to give his sadistic father control over him. This dysfunctional group then seek refuge at an isolated home that just happens to belong to Mari’s parents. Eventually, her parents piece together the gang’s crimes and seek a bloody and brutal revenge. Unforgiving and bleak in its depiction of violence, the film was considered too much by many, who bemoaned the hyper-realism with which it was shot and the moral corruption of a middle-class couple who became murderous in their quest for revenge.
Whilst it’s possible to argue that Craven was trying to glorify or sensationalise violence, a more considered approach might be that his intention was to present its cyclical nature – how violence can be both the cause and effect of reprehensible behaviour. Was the justice doled out by Mari’s parents any more or less appropriate than that which the incompetent local police force might have managed? The film’s final image, of the parents, blood-stained and broken after enacting their vengeance, reflects the proverb ‘an eye for an eye and the world will be blind’. Perhaps this was Craven’s response to the violence, not only of war, but of the newly-televised America that was infiltrating social consciousness.
Craven versus the Censor: A Timeline
The BBFC didn’t care for philosophical assumptions. It was their opinion that The Last House on the Left had no artistic merit, no redeeming quality to compensate for the images of degradation it presented. It was famously banned in the UK and was suffered similar censorship in other parts of the world. It was first submitted to the BBFC by UK distributor Oppidan in July of 1974, with a cover letter that declared it to be ‘not a violent film, though of course it does have some menacing undertones’. The response, by BBFC secretary Stephen Murphy was interesting, particularly in regard to their current stance: ‘Despite your letter, we can find no redeeming merit, in script, in acting, in character development, or in direction, which would lead us to feel that this muddly [sic] film is worth salvaging…We have to reject the picture. Maybe we are wrong. But if we are to go into this area of sexual violence, it will have to be for a film in which we detect greater merit than this’.
The BBFC claimed that no amount of cuts would make Last House suitable for distribution in the UK, on the grounds of indecency. Two years later, the distributors applied to Greater London Council, appealing to the local authorities’ right to overrule the BBFC and offer an alternative certification for theatrical screening in their area. It was again rejected and withheld from UK horror fans until becoming briefly available on video in the early ’80s. At this point, certification for home video was largely unchecked, until the Video Recordings Act 1984 granted the BBFC the power to cut and classify all videos.
Though it is one of the most-commonly-known films to have been given the ‘video nasty’ title, Last House pre-dated the common use of this label by over a decade. The video nasty list was compiled by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) as a roll call of films which may be in breach of the Obscene Publications Act. The OPA comes into force when a piece of work ‘as a whole, has a tendency to deprave and corrupt a significant proportion of those likely to see it’, and renders it a criminal offence to supply, distribute or own such work. In addition to its refusal of a theatrical certification by the BBFC, Last House found itself on the DPP’s video nasty list and therefore taken from the shelves of stores and treated as a criminal possession.
In 1988, the National Film Theatre screened Last House, without a certificate, as part of a Wes Craven retrospective, and current BBFC Director James Ferman attended the event, reiterating the film was still unacceptable for common certification. It is unclear whether this screening was a full, uncut version of the film but the organisers of the event would have had to have been granted permission by the Greater London Council to screen it in any format.
Carl Daft, head of Blue Underground distribution, approached the BBFC in 2001, when the title was again refused certification. This time, 16 seconds of cuts were suggested to qualify it for release. Just a year earlier, Last House had become the only film in ten years to be refused certification outright after its distributors, Feature Film Company, chose not to accept the suggested 90 seconds of cuts requested by the BBFC. Believing in the horror fans’ right to see a film in its entirety, Blue Underground also refused to make the cuts to their DVD release and presented their case to the Video Appeals Committee, which sided with the BBFC. Invoking the local authorities’ legal right to overrule a decision by the BBFC, Blue Underground presented public screenings in Leicester, Southampton and London, as part of a double feature with the similarly controversial Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The intention was to provide horror fans with the full experience whilst making a point to the BBFC that the film posed no real threat to its audience.
It wasn’t until 2003, when Anchor Bay picked up the rights to The Last House on the Left and resubmitted it to the BBFC, that the film was eventually made available on DVD, and it was the Metrodome 2008 release which finally offered horror fans an uncut version of the film, as part of their three-disc box set.
