Everyone’s heard of, if not seen the Nightmare on Elm Streetmovies, featuring the sharp-tongued, joke-cracking serial killer of your dreams Freddy Krueger. You could probably say the same about the Screammovies as well. While these two franchises are both huge, how many of us [especially the younger generations] are familiar with Wes Craven’s earlier films… the ones that first earned him his street cred as a horror filmmaker?
The Last House on the Left (1972) was Wes Craven’s feature film debut and did he ever enter into “the Biz” with a bang! The movie follows two teenage girls who are going to attend a rock concert as a birthday celebration. Along the way, the girls decide to try and score some weed to enhance the experience, but manage to get themselves kidnapped by a gang of psychopaths who’re looking for a little fun of their own. This is by far Craven’s most raw and emotionally charged film to date, evoking extreme feelings of fear and helplessness as the kidnappers continue to torture the girls in ways that become difficult to watch. The film was so controversial, it was banned several times in the UK and still remains one of the most terrifying movie watching experiences a person can have.