"Nobody is served by refusing to see that for what it is" – my Letterboxd review of Last House

Although this blog is my main focus when discussing what was done to Sandra Peabody as she worked on The Last House on the Left, it is not the only place I write. I recently posted a review of the film on Letterboxd, and for completeness I shall reproduce it here. I awarded the film the minimum possible star rating of 0.5 out of 5, and I made it very clear why I was doing that. Here is the review in full:

"I rarely rate films based on behind-the-scenes stories, but Last House on the Left is an exception, because the way Sandra Peabody (Mari) was treated by certain colleagues bleeds directly into what you see when watching. Her on-screen fear during Mari's most traumatic sequence is not only largely genuine, it was at least in part deliberately induced. This was due to the frighteningly aggressive way David Hess decided to play Mari's tormentor Krug in that scene, an approach which even in the 1970s could and should have been moderated by Wes Craven.

The above only scratches the surface, as do the slew of listicles and trivia spots that fail to capture the true extent of Peabody's suffering. I strongly advise fans of this film to experience the Blu-ray extras in full – especially those featuring or partially about Hess – as well as David Szulkin's essential (though long out of print) making-of book. That now reads a good deal more disturbingly in places than it likely did when first published in the late 1990s. So it should: "it was another time" is rarely a particularly good excuse for ethical failings.

Last House is therefore not a movie I feel able to assess purely on its story. For what it's worth, though: despite its undeniable influence on the genre it is largely a tonally jarring mess. A mess with the occasional flash of real power, yes, not least in two almost wordless scenes involving water. One of these centres Mari and may well be the most genuinely affecting sequence in the film. It is also one of the few times that the bizarre soundtrack (by Hess) provides genuine enhancement to a scene. The grainy Super 16 picture sometimes serves to make the found-footage feel disturbingly effective but at other times simply looks amateurish.

For all the high-minded talk about Vietnam and depicting unflinching violence as a statement *against* violence, this is at heart an exploitation movie – directed by a man who back then could behave more like his peers than many fans of the later Wes Craven™ prefer to admit. This is visible in a cruel scene involving Krug's gang sexually humiliating their young victims (Phyllis, played by Lucy Grantham, is the other). It was originally filmed much longer and in gratuitous, leering detail. In her only Last House interview, Peabody told Szulkin she cried a lot while acting it.

Last House on the Left being a rape-revenge film, it is no spoiler to say that the final third covers the "revenge" part of proceedings. I'm not the first person to note that this resembles nothing so much as a violent and at times truly absurd precursor to Home Alone. The use of a live chainsaw, several years before Tobe Hooper had the same stupid idea, offered extra danger to those on set for very little extra on-screen impact. The ending, meanwhile, is a great deal less profound than it seems to think it is.

But the effect on Peabody especially outweighs everything else. It is to Wes Craven's discredit that he apparently never managed to make the jump from "I wouldn't make a film this way again" to "I shouldn't have done it then either; I'm sorry, Sandra". I would prefer to give this film no rating at all, but Letterboxd's setup means that could seem like I was simply unsure. I am not: the way Last House was made resulted in real and unnecessary distress, often visible on screen, and nobody is served by refusing to see that for what it is."

As you will note, I have avoided mentioning any of the most serious stories Sandra's abuse and mistreatment explicitly. That would have risked turning them into exactly the sort of uncontextualised trivia that I have been trying to avoid for more than fifty posts here. It would also have risked Sandra's dignity for much the same reason. Instead, I have simply provided anyone who is seriously interested with easily accessible and significant ways into the primary sources: the Blu-ray extras and Szulkin's book.

Since Letterboxd is fundamentally a film review platform, I have also included more about the Last House fictional story than I do over here where I assume my readers are familiar with its plot. I acknowledge that the film is not without worth as a film, but I explain that this is outweighed by the harm that Sandra endured in its making. Whether anyone will ever engage with the review on Letterboxd I don't know, but it was important to me to write it.

At the very least, I have added something that is rarely seen in Last House on the Left section on that site: a highly negative review in English that runs to more than a few sentences. You already know, I'm sure, what my motivation was for writing and posting it, but to spell it out once more to centre the person who should be centred here: Sandra Peabody deserves better.

