YOUNG WARRIORS is a crazy fuckin movie released by Cannon in 1983. The description on the back of the VHS box begins like this:
“What do you get if you cross ‘Animal House’ with ‘Death Wish’? Young Warriors– a unique combination of fraternity hijinks, high-speed action, wildly imaginative animation, and hard-drivin’ rock!”
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I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE (2010) is an okay-but-could-be-much-better remake of the disreputable cult classic. In the rankings of 21st century remakes of notorious ’70s rape revenge movies I’d put it at #2, more watchable than CHAOS but not nearly as artful as LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT. It has pretty effective pacing and a couple good ideas, but it’s not as smart or observant as I’d want for a really worthwhile remake.
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DEATH WEEKEND, aka HOUSE BY THE LAKE, is a 1976 Canadian rape-revenge movie, and a pretty good one. You know, now that I’ve finished typing that sentence I feel like that description doesn’t sound nearly as appealing as I would like. So let me rephrase that: DEATH WEEKEND, aka HOUSE BY THE LAKE, is from 1976. (more…)
WARNING: This review contains spoilers for LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT remake, LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT original, VIRGIN SPRING, CHAOS, THE HILLS HAVE EYES remake, and URBAN LEGEND.
Well well well, what do we have here? Looks like a remake of a Wes Craven movie, already unofficially remade as a Demon Dave DeFalco movie, itself based on an Ingmar Bergman movie based on a 13th century ballad based on a legend of why a particular Swedish church was built. I’m not sure the modern moviegoer is concerned with the origin story of the Kärna church, so we gotta wonder what exactly the reason is for this remake. The answer, of course, is that the original movie was first called KRUG AND COMPANY, they didn’t call it LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT until it had been traveling around for a while. They made it up after the fact, it didn’t really mean anything, so in the movie they never mentioned the location of the house. I saw the trailer for the remake where somebody’s driving down a road and says “it’s the last house on the left.” This is the reason to remake it, you can finally go back and establish that!
Well, actually that line’s not in the movie, and come to think of it there are no other houses in the area at all. “Last house on the left” is not an accurate description of this house. It should be called ONLY HOUSE ON THE STREET. So I guess geographical accuracy is not in fact the reason for the remake. The reason is because they’re going through IMDb and just remaking every god damn movie that ever existed. (more…)
In Sweden back in the ’70s there was some crazy shit going on, just like they had in the woods there in the 1800s. Take for example the case of Frigga (Christina Lindberg), the subject of this cruel picture. She’s just an innocent farmgirl who keeps running into some filthy scumbags. In the opening scene she is a little girl being spun around by an old man who you assume is her grandpa or something. Then the guy keels over and blood pours out of his mouth. I don’t understand why, but this somehow symbolizes that the guy raped her. Don’t get me wrong, I am very, very glad that they chose to depict that through symbolism instead of showing it, but I got no clue what that’s all about. It’s a Swede thing.
The trauma of that opening scene causes her to be mute and, the neighbors say, not quite right in the head. She is seeing a special doctor for her troubles but one day she misses the bus and gets picked up by a sleazy hipster asshole who takes her to dinner and hits on her.
At first it seems kind of satirical because he keeps hitting on her and doesn’t seem to notice that she never talks. Even when he asks her direct questions he doesn’t notice that she doesn’t answer. But then the guy brings her to his apartment and drugs her drink. As soon as she passes out he makes a weird phone call to a doctor, pre-reminiscent of the phone call in PULP FICTION when the guy catches Bruce and Ving and is gonna have his special redneck way with them.
Well, due to having recently seen LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, CHAOS, I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE and VIRGIN SPRING I was pretty fuckin worried about what was gonna happen here, but luckily what happens is horrible but not graphic. Yet. They’re not gonna rape her, instead they shoot her up with all kinds of high quality heroin for several days, to get her addicted. And then they force her into prositution. I guess it’s a sick genre if I’m saying this isn’t that bad compared to other movies of this type. But it is a little less hard to watch than those other ones. (more…)
or Max Von Sydow’s Badass Revenge
Recently on The Ain’t It Cool News I reviewed this movie CHAOS, which is a rip-off of LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (not on purpose, I am assured by the filmatists) which itself was an update of THE VIRGIN SPRING. One of the talkbackers, Readingwriter, was annoyed that I didn’t mention VIRGIN SPRING in the review. He had a good point that it would’ve been interesting to compare all three of them, not just those two, and I’m sure I would’ve done that if I had actually seen VIRGIN SPRING. But I hadn’t.
