6. Last House On The Left (1972)
Mari and Phyllis are two carefree young teenagers, celebrating Mari's 17th birthday. They are to go to a rock concert and Mari's mother expresses some consternation at this but gives her daughter a silver peace sign symbol necklace for her birthday. The teenagers go to look for marijuana and have the grave misfortune to run into a gang of hoodlums - Krug Stillo - a rapist and serial killer, his heroin addicted son Junior, Sadie a psychopathic sadist and Weasel - a thorough pervert. The gang kidnap the girls and take them to a forest near Mari's home. They act in an extremely sadistic way towards the two girls. Forcing one of them to wet herself, getting the two girls to go lesbian with each other. Phyllis runs away to get help but her escape plans are thwarted by the criminals chasing her. Weasel stabs her to death and just to be thoroughly depraved - Sadie pulls out her intestines in a frenzy. They bring Phyllis' severed hand to Mari. Krug carves his name onto her chest and then rapes her. Mari vomits and walks into a pond where Krug shoots her. The gang get cleaned up and approach a nearby house - which happens to be Mari's. After an uncomfortable dinner scene, Mari's mother Estelle notices the peace sign on Junior's neck. She finds a lot of bloody clothes in the gang's baggage and she and the doctor are alerted to the fact that they are harbouring their daughter's killer. They set in place plans for revenge - Estelle pretends to fancy Weasel and bites his knob off while performing fellatio. Krug has already engineered his son's suicide so Junior is off the picture. Sadie gets her throat cut and Krug gets chainsawed. The police are finally here. Whenever I first got a copy of this film, I was so entranced by it that I watched it every day for two weeks. The film has a great pace, with horror upon horror being piled on top of one another. It is an astonishingly nasty movie - probably inspired by real life events such as the Vietnam War - which was still an issue in 1972. Way before Last House on the Left was banned by the DPP in 1983, it had already accrued a ban on Theatrical release in 1974. After its ban in 1983, nobody dared present it before the BBFC for nearly 20 years. In 2000 the film was presented again - but failed to rescind the ban. Blue Underground toured the film in its unexpurgated form until finally in 2003, Last House on the Left received an 18 certificate with 31 seconds of cuts. The uncut version was released in 2008. Few films have divided people as much as Last House on the Left. Controversial because: Rape, torture, murders, man having his dick bitten off - should I go on?