"But Last House on the Left is important"

One reason why there is resistance in some quarters to serious criticism of The Last House on the Left is that the film does, undeniably, have a place in the horror pantheon. It is highly influential, along with several of its contemporaries from the 1970s, perhaps most notably Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

But acknowledged influence should not insulate a film from serious criticism when it deserves it. The aforementioned Texas Chain Saw features a plethora of ethical concerns, and Marilyn Burns' decision largely to lean into those and participate in the film's fandom does not erase them.

These range from filming in extreme heat to repeated unsafe stunts to lesser-known but perhaps even more concerning events. One was the post-production incident when Hooper deceived Burns into attending the editing suite for "a few photos" of her eyes, only to keep her there for hours, resulting in such emotional exhaustion that editor Larry Carroll, who was in attendance, was shocked:

"I think for Tobe, the performance that he wanted, about the only way he knew how to get it out of [Burns] was basically torturing her, and he did. It was horrific."¹

As with Last House, the way the production ethics of TCM get talked about tends to be limited. Noting the dangers of having a live chainsaw on set, or the legendarily harsh 26-hour dinner party shoot, those are often discussed. But the incident described above, or the moment when Gunnar Hansen briefly thought he was the murderous Leatherface, those tend to be skimmed over if mentioned at all.

A lot of fans are far more comfortable in the case of both films when the conversation turns to the movies' influence. Whatever you think of the merits of either, that they were influential on their genre is undeniable. Here, for those fans, we are back in safe territory: Last House, like TCM, is certainly "important" in that sense.

The trouble comes when that importance is used as a kind of get-out card: "Yes, bad things happened on set, and that wasn't okay, but look at what the film gave to the genre!" Given that "what happened on set" in the case of Last House was that Sandra Peabody spent weeks in fear, was driven to start hitchhiking to get away, and was threatened with being pushed off a cliff, including that "but" at the end of the sentence risks implying that Sandra's mistreatment was unfortunate but excusable.

It wasn't. What happened to Sandra was the single most important feature of the making of Last House on the Left. Especially now that we're in the 2020s and should all understand that abuse is not restricted to incidents where one person literally says, "I want to hurt this other person", centring Sandra is not an optional extra. It is fundamental to reckoning with the film in a way that begins to do justice to the woman who was harmed.

A truth that many in the horror world seem not to want to confront is that it is Wes Craven's name and later reputation that has protected Last House for many years. His later existence as a thoughtful, humane man who created films that spoke more profoundly about violence than horror historically had does not change the fact that in the early 1970s he was something very different.

Craven is protected by the air of glamour that surrounds the auteur even today, despite recent years having confronted us with the dark side of men like Alfred Hitchcock and his outright abuse of Tippi Hedren.² Unlike Hitchcock, Craven did not himself abuse his female lead – but if Marc Sheffler's description of the cliff threat is even remotely accurate, the director knew that something was happening with Sandra and yet apparently did not investigate.

Craven is indeed important to horror. But that is not a reason not to look at his first horror feature film with clear eyes. Indeed, it is a reason to do exactly that. As I have already said, a man who "got better" at handling actors must by definition have started out worse. Today, for example, we would consider his decision to allow a situation where Hess "just went at" Sandra during long, locked-off takes of Mari's rape scene to be ethically insupportable.

The Last House on the Left is indeed important to horror too. But, again, that gives us a greater responsibility to examine it critically and honestly, not less of one. Horror fandom is not always good at this: witness how Ruggero Deodato's undeniably innovative Cannibal Holocaust (1980) tends to be criticised often for its on-screen animal killings, but considerably more rarely for very serious concerns surrounding the age and level of informed consent of the indigenous girl who plays the victim of a violent gang rape.

As we have seen on this blog over an extended period, Sandra Peabody was abused in connection with Last House on the Left. We can and should recognise Last House for its influence on horror and for launching Craven's career. But as with the other films I have mentioned, this profound ethical failure must not simply be ignored because of the movie's fame or the identity of its director.

Last House on the Left is indeed important. But that is not a get-out card for those who would really prefer not to talk about its production ethics – because what happened to Sandra Peabody in its making is more important.

¹ Hansen, Gunnar. Chain Saw Confidential: How We Made the World's Most Notorious Horror Film (2013). p128.
² Specktor, Matthew. "The Baffling Cruelty of Alfred Hitchcock". The Atlantic (9 November 2023).

"I wonder how damaging being in this movie was for her" – the Surgeons of Horror podcast

Surgeons of Horror is a long-running blog which advertises itself as "dissecting horror films". One of its earliest posts – in fact only the second, made in May 2016 – is about Last House on the Left. The post itself does not say all that much beyond the obvious, but at the end are links to a podcast. The ones there are now dead, but the episode remains available on Spotify.

As might perhaps be expected of a recording from so early in a series' life and so long ago – notably, before #MeToo took root – the episode has at times very poor sound quality, which makes it difficult to reliably pick out who of the three participants (Paul Farrell, Ben Skinner and Miles Davies) is speaking. As such, I will not identify individual speakers here; apologies to the personnel in question.

The episode lasts 79 minutes and ranges widely, covering subjects as different as VHS video cover designs and how censors can sometimes be more lenient with non-sexual violence than with consensual sex. However, here I shall concentrate on what they say about Sandra Peabody's experience.

This is not Road to Nowhere – the word "abuse" is never uttered and that podcast's strong moral tone in terms of Sandra's treatment is largely absent. However, nor are the Surgeons of Horror team members purely celebratory. After a while, they go through the movie's plot points in roughly chronological order, and when they get to the forced oral sex scene one says:

"It is kind of quite gratuitous in the way it's handled. Sandra [...] was actually genuinely quite scared and there's a bit where Lucy who plays Phyllis [...] is talking her through it saying, "It's okay, there's no one else around here." All of that was actually improvised [...] Which makes you kind of really start to think it was quite a harrowing thing going on. "

This reference to Lucy Grantham's compassionate response to Sandra's distress is quite often mentioned, but it's unusual to see it specifically noted as suggesting that the scene was "harrowing" for Sandra, despite this being a matter of record thanks to her telling Szulkin (p73) that she found this part of the movie very upsetting to film.

Very shortly afterwards, the podcasters note the looseness of the script and the level of improvisation, pointing out how much a situation like this requires actors to trust their director:

"Wes [Craven] is [...] not the skilled director that he went on to become, and [...] just allowing the actors to improvise [and if you do that] it can easily swing in the wrong direction. [...] I'm sure [Sandra] was just like, just praying he would call cut [...] at any point."

Since the improvisational nature of the script is quite often framed positively by horror writers, this is a notably empathetic reading, and one which recognises the power imbalance present on set. It should however be emphasised that Sandra herself has never confirmed or denied that she was "praying [Craven] would call cut".

A little later, we reach the scene where Mari is attempting to get Junior to release her, which thanks to Marc Sheffler's repeated stories we know was when the cliff threat occurred. The speaker says:

"When you learn this stuff, I'm seriously watching this thinking, 'Uh, what's going on here?'"

As often in shows that run through the chronology quickly, however, there's no dwelling on something has clearly disconcerted the podcaster. We soon arrive at Mari's rape scene, and given its pivotal nature unsurprisingly this gets attention from the Surgeons of Horror team:

"David Hess even said that [...] he could sense that she was really, really genuinely scared in that moment, you know, and it's not, she's not acting by that point. Hmm. She was really, really scared"

This is a sanitised version of the various things Hess actually said about Sandra in that scene, perhaps sourced from a listicle, though I don't know for sure. There's then a brief comment about Krug's drooling, though the coverage doesn't go into its real-life effects on Sandra beyond noting that "the act alone is invasive" and acknowledging that it makes the effect more shocking.

After the chronological run through the fictional story has ended, the podcasters discuss the characters, beginning with Mari. Unusually, they cover her role in Teenage Hitchhikers before moving on to Last House itself. Sandra's fear is again mentioned:

"Sandra was scared [...] of the guys in the movie, the three [villains] and actually, she actually walked off set before they were ready to shoot, only to be persuaded to come back."

There then follows the common and depressingly minimising description of Hess's behaviour as "a bit method", but then we get a more interesting and insightful comment from the same speaker:

"[Sandra] was really intimidated by [Hess] in particular [and] when you kind of watch this stuff and read about it, you just start to question the logic behind it."

It's not often you get a podcaster – other, of course, than Jara on Road to Nowhere – who openly questions whether this approach was acceptable. After a brief diversion, he goes on to say that, although his own approach to acting and directing has generally been aligned with letting the actors "roll with it":

"you kind of are a bit awakened to the impact that that could necessarily have [and] I wonder how damaging being in this movie was for her [Sandra]. I mean, [she] has never spoken on any of the commentary stuff and come out and spoken about the impact it's had on her."

