It's Only a Movie... It's Only a Movie

Which is the tagline for the film The Last House on the Left, of course. "But Christina," I hear you asking, "what about the job?" Well, I don't know yet. What you ought to be asking instead is, "Christina, what about the weenie-biting?" Oh, I'll tell you all about the weenie-biting. For one thing, it isn't there.

What's happening to this guy? Well, he's certainly not getting his penis bitten off.

The story goes something like this: two girls go out to score some pot and end up going to the wrong place. Four criminals (two guys, a girl, and a junkie in the original) kidnap them, steal their car, rape them, kill them, and leave them for dead out in the forest--the forest where one of the girls just happens to live. You know, on the last house on the left. The four criminals go to the house looking for shelter for the night. One of the girls manages to crawl back home where her parents find her body. The parents then take their revenge. The mother lures one outside with promises of oral sex. Then guess what happens.

Now, I'm not going to insist that the 1972 version of The Last House on the Left was socially-conscious, but after watching two girls get raped and murdered, yeah, it's kind of satisfying to see the rapist get emasculated. In the 2009 version, every part of the movie--the rape and the revenge--was scaled back a bit, which made the entire thing unnecessary and anti-climactic, much like every other horror movie remake this side of Rob Zombie's Halloween. The junkie was replaced by a troubled teen (that kid in Gladiator, I now realize), and there are other strategic changes as well. That's not to say it was terrible. It was actually pretty good, considering, and probably the best horror movie I've seen in a while (and there's been a lot of them). I'm not sure if that's sad on my part or the industry.

The castration scene, which was probably the most memorable scene of the original, was replaced by microwave death. It almost didn't happen, but when it did, it was magical. The placement and timing of the scene was what made it special. I can't imagine what critics had to say about it, and I don't really care. Horror movies are about people getting their heads exploded in microwaves and their hands chewed off by garbage disposals. The Last House on the Left doesn't forget that, at least--not like every PG-13 horror movie ever made. I'm looking at you, Haunting in Connecticut.