Until now. Today, I return to the topic armed with a new, more Swedish perspective of the classic revenge tale.
I would have to say Ingmar Bergman’s take is the best of the three, and one of the nicest slasher pics you’ll ever see. His is less graphic, but more medieval, more religious, and more Swedish. Instead of those faded, muddy ’70s colors his has crisp black and white photography. Must’ve looked weird playing in those grindhouses. Maybe that’s why it has been banned in over 5,000 countries or whatever. Or I might be thinking of a different movie.
It is a pretty disturbing movie actually, just not rubbing-a-dog’s-nose-in-his-shit-hard-to-watch like the subgenre it accidentally spawned. The story is pretty similar to the other two in its basic outline. There are two girls, Karin and Ingeri, but instead of both of them getting raped and killed, Ingeri survives and blames herself because 1) she was jealous of the other girl and 2) she may have prayed to Odin to fuck up the other girl’s life. Just a little bit. Anyway, it’s a good thing this girl survives because she’s pregnant. That would be too much. (Oh jesus, I can only imagine what Demon Dave would’ve had happen to poor Ingeri and Ingeri Jr.) (more…)
I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE is one of the most notorious of the revenge pictures. Why? I bet it’s mostly because the title is so good. LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT is a great title too, because it sounds cool but it doesn’t actually mean anything. It’s enigmatic. I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE is the opposite approach, it’s blunt and harsh and to the point. Whoever this is that’s speaking the title, he or she DOES NOT like you. That much is clear.
Until my recent run-in with CHAOS and David “The Demon” DeFalco I never thought too much about watching this one. Why should I watch a movie that tells me it spits on my grave? But with all the ensuing discussion of LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT a couple people recommended this one to me and I thought, ah, what the hell.
Coincidentally, I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE’s bad rep comes from the same place as CHAOS’s: Chicago, and Roger Ebert. Ebert, representing a ruthless group known as the Chicago-Sun Times, and his crosstown rival Gene Siskel, overseeing Chicago’s “movie beat” from his throne atop the Tribune Tower, both treated the movie with the sort of respect and sensitivity that the characters treat each other with in the movie. Ebert called it “a vile bag of garbage” and “an expression of the most diseased and perverted darker human natures.” Siskel called it “easily the most offensive film” he had seen in his career. Both talk in their reviews about being disturbed by weirdos at the screenings cheering on the rapes or bringing their kids to see it. I can understand why that would sort of ruin the experience, but luckily I didn’t have either of those problems watching the movie on DVD at my apartment. I keep a tight lid on those types of things.
Ebert did like LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT and more recently DEVIL’S REJECTS so he’s not a total prude. But I don’t really agree with him on this one. Yes, it’s raw and exploitative and hard to watch, but I think it has more to it than he was willing to notice back then. I don’t think it’s misogynistic. I think it’s genuine in its anti-rape stance and it’s actually very anti-male. But I can take it, men deserve it sometimes. For example those weirdos at his screening who were seriously misinterpreting the movie. They fucked it up for poor Roger. (more…)
Well boys, there’s this horror movie called CHAOS that comes out on DVD at the end of September. I thought it would be good to review it now so that you will have forgotten about it by then. I wouldn’t recommend watching the movie – in fact, if possible, I recommend not ever hearing of it. Just stop reading now, unread the first part of this paragraph, and don’t think about it again. We’re only encouraging them. By reviewing this movie I’m just giving the dipshits who made it the attention they’re waving their dicks around begging for, but I want to review it for two reasons:
CHAOS is a low budget, no imagination, blatant ripoff of LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT directed by a former pro-wrestler named David “The Demon” DeFalco. Its one and only claim to fame is that they managed to get a no-star review from Roger Ebert and then they wrote him a letter that lured him into an ongoing debate about violence in movies, as if their movie deserved to be a part of that discussion.
During the opening scene I actually thought I might like the movie. A Honeybunny-from-Pulp-Fiction type is hitchhiking when some rednecks pull over and imply that they will give her a ride in exchange for sexual favors. She refuses their offer, they grab her like they’re gonna rape her. But these rednecks aren’t the ones you gotta worry about. The girl’s friends, one of them a big, bald Stone Cold Steve Austin type, come out of the trees, beat the shit out of the guys, and destroy their car with a baseball bat. The way it cuts right in the middle of the car-smashing just tosses you into the movie like a rock through a window. (more…)
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