Last House on the Left (2009)

I KNOW THAT Wes Craven’s 1972 film The Last House on the Left is heralded as a classic by many horror buffs, and it even has a fan in legendary critic Roger Ebert.

But for me, the original Last House is an odd blend of truly terrifying scenes juxtaposed with hippy-dippy interludes that somewhat dilute the tension Craven had successfully created. In my opinion, the reputation of Last House as a horror classic is more powerful than the film itself.

Fast-forward to 2009, and amongst the sea of McRemakes that have been flooding our theaters lately, there came a new version of Last House on the Left…

Plot:

The wholesome, well-to-do Collingwood family – dad John (Ghost’s Tony Goldwyn), mom Emma (Monica Potter), and teenage daughter Mari (Sara Paxton) – head to their huge summer house on Heavily Wooded, Winding Road With No Neighbors And The Nearest Town Is 20 Minutes Away Lane.

In town, Mari and her friend Paige (Martha MacIsaac) meet shy, brooding teenager Justin (Spencer Treat Clark), who innocently invites them to smoke weed with him in his motel room. Soon, the girls are introduced to the rest of Justin’s family: dad Krug (Garret Dillahunt), uncle Frank (Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul), and Krug’s girlfriend Sadie (Riki Lindhome).

Since Krug and his cronies are on the front page of the local papers for murdering two policemen, he decides they can’t risk letting the girls go. But when the girls try to escape, their captors quickly become their torturers – beating, stabbing, and raping the girls before leaving them for dead.


Later that night, Krug’s crew stops for help during a thunderstorm at, by sheer coincidence, the home of Mari’s parents. Initially neither group knows the other has a tie to Mari, but that soon changes – and it becomes a violent battle for escape, survival, and revenge.

Critique:

Last House on the Left is the second Craven remake I’ve seen that has, on some level, improved on the original. (While no masterpiece, 2006's The Hills Have Eyes was much more harrowing and brutal than Craven’s 1977 version.)

I felt a bit uncomfortable during the first half of Last House, both in knowing what fate awaited the girls and then having to witness it. But the second half of the film – after John and Emma realize who Krug and company are and what they did to Mari – kept me glued to the screen until the credits rolled.

Sharone Meir’s cinematography and the musical score by John Murphy give Last House an atmosphere of mainstream drama rather than horror film, which makes the violence and terror that unfolds much more realistic – and possibly hitting too close to home, both literally for the Collingwood family and figuratively for the viewer.

Just like the original, Last House on the Left explores how the allegedly civilized can become the savages, either out of pure survival or brutal vengeance. And much like Craven’s 1972 effort, I would hardly call this version a classic. But it built and improved on the original, it entertained me, and I was exhilarated when John and Emma start extracting revenge on Krug and his crew.

Rating:

Is it suitable for your kids?

That would be a big fat no. Last House on the Left contains a slew of bloody shootings, stranglings, stabbings, and bludgeonings, as well as a graphic, lengthy rape scene, a close-up of a broken nose being stitched, and an over-the-top death by microwave. There are also several topless scenes courtesy of Lindhome, and Justin and the girls smoke weed in his motel room.

Will your FilmMother want to watch it?

Last House on the Left is tough to watch regardless of gender, but I would think that the violence and sexual assaults on the girls would turn off many female viewers.

Bottle of white / Bottle of red / Perhaps a bottle upside your head…

Last House on the Left
* Director: Dennis Iliadis
* Screenwriters: Adam Alleca, Carl Ellsworth
* Stars: Tony Goldwyn, Monica Potter, Sara Paxton, Martha MacIsaac, Spencer Treat Clark, Garret Dillahunt, Aaron Paul, Riki Lindhome
* MPAA Rating: R


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The Thing (1982)

*UPDATED 3/11*

I’LL MAKE THIS INTRO BRIEF and to the point: If you love sci-fi and/or horror, you must see John Carpenter’s The Thing.

Plot: Scientists at a remote Antarctic research station are confronted by a shape-shifting alien that assumes the identity of the people it kills.

As one of a dozen men inhabiting the research station, Kurt Russell is at the top of his game. He portrays helicopter pilot MacReady as a man who just wants to do his job, get paid, and get drunk – but then is partially forced, partially driven to take charge of the situation.

And forget everything you know about warm, fuzzy character actor Wilford Brimley (Cocoon, those Liberty Medical commercials); in The Thing he’s unpredictable, a bit frightening, and nearly unrecognizable (no Cap’n Crunch mustache) as a scientist who’s slowly losing his marbles.

Upon its release, The Thing was dismissed as a slimy, gratuitous remake of the 1951 sci-fi classic. But over the years, critics and fans have warmed to the film and appreciated not only Rob Bottin’s amazing pre-CGI special effects, but Bill Lancaster’s powerful screenplay, the bass-as-heartbeat musical score by Ennio Morricone (The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly), the nightmarish sound effects of the creatures, and Carpenter’s masterful hand at creating an intense atmosphere of isolation, paranoia, and distrust.

In addition to being a great film, The Thing also had great poster art (see above) and one of the best taglines ever, which can be seen at the end of the trailer (which is also pretty awesome):

And after all these years, after seeing The Thing dozens of times, there’s still one scene that makes me jump. I know it’s coming, but damn if I don’t jump anyway. Any guess what it is? Drop a comment with your thoughts; I’ll reveal the answer in a few days. (For the sake of Thing virgins, don’t use the name of the person involved besides MacReady – call him “Ishmael” instead).

Want further proof that you need to see The Thing? As of this writing, it’s #173 on the Internet Movie Database’s list of the top 250 films of all time.

(For more things Thing, check out the website Outpost #31. It’s astonishing how much information and material they have about this film.)

[UPDATE: Mr. Canacorn was the only one who tried to guess which scene in The Thing still makes me jump. While he wasn’t correct, his mention for his still-jump scene is actually mine too: the blood test! Four words: “We’ll do you last.” Take it away, Ishmael!]

Rating: 4.5 stars (out of 5).

Will your kids want to watch it?

Show one scene of the creature’s transformation to any male tweener, and they’ll be dying for more. However, I’d hold off letting them watch the entire movie for a couple of reasons:


1) While Rob Bottin’s FX are amazing, they are very bloody, gooey, and gory. And there’s also a dash of gunplay and adult language. In other words, its R rating is justified.
2) As a 14-year-old gorehound who saw The Thing on HBO, I was too young to appreciate all the other remarkable elements of the film besides the gnarly special effects.

I know teens are growing up much faster than in my day – and thanks to the Internet, they see more depraved things than ever before. But for your kids to truly appreciate The Thing, I would wait until they are at least a couple years older than I was at my first viewing.

Will your FilmMother like it?

This may be a broad stroke, but I don’t think too many FilmMothers will care for The Thing – which is a shame, because it has top-tier dialogue, direction, acting, and FX. (This is probably one to watch by yourself, with your buddies, with your teenage son(s), etc.) However, if she likes being scared or burying her face in your shoulder when nasty stuff happens on-screen, you may be in luck.


The Thing
* Director: John Carpenter
* Screenwriter: Bill Lancaster
* Stars: Kurt Russell, Wilford Brimley, T.K. Carter, David Clennon, Keith David, Richard Dysart, Richard Masur, Charles Hallahan
* MPAA Rating: R


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Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)

Watching HBO as a kid in the ‘70s, I was exposed to (and traumatized by) some scary movie trailers – Carrie and It’s Alive immediately come to mind.

But the first full-length film I saw on HBO to completely scare the hell out of me (aside from Jaws) was the 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I mean, even the poster freaked me out. So when I saw the DVD for $5 at Music for a Song (right next to The Late Show), I brought it home to see if it still had the same effect on me as a grown-up, 30 years later.

Plot: Pod people, man. Pod people. From space.

Our visitors first arrive as innocuous, pickable little flowers covering other plant life. After Elizabeth Driscoll (Brooke Adams) – assistant to health inspector Matthew Bennell (Donald Sutherland) – brings one home, it wastes no time “getting” her husband (Art Hindle) in his sleep. From there, Matthew and Elizabeth steadily notice (through phone complaints to their office and observing people on the street) that people aren’t themselves.

After Matthew’s married friends (Jeff Goldblum and Veronica Cartwright) discover a half-developed pod person in her mud spa, they call over Matthew and Elizabeth, and begin a quest for help – which, after realizing the pod people are increasingly taking over, becomes a quest for survival.

Director Philip Kaufman makes good use of long shots down hallways and shadowy lighting from all angles (backlit, side lit, from below) to create an atmosphere of isolation, paranoia, and the unknown. By the second half of the film, your own paranoia of who’s who bubbles to the surface, and it’s hard to shake (John Carpenter mined the same shade of paranoia in his remake of The Thing four years later).

The special effects in Invasion are, without exaggeration, the stuff of nightmares. Seeing and hearing pod people hatch, especially in an extended sequence near the end, is completely unnerving. (The film has impressive FX for its time.) And the squealing screams of the pod people, when they identify someone who’s still human, are even more nightmare-inducing than the creatures’ whispers from Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark. (Invasion’s sound FX were created by Hollywood veteran Ben Burtt, whose latest accomplishment was this year’s WALL•E.)

Kaufman also uses the screenplay by W.D. Richter as a blueprint to make Invasion a final sounding bell for the ‘70s. As a film of the “me decade,” it probably hit audiences hard watching the characters being turned into “one of them.” In another touch of the times, Leonard Nimoy appears as a best-selling, overbearing New Age psychiatrist, who tries to rationalize Elizabeth’s growing fear that her husband is not himself (literally).

And without giving anything away, this film has one of the best shocker endings ever. God bless the nihilism of ‘70s filmmaking.

So yes, Invasion of the Body Snatchers still has the power to creep me out after all these years. This 1978 version is widely regarded as the best of the remakes (even better than the 1956 original, some say). If you’re a fan of the sci-fi/horror genre, die-hard or casual, I would make it required viewing.

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5).

Will your kids want to see it?

If you have small kids, I don’t think they’d even know about this film…which is fine, because despite my high marks, I would keep it away from pre-teens. (See my aforementioned traumatization.) Beyond that age, just a heads-up that there are many intense sequences and several icky moments involving the pod people, plus some brief nudity near the end.

Will your FilmMother want to watch it?

As I say in my other reviews of horror films: If you have a FilmMother who digs the genre, by all means she should see this. Otherwise, I can’t say for sure. But it’s a great film to get her to grab your arm and hold you tight. ☺

OMG, my parents had those bedsheets!

Invasion of the Body Snatchers
* Director: Philip Kaufman
* Screenwriter: W.D. Richter
* Stars: Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Jeff Goldblum, Veronica Cartwright, Leonard Nimoy, Art Hindle
* MPAA Rating: PG (intense scenes, adult language, alien sliminess and gore, brief nudity)


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