... you can learn from:
The Last House on the Left (1972)
Estelle: I think it's crazy.
Mari: What's crazy?
Estelle: All that blood and violence.
I thought you were supposed to be the love generation.
Today is Wes Craven's 73rd birthday. Happy day, Wes! Similarly The Last House on the Left, which was Craven's first film, turns 40 at the end of this month. It was released on August 30th, 1972. I googled what was happening on that date and the first thing that came up was a John Lennon concert at Madison Square Garden - the fact that Last House starts off with its two lead girls heading into the city to go to a big rock concert and do some drugs was not lost on me as I saw this. To borrow the parlance of the times, it must've felt like a really bad fucking trip, this movie when it came out. This was three years after that bad Charles Manson business and right on the precipice of Watergate - whatever was left of that hippie-dippy free love vibe was well in its death throes. Bring on the cynical disco cocaine!
In all seriousness, I've always had a really hard time with Last House. It is purposefully awful, and terribly successful at it. It makes me feel horrible, just grimy and gross, so I've only seen it twice and not in a long time. But then Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring, which it's basically a remake of, makes me feel legitimately awful as well. So good work, Wes! You kept the vibe alive!
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment