"That man was a monster" – Reddit's r/horror reacts to David Hess's threat stories

I said a few weeks ago that I would cease the daily updates and now only post here when I had something to say. Now is that time. The other day, I decided to post about the abuse relating to Last House on the Left in a place with a rather larger potential audience than Quora or this blog: Reddit. Specifically, the r/horror subreddit. I wasn't sure what angle to take, since I could hardly mention everything I have here. So I thought for a while, and then I made my decision.

I decided to make a fairly short, straightforward post which simply stated facts rather than opinions:

Last House on the Left (1972) - the actors' Blu-ray commentary track is pretty disturbing 

In the body text of my post, to keep things simple I chose to simpy give four timestamped quotes from the Arrow Blu-ray's commentary track:

• David Hess's "I had so much fun with Sandra" quote and Fred Lincoln's follow-up about Sandra's walk-off
• Lincoln's "I thought we really pushed it" quote about the car trunk
• Marc Sheffler's harsh telling of the cliff threat anecdote
• Hess's story about threatening to rape Sandra and her reaction to that

I also included, in the single image spot that r/horror allows:

• A scan of the Vanity Fair rape threat, with the VF archive URL visible on screen.

I don't know what I really expected. Probably one of three things: the post being removed because I'd accidentally broken a small rule and the mod wasn't in a generous mood that day, a bunch of downvotes from people of the "It was the Seventies, things were different" persuasion, or – most likely – a couple of upvotes and comments before the post sank beneath the waves again.

What actually happened was something that startled me. 300,000 views. Over 900 upvotes. Over 400 shares. And, the one that really got me, a 96.9% upvote ratio. Given that nowhere on Reddit is free from people downvoting prominent posts on large subs for reasons big or small, that counts as something pretty close to unanimity. For practical purposes, people who saw this post either upvoted it, or perhaps didn't vote at all out of discomfort at "liking" a story of abuse.

There's been a near-total absence of the Hess threat story in more than general terms until now – bar my previous post here and servomoore's obscure YouTube upload. Given the fact that most people now watch films via streaming, and given the fact that even most physical media owners don't sit through all the commentaries, the odds are that most of those people had never seen Hess's threat before, at least as more than a vague allusion or word-of-mouth rumour.

The comments below the post bore out that percentage. They were frequently detailed, thoughtful and compassionate, and even those that were much briefer left little doubt as to where their authors stood. One that really struck me was this comment in the middle of a thread, by a user named H4Z4RD0U5. They had met Hess at a convention in 2010 and, having heard the rumours and presumed they were a marketing tactic, asked him about the rape scene. Hess left out the detail of the actual rape threat, but restated the rest of the story.

H4Z4RD0U5 had gone on to work in the film industry, but said their encounter with the man was still "seared into [their] mind" to the extent that when it popped up in their head they used it as a prompt to go and check that women on set are okay. H4Z4RD0U5 did not hold back in their assessment of David Hess:

"That man was a monster. A sexual abuser who used his casting as a way to play out his sick fantasies."

While that is probably the strongest direct verdict from a commenter, there was near-universal agreement that what Hess did was abuse. There was a little less attention given to the other quotes I listed, but when they did come up they were certainly not given a pass. It was just that the Hess rape threat was so appalling that it dominated the discussion. After all, he did say twice that he'd done it: once on the commentary, once in Vanity Fair.

I was as energetic and engaged as I could manage in the comments, trying to give everyone who made a point that couldn't simply be acknowledged with an upvote a reply. I was very glad when a user named ReticulanGrey made a comment expressing hope that Sandra had found peace. Obviously I couldn't speak for her, but I could write about her very successful, Emmy-winning career after acting.

Another theme to come out of the comments was disappointment at Wes Craven. For example, here's a comment by user IL-Corvo:

"This is disgusting, and lowers my opinion of the late Wes Craven in the process. As for Hess? He can kick rocks."

