9. The Last House on the Left
I still remember the day I finally saw Wes Craven's controversial grindhouse classic The Last House on the Left; I was so excited and my expectations were very sky high. After having finally seen Cannibal Holocaust and I Spit on Your Grave and being thoroughly impressed by them, I anxiously sat through The Last House on the Left. What I found was an over-hyped and brutally over-sold shock flick that didn't quite deliver on all of its promises, in the end. Granted it presented a view of a filmmaker who had promise and potential, but it was typical Wes Craven. He has a bad habit of providing audiences with harrowing frights and scares and then alleviating the endless terror with some form of comedy - he's done it in almost all of his films and continues to do it to this day, and the Last House was no exception. Two young upper class girls looking for an adventure run afoul a group of psychotic drug dealers after their drug deal runs afoul. For the duration of the movie they're chased, raped, tormented, and tortured by the drug dealers until the finale where the parents of one of the girls get their revenge. The problem was that the original spent time dividing its plot between the torture of the young girls, and two of the most inept ridiculous cops ever conceived for film trying to get to the woods to save them. Their awkward comedic sub-plot completely destroys the impact of the film. Last House 2009 completely improves on the premise: it cuts out the police officers, reduces the torment of the young girls, and induces the best aspect of the film - the wrath of a mom and dad. After watching Disney pixy Sara Paxton and Superbad dream girl Martha MacIsaaac raped and tortured for an hour, the film shifts over to Tony Goldwyn and Monica Potter, both of whom open the door to the arms of their daughter Mari (gorgeous Paxton) who barely survives the encounter. Discovering the travelers who have come to their house asking for help are the people who raped and hurt their daughter, the final forty minutes of the film is an all out assault of parental carnage that the original never quite mastered. Goldwyn and Potter's wrath on the drug dealers is absolutely cathartic, and the final scene involving a microwave is fantastic. Without a doubt, Last House improves on Craven's original.