Sandra has of course spoken to Szulkin, whose book is mentioned in another context elsewhere in the podcast, but it is certainly true that she's never spoken on camera or tape about Last House on the Left. This last extract is considerably more thoughtful than a lot of informal (and even formal) media coverage of this film in terms of considering the human impact of the way it was made. Most of all, it centres Sandra.

Sadly, once again there's no pause for a more detailed examination of this point – Road to Nowhere really does stand out in this regard – and the rest of the podcast is a fairly straightforward mixture of analysis and silly humour.

In 2022, Surgeons of Horror like many other sources noted the 50th anniversary of the film's release with a retrospective post. The piece by Saul Muerte runs to nearly 600 words, but despite #MeToo by then having had considerable effect on discourse elsewhere, there's almost no coverage of the ethics of Last House's production. All we get is this oblique sentence:

"It should also be noted that some scenes were questionably pushed beyond the limits of decency; a sign of creative freedom at the risk of the players involved."

It's jarring to see a piece include a mention of "risk of the players involved" but then move immediately on to the link between the names of Krug and Freddy Krueger. Given that the podcast at least considered Sandra Peabody's experience on set, if sometimes frustratingly superficially, the lack of any further comment in a relatively lengthy blog post feels like a missed opportunity.

"You start to wonder how much you can protest violence when you're making a living from it" – Last House, Vietnam and real-world harm

The Vietnam War often comes up in discussions of The Last House on the Left, and indeed it was very much in the minds of many people in early-1970s America. There was, as Wes Craven notes in Szulkin (p15) a feeling both that the most powerful footage available was in what was coming out of South East Asia and that the full horrors of the situation were being concealed. As Craven goes on to say:

"There was a great amount of feeling that 'It's time we showed things they way they really are.' In Last House we set out to show violence the way we thought it really was, and to show the dark underbelly of the Hollywood genre film."

Szulkin notes in editorial text that the era saw films appearing with levels of graphic violence that had not been seen previously, such as 1971's A Clockwork Orange and Straw Dogs – both of which, like Last House on the Left, received particular criticism for their brutal depictions of sexual violence.

As Szulkin also tells us, the original script for Night of Vengeance contained several direct references to Vietnam – including Krug strongly implying to Mari that Weasel learned how to torture while out there. It wasn't only fiction which was affected by the war: Marc Sheffler, in his early twenties at the time, was of an age where, subject to deferments, the draft lottery might have chosen him to fight.

Contrary to some more recent assertions in horror and wider film media, Craven says (Szulkin, p16) that he does not regret making Last House – but he does acknowledge that a film like that can have real-world effects:

"I think if you spend too long working in that area, you brutalize your soul [...] You start to wonder how much you can protest violence when you're making a living from it."

This tension between the insistence that there are high-minded ideals behind the film's creation and the harsher realities of its actual production also surfaces when producer Sean Cunningham tells Szulkin (p33) that:

"[Wes Craven and I] thought it might be worth doing as a way to turn violence around on itself make people re-evaluate that which they call entertainment."

Szulkin's immediately following editorial drily observes that, "[r]egardless of this lofty rationale", there really isn't any avoiding the fact that Last House on the Left was planned as an exploitation movie first and foremost, violence and shock value being what its financial backers wanted. As I've noted, at least some of the genre's norms survived into production, with significant implications for Sandra Peabody especially.

The real problem here is that Last House only succeeded – to whatever extent you think that it did – in critiquing real-world violence by perpetrating (even if unintentionally) harm of its own. While no actor was actually shot or disemboweled, Craven's apparent belief – again, common in 1970s exploitation but disturbing in retrospect – that only physical danger was a show-stopping problem left the door open for much else.

In Sandra's case, her sometimes extreme fear was at least sometimes mined as a resource by Craven, such as in the torture/rape sequence. The director acknowledges on his commentary track that Sandra was "scared to death", but asserts that this made for "a scene that was absolutely convincing". ¹ The harm caused by letting that fear play out was often little considered in 1970s exploitation cinema.

Sandra was of course threatened with physical violence – Sheffler telling her he'd throw her over a cliff if she didn't improve and Hess's claimed threat of rape. Even though there is no evidence that any of these threats were made with intent to follow through, psychological and emotional damage are now firmly established as real and significant harms, even if the specific question of whether they qualify as violence is still debated.

However, one thing seems clear. You can have all the fine-sounding soundbites in the world about how you wish to make a statement against violence by confronting audiences with what it truly means. But if in the course of illustrating your intention – in this case by making Last House on the Left – one of your cast is herself harmed, then you have fundamentally undermined the argument you claim you wish to make.