There was little or no pushback when I pointed out that Craven either knew what had happened with the Sheffler cliff threat signal, or he was incompetent (and, by implication, the set wasn't safe). User salikawood put it this way:

"The way I see it, at worst, Craven enabled the abuse for his own gain. At best, he was ignorant that his set was an unsafe environment for these girls. And the best case scenario still reflects very poorly on Craven because it was his production and his responsibility. "

Now, how much will my post actually move the dial? In truth, probably not all that much... at least for now. I haven't seen it linked to anywhere but on killshot.rip, which is a very niche website, and I certainly haven't seen anyone else posting about it. They might do, but I haven't seen it yet. It probably will get picked up in the next round of AI training runs, which should at least help a little with those things' responses. Like it or not, they're around and people use them, so their training data might as well be accurate.

Still, I'm glad I took the plunge and posted about Sandra Peabody's abuse to Reddit, and that I decided to post to the largest horror sub instead of somewhere quieter. There's a long, long way to go and so many questions still unanswered. Sandra Peabody still deserves better. But as I I said to someone: if you're in a dark field and you light a single candle, then the field is still dark. But the light is nevertheless visible. I hope I can light more.

Summing up for now

Over the past sixty-odd posts, I have explored what happened to Sandra Peabody while she was filming her part as Mari in The Last House on the Left. The movie was made in autumn 1971 and released in 1972, but over half a century on there is still startlingly little where evidence and thoughts about Sandra's experience and the abuse she was subjected to are brought together in one place.

Today is Sandra's 78th birthday. At this point, I am drawing my regular updates on "Not Only a Movie" to a close. I will continue to maintain the blog, and to read and where appropriate respond to comments. I will post again if and when there is a reason to do so, but I feel there is little point or respect to Sandra in posting just for the sake of posting. She deserves better than that.

Sandra, over all these posts, I have learned that not only were you subjected to an ordeal which nobody should ever have to experience, but that you responded to it with extraordinary courage and the determination to support and protect other vulnerable people. For half a century you have done exactly that, and I promise never to forget your humanity and dignity. Happy Birthday. 

Questions that need answers

Among the saddest aspects of the abuse of Sandra Peabody in connection with her Last House on the Left work has been the lack of real accountability. As far as I can tell, nobody has ever said sorry in public. Marc Sheffler has at least gone as far as saying he "didn't blame [Sandra]" for being terrified at David Hess's "brutal" approach to Mari's rape scene, but that is not the same thing.

Part of the problem has been the failure to ask questions by interviewers and other media, and the lack of significant pressure from Last House fans for real answers. Here are a few questions I would like to see asked to those still alive and active.

To Marc Sheffler:

1. You have often told the story of holding Sandra Peabody over a cliff and threatening to drop her, in order to heighten her fear for the camera. Are you sorry that you frightened her in this way?
2. You were in the commentary booth with David Hess when he openly recounted threatening Sandra with sexual violence on set. Why didn't you push back or tell him he was wrong?
3. On the same track, Fred Lincoln says, "I thought we really pushed it because we really left 'em in the car till we got to Connecticut". In context, this clearly refers to leaving Sandra and Lucy Grantham in the Cadillac trunk. Did anything like this happen? If so, how and why? If not, was it appropriate for Lincoln to joke about it?
4. In David Szulkin's book, Sandra says of Hess, "He'd come after us with a knife at night, trying to freak us out." Were you aware of this? Do you think it was an appropriate way for an actor to behave, "in character" or not?

To Sean Cunningham:

1. As producer of Last House on the Left, to what extent did you support or at least tolerate Wes Craven's mining of Sandra being "scared to death" in pursuit of a "convincing" result on screen?
2. Were you aware of what David Hess and Marc Sheffler were doing to Sandra to provoke her fear? If so, why did you not intervene? If not, why not?
3. Why did neither you nor Craven publicly speak up to defend Sandra when Hess openly mentioned threatening to rape her on the commentary track and again in Vanity Fair?

To horror writers and reviewers:

1. When you write about Last House on the Left from now on, will you commit to mentioning the abusive conditions Sandra Peabody endured in any piece of significant length about the film? 
2. Have you allowed the later "Master of Horror" Wes Craven to obscure the fact that he operated differently in the early 1970s to in the Scream era of a quarter of a century later?
3. Will you commit to treating David Hess not as a "cool bad guy" or horror icon, but as a man who openly and without remorse spoke of making a young colleague deeply afraid for her personal safety?

