David Hess died in October 2011. In February of that year, he had given what proved to be one of his final interviews, to the website The Terror Trap. This site specialised (it seems to have been inactive since around 2014) in horror and thriller films from 1925 to 1987, and so The Last House on the Left fell squarely into its remit. Hess's interview is fairly lengthy and, as was normal for this kind of coverage, not especially hard-edged. It is, however, interesting.
Hess talks at considerable length here about many of the people he worked with throughout his career, briefly about music but in far more detail when it comes to his film career. He says Corinne Clery could have been "the love of [his] life" despite being his screen rape victim in Hitch-Hike (1977). He says he's worked with "really good friend" Ruggiero Deodato five times. He shows compassion when discussing a family tragedy Louis Jourdan had suffered just before they worked together on Swamp Thing, the 1982 superhero movie directed by Wes Craven.
When it comes to Last House associates, Hess says Craven was "more professional" on Swamp Thing than he had been a decade earlier. He mentions still being close friends with Jeramie Rain and Marc Sheffler. He calls Lucy Grantham "incredible" and opines that if he and her "got together tomorrow, it would be like there was no time in between". Finally, when asked what this film had that would be nearly impossible to recapture today (ie in 2011), he suggests friendship: "we were all friends so we worked for each other". (Underlining is The Terror Trap's.)
When it comes to Sandra Peabody, however, the tone is very different. First, Hess is asked about his audition and whether any of the other Last House principals had been with him apart from Martin Kove, who had taken him along. Szulkin (p38) tells us that Kove himself had originally been asked to play the role, but felt it too dark and so recommended Hess. On the audition question. Hess is clear:
No. Just us and Sean Cunningham (the producer). And the girl who I scared half to death. (Laughs.)
Both Hess himself and Sandra (p41) give fairly extensive reminiscences about this audition in Szulkin, but neither so much as mentions the other being present. Still, there's no reasonable candidate for "the girl who [he] scared half to death" other than Sandra.
Immediately after the section about Grantham, Hess without prompting goes on to say, "Sandra was a little different. I think she was more… vulnerable. Memory-wise, there's a visceral attraction to Sandra's Mari in the film. Krug does that." Frustratingly, the Terror Trap interviewer does not quiz Hess on what he means by the somewhat confusing second half of that quote. Hess then goes on to suggest that Krug feels "kind of filthy" to attack the innocent Mari, but has "gone too far at this point." At which point Hess adds:
And that’s the way we inter-related, even when we weren’t shooting. Sandra was an innocent and I held my character. She didn’t want to get anywhere near me. [...] She didn’t want any part of me. She thought I was a fucking monster.
After this, the Terror Trap interviewer does ask an interesting question, which prompts an even more interesting answer:
Terror Trap: Was that because she was a really enthusiastic Method actress and she was creating that whole thing? Or was she actually really scared of you?
David Hess: I think she was really scared. She wasn’t what I would call a complete Method actress. I mean, I studied with Sandy Meisner and Stella Adler. I knew what the fuck I was doing. I knew how to maintain that character, even off screen. And for very good reason. I wanted that reaction from her.
There is a lot to unpack here. First: "I think she was really scared", in 2011. This is the same man who in 2008 admitted threatening to rape her. The same man who Fred Lincoln and Wes Craven both noted Sandra as being afraid of in Celluloid Crime of the Century in 2002. The same man who Sandra herself said "I was scared" about in Szulkin (2nd edition 2000) in connection with his knife stalking. Hess, speaking some years later than that, says he thought she was really scared.
Then there's the name-dropping. We've already met Sanford "Sandy" Meisner on this blog, since Sandra spent two years studying under him in the late 1960s. It is... somewhat surprising that a man who also studied with him would not recognise a fellow Meisner-trained professional. It is also... somewhat surprising that a man who studied with him would imagine that Meisner's principle of "living truthfully under imaginary circumstances" could ever include threats of real sexual violence as a legitimate part of an acting toolkit.
Marc Sheffler, speaking for an interview in 2022¹ and a man who knew David Hess well for a number of years, has a very different perspective on Hess's acting background during his Last House days. Sheffler says:
He knew nothing about acting, he was doing what he thought people should do, so he was in character 24/7 the entire shoot.
This creates a conflict. A man who "studied with Sandy Meisner and Stella Adler" cannot be a man who "knew nothing about acting". It's not possible for both Hess and Sheffler to be accurate here. This is one case where the answer seems crystal clear: Sheffler is correct. He was speaking more than a decade after Hess had died, so unfairly denigrating his former associate would have looked gratuitously insulting. Hess, meanwhile, was making the point to the Terror Trap interviewer that he "knew what the fuck [he] was doing".
Except that he didn't.
Finally, consider the warmth Hess shows to so many former colleagues, the genuine concern for Jourdan, the friendship with Deodato, the praise for Grantham. There is one and only one person here who he covers more than incidentally who gets absolutely none of this. No remorse, no regret, no warmth, no compassion. Most actors, forty years on from a difficult film and considering a co-star who has retreated from acting, will at least manage a formulaic "I hope she's happy in her life now" or similar.
Sandra Peabody gets nothing.
1 "Marc Sheffler sits down w/ Hollywood Wade to discuss the infamous Horror film Last house on the Left", Hollywood Wade | Crime & Entertainment, 4 Sep 2022. Timestamp 35:06
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