10 Behind-The-Scenes Stories That Spoil Classic Movies

8. The Last House On The Left Villains Were A Bit Too Method

Before he got progressively more post-modern with his horror in Nightmare On Elm Street and then the Scream series, director Wes Craven burst onto the scene with the nastiest of the video nasties. The Last House On The Left was a low-budget production that, in the era of Vietnam, brought the horror home. And made it human. In fact it was all too real. Craven's later films were creature features, starring the likes of Freddy Kreuger and the inbred cannibals of The Hills Have Eyes. His first feature, meanwhile, was all about the evils of man, centring on a group of escaped prisoners gang raping and torturing a young girl to death. They were terrifyingly believable psychopaths €“ possibly because they actually were psychos. In most horror films, there's some comfort in knowing the set was probably an easy going time, in sharp contrast to the terror on screen. In this film, actor David Hess suggested actually raping Sandra Cassell to get a more believable performance, and used to threaten her physically throughout shooting. Truly, man is the real monster. Hess, specifically.