Sexual Violence
A great number of films that have fallen foul of the BBFC have done so on the grounds of the apparent eroticisation of sexual violence. In other words, if a film depicts a rape or sexual attack in a way that could be deemed to be arousing or glorified, there are grounds for concern that such an act may lead to the moral corruption of its audience, particularly young adult males, whom they claim could be encouraged into sexual deviancy. It’s a moral landmine, with psychologists, film critics and censors sitting on both sides of the argument.
Celebrated UK critic Mark Kermode, a keen supporter of Last House, put forward an argument against the BBFC in 2001, claiming a bias towards foreign language or art-house films that depict similar instances of rape or sexual deviancy. Films such as Salò could be considered equally, if not more, morally repulsive and explicit than Craven’s debut, yet Salò was passed by the BBFC uncut whilst Last House remained banned.
Craven took inspiration for Last House from the 1960 Bergman classic, The Virgin Spring. This is the story of a Swedish girl who is raped and murdered by herdsmen on her way to church. Her devout family discover the truth and enact vengeance on the men after offering them a bed for the night. It is arguable that Craven also took stylistic cues from Bergman – the wilderness that can be both tranquil and savage, the methodical mental preparation for the act of violence and the depiction of a father psychologically broken by the act of avenging his daughter. It is difficult to find another film on the video nasty list with as much artistry or integrity, and many consider it to be Craven’s finest film.
The inclusion of sexual assault in Last House can hardly be considered ‘hardcore’ or explicit. The BBFC alleged that, because of some of the more disturbing images of sexual violence within the film, if it were passed uncut they would find themselves cornered when it came to the certification of violent pornography. However, any eroticisation or intention of arousal through these scenes is questionable. When Krug rapes Mari, the camera remains almost entirely on their faces, a shot similar to that used by Bergman, in a relatively brief scene that doesn’t expose any genitals or linger on brutality. Earlier, when Mari is raped orally by Sadie, the act is implied rather than shown and we are encouraged to focus on Phyllis’s plot for escape. We are left with the argument that it is the tone of the film, its moral ambiguity and its presentation of remorseless characters that make Last House so problematic, rather than what is shown. It’s interesting that the director of the BBFC in April 2001, Mr Robin Duvall, claimed that The Last House on the Left ‘invites the viewer to relish the detail of the violence and the killings.’ To simply disagree with him would be redundant but one can, as Kermode did, argue that other films granted 18 certificates at the time could be considered more guilty of this and more explicit in their portrayal.
The Legacy of The Last House on the Left
On 17th of March 2008, The Last House On The Left was finally given an 18 certificate for release in its entirety, ending a 30-year struggle against censorship. This is surprising when considered against other films that were initially banned but shortly after became readily available and unanimously acceptable, such as Evil Dead, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and I Spit on Your Grave. The decision came after the consideration of modern horror films such as Hostel, The Devil’s Rejects and Wolf Creek. These films, often described as ‘torture porn’, often included much more explicit acts of violence than Last House yet proved popular after being passed with an 18 certificate.
The UK has become renowned worldwide for the exaggerated moral guardianship of its censors, railing lengthily against the stories and images they deem to be offensive. The not-so-distant past has seen tabloid newspapers pin the cause of heinous crimes upon violence in the media, keen to use horror as a scapegoat for society’s ills. After The Human Centipede 2 was notoriously banned in the UK, Tom Six said, “I made an horrific horror film, but shouldn’t a good horror film be horrific?” Regardless of your personal definition of ‘horrific’, the genre does, and should, continue to push the boundaries of what we are willing to accept from a cinematic experience. As a piece of film history, The Last House on the Left serves as a reminder of where those boundaries used to lie, of a bold, intelligent and unsettling piece of storytelling that presented a generation with a type of horror they had never experienced and that continued to shock for decades to come.
Wes Craven has made some significant films in his 40-year career. He has spawned franchises, made serial killers into household names and found ways to adapt the genre for every generation of film fan. He will never be the most well-known, or fondly remembered, for his debut film but it remains one of the most important pieces of horror film-making in the last half century.
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