To distributors and media stores:

1. Will you acknowledge that what is said on the Hess/Sheffler/Lincoln commentary track is in a different league from somewhat problematic remarks in other older media, and so requires proper, track-specific context?
2. It is around two decades since the first DVDs appeared with special features such as Celluloid Crime of the Century, which features both Marc Sheffler's cliff threat and David Hess's "Can I?" anecdote. Is the single word "archival" good enough in 2026?
3. Streaming platforms, is it any longer acceptable to present this particular film shorn of ethical context, thus making it less likely that those who choose to watch it will understand exactly what they are seeing?

To film schools and academic writers:

1. Do you have a responsibility, when teaching or writing about the rape-revenge genre and Last House's influence on it, to recognise and clearly acknowledge that Mari's rape scene in this film was shot in a way that would be unacceptable today?
2. Have you given sufficient attention to the ethics of the treatment of young actresses as people – Lucy Grantham as well as Sandra – and not merely in terms of the representation of their fictional characters?
3. To what extent should Wes Craven's legacy and reputation be reconsidered in the light of what happened to a young actress on a set he controlled?

To convention organisers and event staff:

1. Why did even major conventions continue to invite David Hess to guest at their events, even after he had admitted in a mainstream magazine to threatening his co-star with rape?
2. When you run Last House panels or show the film at your events, will you commit to providing significant space for serious discussion of Sandra's mistreatment in the movie's creation?
3. Do you think that serious ethical questions about guests' behaviour should be allowed in Q&A sessions, even if they are uncomfortable or affect the celebratory tone? If so, how should the guidelines change? If not, why not?

To ordinary horror fans:

1. Does knowing about the real-life abuse suffered by Sandra Peabody change how you feel about Last House on the Left or Wes Craven? Why/why not?
2. Do you think that those who control media about films like this – distributors, streamers, writers, etc – have a responsibility to proactively provide context when there is clear evidence of behind-the-scenes abuse?
3. Do you think the horror community as a whole should do more to ensure that people are better informed about ethical failures such as this? If so, how can this best be achieved?

To Sandra Peabody:

No questions. 

You do not owe us a single word. We owe you a great deal: an end to minimising and trivialising what you survived, respect for the remarkable courage and humanity you showed, and recognition of the decades you have spent building safer, more supportive spaces simply because it was the right thing to do. We owe you freedom from unwanted intrusion and questions about Last House on the Left, and recognition of your "No comment" as a sacred boundary.

Most of all, Sandra Peabody, we owe you peace.

How can we watch The Last House on the Left ethically today?

We have established that Sandra Peabody was abused in connection with her work on The Last House on the Left. We also now know from Marc Sheffler himself that the fear on Sandra's face in the scene after the cliff threat was real and deliberately caused. Sheffler also tells us that "a lot of what you see from her is real" because Sandra was "scared shitless" by David Hess's approach to Mari's rape scene. Hess himself tells us that he threatened to rape her for real.

At this point it becomes unsustainable to reasonably lump what happened on the Last House shoot in with the stories of "rough shoots" or "gruelling productions" that are fairly common when discussing 1970s cinema – especially independent grindhouse films shot guerilla-style on small budgets. The ethical issues thrown up by this film are in a qualitatively different category, even before you add in Wes Craven's own mining of Sandra's real fear for realism.

This does not mean that Last House on the Left should be banned. My own view is firmly that this would be wrong, and indeed counter-productive. It doesn't even mean that people shouldn't watch it as a film. We can still watch The Birds as a horror landmark even though we know that Alfred Hitchcock abused Tippi Hedren.¹ We can still enjoy The Wizard of Oz as a family classic even though we know that MGM abused Judy Garland.²

But the word "know" is important. Although it has taken many decades from the time of the abuse, it is now well understood and accepted that these women were abused, and this fact is routinely mentioned in any serious study of the films in question. With Last House that is not the case. Indeed, as my look at legacy media and academic writing has shown, it remains rare that Sandra's treatment, as opposed to Mari's, is mentioned at all.

There is worse. While those who watch the film on streaming services will probably and quite reasonably assume that it was made, if not to modern standards, then at least without actual harm, that cannot be said about those who know what is on the current Blu-ray release. Arrow Films made the choice to include Celluloid Crime of the Century, "Scoring Last House", "Junior's Story" and the actors' commentary track.

