The 2009 version of Last House on the Left bears the tagline: If bad people hurt someone you love, how far would you go to hurt them back? The 1972 version of course famously had a tagline which became a catchphrase: To avoid fainting, keep repeating it’s only a movie, only a movie, only a movie . . .
Well, Last House on the Left was initially intended to be an envelope-pushing 70’s porn feature and its legacy as a movie has been far beyond that of the average only a movie flick. There is the notion that the current spate of torture porn horror movies is something new, but people like Wes Craven and Sean S. Cunningham pioneered the genre more than three decades ago. Wes Craven, most famous for Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream, wrote and directed the original Last House on the Left and Sean S. Cunningham, most famous for Friday the 13th, produced it. Before you even take into account the legions of movie-makers influenced by Craven and Cunningham, the legacy of Last House on the Left is huge simply for how its creators built on their own work. For the 2009 Last House on the Left, Craven and Cunningham both serve as producers. The director of 2009’s version is Dennis Iliadis whose main previous credit is the movie Hardcore, about two prostitutes who fall in love.
The initial torture porn grew out of 1970’s porn porn. At the time, partly because video not being used yet, any porn flick more involved than a tiny stag loop tended to be approached as a feature. A lot of the underground creative work at the time was about exploring taboos, so there was not as much . . .
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