9 Horror Movies That Made Actors QUIT Forever

Wes Craven's first feature film, The Last House on the Left (1972) is a low-budget exploitation horror that trades on the trope of being a true story. Unfortunately for audiences, that 'true story' is one of rape and revenge, in which teenage girls Mari (Sandra Peabody) and Phyllis (Lucy Grantham) run into a gang of fugitives who subject them to a living hell.

It remains a hugely controversial film to this day, and many of the actors and crew involved have disavowed it in the years since, not least of all Peabody. She not only disliked the exploitative end product, but had a terrible time on set, suffering misogyny and harassment from other cast members, including David Hess, who thought method acting as a sadistic serial killer was a good idea.

Though Peabody did a couple more films after this, her experience on Last House left its mark, sewing the seeds for her swift departure from the acting world, with her final part – as Bird in Teenage Hitchhikers – coming just three years later in 1975. She also quickly became typecast, for the kind of role she wasn't really enthusiastic about in the first place, a role fittingly parodied in Teenage Hitchhikers as various lecherous strangers attempt to sexualise Bird and her friends.