The acknowledged facts of Sandra Peabody's real-life suffering on set include being subjected to extreme fear, threatened with physical harm and experiencing misery when acting certain scenes. These severely compromise whatever power Last House may have had to lay claim to a truly progressive justification for its harsh cinéma vérité approach and unflinching representation of violence.

¹ Commentary track featuring director Wes Craven and producer Sean S. Cunningham, available on multiple DVD and Blu-ray releases of The Last House on the Left.

No questions asked – how keeping things cosy has failed Sandra

Something that's become increasingly apparent as I've looked into Sandra Peabody's treatment while making The Last House on the Left is how little this issue has been seriously interrogated in the last half-century. While there have been interviews with cast members and of course David Szulkin's very important making-of book, for the most part they've been essentially celebratory.

What we haven't seen, beyond the Road to Nowhere podcast, the very occasional mention in an academic paper or the scattergun approach of various listicles, is coverage that spends more than moments turning an openly critical eye on the production itself. Once you come to the conclusion that Sandra Peabody was abused, not merely that she "had a hard time on the movie" or similar euphemisms, this becomes an increasingly glaring absence.

One reason is of course Sandra's decision to prefer peace and privacy and her work in other fields to leaning into her fame as "the woman who was Mari". If she had chosen to exploit this fame – or notoriety – there might have been more attention paid to her. But given her weeks of fear and intimidation, doing this could well have proved deeply damaging. Sandra's decision to stay away must be respected absolutely.

Members of the Last House team have often guested at horror conventions and similar events. However, these are designed as celebratory affairs. Any questions towards invited guests that seriously challenge them are generally deeply unwelcome – moderation at Q&A sessions almost always weeds these out before they can even be asked. This avoids embarrassment for the stars who have been invited, and for the events which have often paid them substantial appearance fees.

We can see an example of this in the case of Fangoria's 2009 Weekend of Horrors, as reported by The Bedlam Files at the time. David Hess, Marc Sheffler and Fred Lincoln attended a special Last House on the Left panel, along with Szulkin. The panel was described as "pretty raucous", which itself suggests there was very little opportunity for serious, reflective discussion of the ethical dimension to the film's production.

According to the Bedlam Files reporter, Sheffler told the cliff threat story at the panel. There is no suggestion that anyone challenged him on whether this kind of threat was acceptable. Nor indeed does our correspondent give any impression that Hess was asked about his open admission that he threatened rape against Sandra, something which had appeared in Vanity Fair the previous year.

We see the same thing in online interviews. The 2018 Without Your Head and the 2022 Hollywood Wade pieces last over an hour apiece, and in both of them Sheffler is asked about the cliff threat. ¹, ² In both cases he provides a version, but in neither case is he confronted with serious questions about it. By the time these interviews were published, questions of consent and safety in historic film-making were becoming prominent, making their absence more striking here.

While I don't know what those two hosts specifically may or may not have agreed with Sheffler beforehand, some interviewers will worry that if they get too harsh, their subject will pull out or that they may lose their "access to the stars" altogether. Given the way modern online media works, there can be a genuine fear that even a short period without such big-name guests might hole the show below the waterline.

Despite this, when there evidence of serious mistreatment of a member of the cast, as there is in Sandra's case, taking such a gentle line risks airbrushing the reality that she lived. The story of a woman threatened with being thrown off a cliff can be softened into lore or even jokey trivia. The question of Wes Craven's ethical responsibility is skimmed over. The fact that one of Sheffler's Last House co-stars claimed to have threatened rape gets omitted completely.

There is indeed a balance to be struck. We see this on the Arrow Blu-ray, where "Junior's Story" allows Sheffler to speak without an interviewer's voice being heard at all. The result is very revealing even though the cliff threat is not even hinted at. However, the word is balance. When, as with Sandra's experience, there is a near-total absence of serious questioning in virtually every source, that is not balance at all. That is whitewashing.

¹ "Marc Sheffler of Wes Craven's Last House on the Left interview". Without Your Head, YouTube, 4 Apr 2018.
² "Marc Sheffler sits down w/ Hollywood Wade to discuss the infamous Horror film Last house on the Left", Hollywood Wade | Crime & Entertainment, YouTube, 4 Sep 2022.

