Last House on the Left - UK DVD

[DanWilde1966]

First of all, I am delighted that this film has finally made it to the UK legally, so that more Brits can get at least a taste of it. At the same time, however, I am saddened that it has only managed to get a DVD certificate after over half a minute's worth of cuts.

The UK has a long and tawdry history of film censorship. In the 1980s, the Video Recordings Act swept away pretty much a whole genre of films (and my genre, into the bargain), in the wake of the "video nasties" moral panic. No one ever actually managed to prove that watching violent films caused violence in the streets, but films like TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, THE EVIL DEAD and THE EXORCIST were removed from video shelves anyway. LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT was one of the official video nasties, and stores caught renting it faced legal action.

In the late 1990s, British Board of Classification head honcho James Ferman stepped down (and died not long afterwards), and various of the old video nasties started appearing again, this time with the BBFC's blessing. I caught TEXAS CHAINSAW in a London theatre in late 1998, and a year later, it had secured an 18 DVD certificate uncut. Kubrick's death meant that his wife Christiane decided to reissue A CLOCKWORK ORANGE - a film that had not been legally available in the UK since the early 1970s. THE EXORCIST was re-issued without cuts. After a famous courtcase in 2000, hardcore pornography was effectively legalised in the UK, as long as it was sold in licensed sex shops. And in the fall of 2000, I saw LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT at London's ICA (actually, a cut called KRUG & COMPANY), as part of FilmFour's conference to discuss the issues surrounding UK movie censorship. After the screening, I had a chat with the man battling to have the film released uncut on DVD in the UK (I can't recall his name), and though he was sceptical about getting LAST HOUSE through the British censor uncut, he had certain hopes...

Those hopes have not been realised, and I cannot help but wonder why. I am lucky enough to have a copy of the French DVD of the film - completely uncut - and can see exactly what has been culled from the UK DVD. The cuts are all the more crazy, because they can be seen in the form of still blow-ups in the "Forbidden Gallery" on the second disc. I agree with Hess's assessment of censorship, which he expressed at the Leicester screening of the film: that it is anti-educational. Anyone who wants to rip the film to pieces on the grounds of its violence, completely misunderstands the film. To me, it is one of the most powerful statements about the effects of violence ever made, but I would go further: in its very texture, one can sense the filmmakers' pacifism, and their disgust at what was happening in Vietnam at the time. I for one will continue to campaign for this film's uncut UK release.

[PaulB]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><table border="0" width="90%" bgcolor="#333333" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0"><tr><td width="100%"><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#FF9900"><tr><td width="100%" bgcolor="#DDDDDD"><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by DanWilde1966:
films like TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, THE EVIL DEAD and THE EXORCIST</font></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE>

Those films were never 'officially' banned by the BBFC in the UK - they just got caught up in the 'Video Nasties' outrage that is now, thankfully, dead and buried. It is frankly boring when I hear or read people talking about it.

The Last House on the Left was officially banned though - on both cinema and video.

[DanWilde1966]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><table border="0" width="90%" bgcolor="#333333" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0"><tr><td width="100%"><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#FF9900"><tr><td width="100%" bgcolor="#DDDDDD"><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by PaulB:
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><table border="0" width="90%" bgcolor="#333333" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0"><tr><td width="100%"><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#FF9900"><tr><td width="100%" bgcolor="#DDDDDD"><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by DanWilde1966:
films like TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, THE EVIL DEAD and THE EXORCIST</font></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE>

Those films were never 'officially' banned by the BBFC in the UK - they just got caught up in the 'Video Nasties' outrage that is now, thankfully, dead and buried. It is frankly boring when I hear or read people talking about it.

The Last House on the Left was officially banned though - on both cinema and video.</font></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE>

Whatever the technicalities mate, I was unable to walk into my local store and buy TCM or THE EXORCIST until about 1999. I still consider LHotL to be banned in the UK - since I am not allowed to buy the film in its entirity!

[PaulB]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><table border="0" width="90%" bgcolor="#333333" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0"><tr><td width="100%"><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#FF9900"><tr><td width="100%" bgcolor="#DDDDDD"><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by DanWilde1966:
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><table border="0" width="90%" bgcolor="#333333" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0"><tr><td width="100%"><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#FF9900"><tr><td width="100%" bgcolor="#DDDDDD"><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by PaulB:
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><table border="0" width="90%" bgcolor="#333333" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0"><tr><td width="100%"><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#FF9900"><tr><td width="100%" bgcolor="#DDDDDD"><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by DanWilde1966:
films like TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, THE EVIL DEAD and THE EXORCIST</font></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE>

Those films were never 'officially' banned by the BBFC in the UK - they just got caught up in the 'Video Nasties' outrage that is now, thankfully, dead and buried. It is frankly boring when I hear or read people talking about it.

The Last House on the Left was officially banned though - on both cinema and video.</font></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE>

Whatever the technicalities mate, I was unable to walk into my local store and buy TCM or THE EXORCIST until about 1999. I still consider LHotL to be banned in the UK - since I am not allowed to buy the film in its entirity!</font></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE>

By which time the film could have been purchased pretty easily on import anyway.

The Last House on the Left is still banned, in reality. It's like the parent of a family giving a child a new book to read and taking a few pages out of it. Madness. [img]graemlins/hmmm.gif[/img]

[DanWilde1966]

Yes, madness. It's as if the censors think that there is something inherently evil in the emulsion of the film, and that exposure to it will "deprave and corrupt" the viewer. I have never believed this to be possible or the case... One does not become "corrupted" by a work of art, but "educated": horror is genre cinema, after all, and the more you learn about the codes and conventions of the genre, the more familiar you become with how such movies work... It is not "desensitisation", but a process of growing awareness.

LAST HOUSE is a great example of Stephen King's notion of subtext: on the surface, the film seems to be a revenge piece - a reworking of Bergman's classic VIRGIN SPRING. But it is actually a movie about the violence of the Vietnam war - even if it didn't intend to be! The violence of that time, in that country, oozes out of the frames of LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT and is one of the factors which makes the film so intense - and so disturbing.

LAST HOUSE is the embodiment of "film art" - which is to say, a film which disturbs, shocks, reawakens, educates... but never plays it safe. I have never understood why Craven has felt the need to distance himself from it. He may well have wanted to make a horror film, blended (at one point of the planning process) with chunks of hardcore pornography. Whatever. But what the film turned out to be was art with grisly rhetoric - something horrible, amazing, fascinating - and real.

<font color="#007FFF" size="1">[ June 08, 2003 10:28 AM: Message edited by: DanWilde1966 ]</font>

[PaulB]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><table border="0" width="90%" bgcolor="#333333" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0"><tr><td width="100%"><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#FF9900"><tr><td width="100%" bgcolor="#DDDDDD"><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by DanWilde1966:
Yes, madness. It's as if the censors think that there is something inherently evil in the emulsion of the film, and that exposure to it will "deprave and corrupt" the viewer.</font></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE>

Or they're just covering themselves. The film will be available uncut in a few years - but, BBFC, why not now?

[LunA359]

Who the HELL are you two?!? [img]graemlins/grrr.gif[/img] Heh... kidding... carry on. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

[DanWilde1966]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><table border="0" width="90%" bgcolor="#333333" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0"><tr><td width="100%"><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#FF9900"><tr><td width="100%" bgcolor="#DDDDDD"><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by LunA359:
Who the HELL are you two?!? [img]graemlins/grrr.gif[/img] Heh... kidding... carry on. [img]tongue.gif[/img] </font></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE>

Two refugees from the FilmFour forum. Internet nomads...and David Hess fans. [img]cool.gif[/img]