9. Last House On The Left (1972)
Banned: UK, Singapore, Iceland, New Zealand, Norway, Germany, Australia. Wes Cravens debut feature is reckoned to be based on Ingmar Bergmans mighty The Virgin Spring winner of The Best Foreign Film Oscar in 1960. Bergmans refined aesthetic sensibilities are blown to pieces in Last House on the Left as the viewer is bombarded with brutality, rape and torture. The level of violence is as shocking today as it was back in 1972 with the sick son of a b***h Krug leading the mayhem as he vents his sadism on two teenage girls Phyllis and Mari along with his equally heinous acolytes Weasel and Sadie who are both perverted and violent deviants. Krug is such a degenerate, he gets his own son addicted to heroin so he can control him, and in the later stages of the film, he goads him into shooting himself in the head. Krug, Weasel and Sadie lead an obscene glut of violence upon the two girls, and several scenes of extreme humiliation, for example where they force the girls into lesbian activity and force one of the girls to wet herself, are extremely distasteful. Added to that are scenes where Krug carves his name into Maris neck, violently rapes and shoots her and a particularly troubling scene where Sadie reaches into Phylliss abdomen and gleefully pulls out her intestines when she is being stabbed to death. This latter scene in particular did not go down well with the BBFC in the UK. Into the bargain, there are all of the scenes in which Maris parents get their revenge on the thugs. The mother bites off Weasels wiener, Sadie gets her throat slashed in the pool and Krug rather satisfyingly gets chainsawed to death. It is not hard to see why Last House on the Left ended up with so many censorship problems around the world. You would be hard pressed to find a more violent film but in fairness to Wes Craven, he presents violence in all of its raw and ugly facets. There is absolutely no glamorisation of violence in the film and its effects are starkly rendered. For example, the thugs are rather sheepish looking after they dispatch of Mari, as if they know they have gone too far. And Maris parents, when they exact their revenge on Krug & Co, do not look like they have enjoyed doing it or it has redressed the balance of losing their daughter. A piping hot potato of a film which has only had the censorship relaxed in very recent years after it was released. Incidentally, the remake of Last House on the Left was on ITV4 the other night. It is Mickey Mouse compared to the original.