Wes Craven's name tends to conjure up images of that scary guy with the blades for fingers. No, not Edward Scissorhands, the other guy. However, years before Craven reshaped the horror genre in his vision, he started his directing career with a dark, dirty, uncomfortable movie called Last House on the Left.
The movie follows a gang of psychotic killers who brutally rape and murder two teenage girls, then seek refuge in a house that happens to belong to the parents of one of their victims. Last House's graphic rape sequences were controversial enough, but when combined with an uneven tone that included a bizarrely campy sheriff, the movie got some seriously negative press. The British Board of Film Classification rejected the film, stating that "we can find no redeeming merit ... which would lead us to feel that this muddly (sic) film is worth salvaging." The BBFC labeled Last House on the Left a "video nasty," meaning that all copies of any VHS tapes within England were to be seized by the police. The movie was only reclassified in 2008. One of the film's actors, Fred Lincoln, stated that he wished the film was banned internationally, rather than just in the U.K..
This low-budget movie, produced for only $90,000, quickly gained such an unsavory reputation that conspiracy theorists debated whether it had been funded by either the Mob or adult filmmakers, according to the New York Times.
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