We therefore have considerable evidence for Sandra's mistreatment available for the price of a disc. When you add in David Szulkin's book – not that hard to find second-hand – there is really no excuse for serious studies or writing about Last House on the Left not to include at least something about what happened behind the scenes. Listicle-style euphemisms like "Peabody found it difficult" are so inadequate as to border on the offensive in themselves.

The film is indeed influential on its genre and for effectively launching Craven's highly significant career as a horror director. It is perfectly reasonable for film schools to study it as such. But it is not reasonable for them to simply skate over or omit entirely the reasons why the film looks as it does, since at times when Sandra is on screen, Mari's disturbingly realistic appearance is intimately connected with her actress's treatment.

So no, we don't need to stop watching Last House on the Left. We do, however, need to watch it honestly, understanding what happened in its making and the serious harm that was caused to a young and vulnerable woman by real-life threats and fear. If we cannot even give Sandra that, then all our protestations about respecting women in film are only so much hot air. We must do better. Sandra Peabody deserves better.

¹ Lang, Brent, "Tippi Hedren on Why She Went Public About Being Sexually Abused by Alfred Hitchcock". Variety (16 November 2016).
² Jha, Subhash K., "Judy Garland, the first abused child superstar". National Herald (28 June 2020).

"But they never actually hurt Sandra"

It is both surprising and disappointing that even now, in the 2020s, you occasionally hear people say that Sandra Peabody's abuse while she was making The Last House on the Left was somehow less severe because it didn't result in broken bones or bloody wounds. This is a fundamentally incorrect and outdated idea of what harm actually is. People can be hurt very badly by invisible wounds, without any physical injury whatever.

Psychological harm is real harm. Emotional harm is real harm.

Being threatened with rape if you "don't behave yourself" is immensely harmful. While we don't know whether Sandra suffered any long-term health effects – and it would be entirely wrong of us to speculate – we can and should say that the risk was there and significant. Even in the 1970s, when the likes of PTSD were little understood outside the military, it did not take a genius to understand how unrealistic it was to expect a woman to simply shrug off a threat of violence once filming had wrapped.¹

Being threatened with being pushed over a cliff and ending up "fucking mangled" is deeply harmful too. As with the rape threat, we don't know and should not speculate as to whether Sandra personally experienced long-term health effects from what she was subjected to. Again, though, we can and should be clear that if the threat was received as credible – which must have been the case for Sandra's fear to be real – the risk was there.

There remains, as far as I can tell, no public apology to Sandra, and that may have had consequences as well. Once again, we do not know what may or may not have been said in private, and that belongs to Sandra and nobody else unless she freely chooses to share it. But today, it is widely accepted that a genuine and meaningful apology can assist in the healing process, often contributing towards validation, restoration of agency, accountability and closure.²

Regardless of what the actual reverberations of Sandra Peabody's abuse may have been, the fact that she showed great courage and resilience in continuing under such duress does not diminish the severity of the harm she endured in connection with her work on Last House. To say she wasn't hurt is highly misleading and diminishing of Sandra's suffering. Being treated so unethically and deliberately frightened in order to bring about a desired reaction was very much harm.

¹ Mental Health Foundation. "The impact of traumatic events on mental health" (undated)
² Amyrotos, Raphael. "The importance of an apology for survivors of abuse" (undated).

The great betrayal – Sandra's ability turned against her

By the time she arrived on the Last House on the Left set, Sandra Peabody had a high quality acting education. Not only had she obtained a BA after studying drama at the highly regarded Carnegie Mellon University, but she had graduated from two years at the Neighborhood Playhouse. There, she had studied under Sanford Meisner, one of the great acting teachers of the twentieth century.

Meisner's technique rejects the older "method" approach of drawing from real-life past events to inform traumatic scenes, as "Sandy" felt that was too dangerous to an actor's wellbeing. Instead, he promoted what he called "living truthfully under imaginary circumstances", in which actors learn to remain emotionally present and responsive so that they can respond to stimuli on an instinctual rather than intellectual level.

When done properly, this results in a highly believable performance – and because the emotions and impulses are authentic, even micro-reactions visible on an actor's face convince. This is extremely important in film acting, where the camera often captures fine details that can be missed or glossed over when looking at a distant performer on a theatre stage.

Because a Meisner actor has to "drop their emotional guard" in order to respond authentically and spontaneously, they deliberately make themselves highly vulnerable. This means that it is absolutely crucial that scene partners maintain absolute trust in each other. The bargain is: "I will allow myself to fall – you will always be there to catch me." A true Meisner actor like Sandra will place the safety of their scene partner above everything else.

The tragedy of Sandra's experience on Last House was that the simulated threats and harm she had prepared for and dropped her defences to respond to were not all she received. On occasion, as with Marc Sheffler's threat to push her off a cliff or David Hess's horrifying threat to rape her for real, the stimuli forced on her were not safe, rehearsed, imaginary dangers but real ones. That the actors did not intend to follow through and actually cause her physical injury is irrelevant: the body responds to imagined threats of harm very similarly to sincere ones. ¹

The combination of a credible threat of serious bodily harm and the emotional vulnerability required of a Meisner actor is a devastating one. It means that when such a threat does arrive, the recipient has no "shield" to protect herself from the worst, no way of telling herself, "It's only make-believe and he probably doesn't mean it." Fear would have been instant and overwhelming. Indeed, both Sheffler and Hess note how frightened Sandra was after their threats. This is not coincidental.

I am not an actor, but I am assured that to someone who genuinely practises that craft in a controlled and safe manner, what those men did to Sandra goes far beyond mere unethical behaviour and into the realm of absolute betrayal. One way I've seen it described is as a kind of vertigo: the actor hearing about what Sandra experienced feels the floor drop out from under them, because the very bedrock of what acting is has been ripped away, leaving only a terrifying void.

Sheffler openly notes in his 2020 statement about the cliff threat that "the fear you see in her face is real". Hess on the commentary track sounds amused when he says he thinks she was so overwhelmed by terror that she could no longer be sure whether the rape scene was simulated or had crossed into real assault. Sandra's elite professional training – a far cry from Hess, who "knew nothing about acting" – was a major asset in actual acting, but left her defenceless when it was weaponised against her.

Sandra's forced and genuine emotional reaction was used in the film you watch on streaming or Blu-ray today. When you watch those scenes, you are not watching controlled acting; you are watching a young woman forced into extreme fear. She allowed herself to fall, but Sheffler and Hess did not catch her, instead pushing her down harder. Even if Sheffler, at least, was not malicious, the result was similar. It was the absolute antithesis of what acting should be about.

That Sandra not only survived this abuse but remained to finish her role and went on to spend so many years working to protect young people, giving them the support she was denied on the Last House set, is a profound illustration of the remarkable courage she showed both while on the shoot and in later years. In her late seventies, Sandra Peabody still passes on ethical, safe Meisner technique the way her great teacher practised it. That is moral heroism.

¹ Segal, Jeanned, PhD, et al. "Stress Symptoms, Signs, and Causes", helpguide.org (undated).

Caught unawares – Arrow's lack of contextualisation

These days, many – probably most – people who watch The Last House on the Left for the first time are likely to do so via a streaming service. This is now easily the most common way to watch films, with the physical media market no longer the mainstream powerhouse it was a decade or two ago. Indeed, many films now go straight from cinema to streaming without a Blu-ray or DVD being released at all.

That is not so much the case with cult movies, however, and Arrow Films currently distributes a Blu-ray, most commonly encountered in the single-disc edition that I own. This is not particularly difficult to find. The Blu-ray is easily found for about £20 on Amazon UK as I type, and HMV sells both the single disc and the three-disc limited edition. The former is even sometimes found in its high street stores.

When I load up the Arrow Blu-ray, the first thing I see after the introductory animation is an unskippable disclaimer screen. In white all caps on a black background, it says: 

"The views expressed are solely those of the individuals providing them and do not reflect the opinions or views of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Arrow Films, and/or their respective affiliates and/or employees."

That's a very common sight even on much less controversial films than Last House on the Left. It's simply a legal shield rather than something that actually tells the viewer about the kind of material they may be in for if they browse through the extras. The older material is labelled "Archival" on both the external box and the on-screen menu.

And... that's it. And this is a problem.

Most people watching 1970s exploitation films will understand and accept that they were often made in ways that would not pass muster today; it would be forty years before intimacy coordinators became standard, for example. But as you know if you've been reading this blog, Last House's ethical concerns are a great deal more serious than that – especially where Sandra Peabody is concerned.

Few people would be surprised on a disc like this if the film itself or an archival documentary included language or views that many people would consider problematic in the mid-2020s. Outdated terms for racial groups, for example, or attitudes towards LGBT people that have largely fallen by the wayside since the Seventies. You can make a case that the brief legal shield and "Archival" wording is enough for those.

But Last House on the Left is not like that, and Sandra is repeatedly the person affected. In Celluloid Crime of the Century, Marc Sheffler tells how he held her over a cliff and threatened to throw her over. In "Scoring Last House", David Hess muses on her emotional collapse as sexual opportunity. In "Krug Conquers England" (available only on the three-disc edition) Hess talks about how he scared Sandra into thinking he might rape her. None carry context notes of any kind.

But all these pale beside the commentary track that features Hess, Sheffler and Fred Lincoln. Not only does this track see Sheffler tell the harshest version of the cliff threat story and Hess show open amusement, not only does Hess gleefully talk about frightening Sandra for four weeks, but as Mari's torture and rape scene plays we are subjected to perhaps the single most abusive anecdote ever commercially published on DVD and now Blu-ray.

This is of course the moment when David Hess talks about threatening to rape Sandra for real as they filmed the rape scene, using explicit and degrading language, and adding to the mix coercion ("if you don't do this right"), an invitation to viewers to watch Sandra's terror ("now watch her face") and the implication that she had been terrified to the point where she could no longer reliably tell whether the simulated attack was still simulated at all.

There are serious questions to be asked about whether it is acceptable to treat this part of the extras in the same way as the use of outdated racial or sexual terms, or now-deprecated comments about imperialism or drink-driving. Hess shows absolutely no remorse when recounting his threat, and neither Sheffler nor Lincoln push back or otherwise challenge him, instead joining in the conversation that follows.

Distributors sometimes defend themselves by saying that they are simply preserving cinematic history as it was, including the ugly parts. This is convincing only at the most superficial level. This is not the same as The Wizard of Oz still being sold as a family classic despite Judy Garland's abuse, because its commentary does not contain one of her co-actors recounting as some kind of achievement how he terrified her.

Besides, Arrow Films is not merely lumping together old material. It is curating it. Not only does it decide which extras get on to the one-disc Blu-ray and which are reserved for the three-disc edition, but it has added new material. "Junior's Story", in which Sheffler reveals how Hess frightened Sandra with his "brutal" treatment of her during Mari's rape scene, was commissioned for the 2018 release of this Blu-ray.

I do not support banning Last House on the Left. I do not even support banning this commentary track. But if it is to remain unedited, then some kind of real warning or context note about what those who choose it are about to encounter should be added. This is only a "slippery slope" if other influential movies have commentary tracks wherein lead actors gleefully recall threatening to rape their co-stars. I suspect there aren't any.

Because of her completely valid decision to stay away from public comment on Last House, the one person whose voice we don't hear in all this is Sandra. That makes it all the more important to respect her when curating these discs. Outtakes and dailies from the cut, highly exploitative forced oral sex scene she "cried a lot" through (Szulkin, p73) are included as bonus features too. But it is Hess's rape threat story that stands alone for its abusiveness.

The full horror of Hess's words is almost never published, not even by reviewers who have heard the track. Many fans will choose to listen to the commentary without any idea that they are about to hear a man admit to – in truth, brag about – what in most jurisdictions today would be a crime. Some people use violent horror as a safe way of coping with trauma. They too could be at risk if they hear Hess's boast of real-life abuse without warning.

So yes, Arrow Films, I do think this specific commentary track is a special – probably unique – case, one that overrides your desire to keep archival material as clean and original as possible. If you can't bring yourself to edit, then at the very least you need a track-specific warning, not merely the general legal shield I quoted above. In the post-#MeToo era, what you do at the moment is simply not good enough.

Do better. Sandra Peabody deserves better.