"She was not into any of that stuff" – Sandra as odd woman out

Sandra Peabody's Last House on the Left experience included abuse and mistreatment, with even director Wes Craven later acknowledging that the production "put her through hell". One of the factors sometimes mentioned as having contributed to her broader unhappy experience was her isolation from the rest of the cast – not in terms of being deliberately kept apart, but more in terms of personality.

David Szulkin's book, Wes Craven's Last House on the Left: The Making of a Cult Classic, provides some vivid examples of this – and, as so often, we find passages that are perhaps more revealing now than they appeared to readers when the book was new more than a quarter of a century ago.

We have of course covered Mari's rape scene extensively on this blog, and we should always remember and respect Sandra's absolute refusal to talk about it: although there is the "My God... I had the feeling they really hated me" that Wes Craven reported she had said after the scene had been filmed, Sandra's only direct quote – anywhere – is simply "No comment". This stands apart from how anyone else has spoken about the scene.

A striking piece of editorial text by Szulkin comes on p45, very near the start of the chapter "Babes in the Woods: A Crash Course in Guerilla Film Making", which covers the filming of the movie. He says:

"Despite the demanding nature of the project and its often gruesome subject matter, most of the cast report having fun on the set."

At first sight, that reads as a reassuring note that the actors generally enjoyed making even this harsh story. At another glance, however, that "most" really stands out. When you realise that the person who was held over a cliff, the person whose fear was deliberately not calmed by her director, the person who was terrified by the rape scene and the person who walked off the set were all one and the same – Sandra Peabody – the word takes on a much darker and more troubling appearance.

Sandra has been described by several members of the Last House team in terms such as "sweet", and her fellow victim-actress Lucy Grantham says (p42) that they were very different, with Sandra being "ladylike and shy" as opposed to Grantham's rebellious personality. On p51 Grantham says:

"We were living, for the most part, in Sean's house [...] There was a lot of partying and a lot of fun."

This is backed up in the actors' commentary track. While I'm not here going to give what seem like gratuitous specifics about people's private lives, it's clear that at times the partying and fun went considerably beyond simple socialising.¹ This is nothing especially shocking for the 1970s, but it does add to the picture of a production where many personnel played hard as well as worked hard.

We don't know exactly what Sandra's own arrangements were, although she does mention (p50) travelling by train from New York to Westport at least once, presumably via the still-operational New Haven Line. However, her comment (also p50) that Hess "would come after us" (plural) "with a knife at night" shows that she can't simply have travelled home every evening of the shoot.

Steve Dwork provides an example of Sandra's attitude to Last House's material not being the same as most of her colleagues' on pp53–54 of Szulkin:

"Nobody was politically correct about [the violence]. Even with some of the sexual scenes, I don't think anybody on the set was really put off, except Sandra, who was involved in doing it. She was not into any of that stuff, professionally or otherwise—"

Here I'll pause to comment on that apparently odd "or otherwise". There are several ways it could be interpreted, but those would simply be speculation, so let's continue with Dwork's quote:

"—which was an understandable reaction on her part... I mean, if I was being stripped naked and slashed about with fifteen strangers standing around watching, I don't think I would deal with it too well!"

Fifteen is probably intended as exaggeration for effect; Craven and Sean Cunningham, on their own commentary track, come to the conclusion that even ten would likely be on the high side.²

More significantly, Dwork singles out Sandra as the only person who was "put off" by the sexual scenes – which in her case involved not only the forced lesbianism scene which made her cry, but also playing Krug's victim in a rape scene which Anne Paul described as "really graphic, bloody, nasty, horrible" and which Yvonne Hannemann described as "really quite upsetting" and "very rough".

Since Phyllis's earlier rape was off-screen, Sandra Peabody is the only person who had to portray a rape victim in real time – in a scene that as filmed was, as Marc Sheffler makes clear, both longer and harsher than the edited version we see in the final movie. She is the only person among the core cast who has never spoken on camera about the film. She is the only person who is explicitly noted as being "ladylike and shy".

Sandra is also the only person who we know was threatened with physical injury; and the only person who David Hess repeatedly and publicly talked about in sexualised, humiliating and sometimes violent ways. Not a single one of those stories was challenged or even contextualised in the same material, either at the time or on the Arrow Blu-ray release.

Of all the people who worked on Last House on the Left, Sandra Peabody stands out, not merely for her feelings about the material but for the fact that over half a century on she has still not been granted the public recognition and apology she should long ago have received for what she went through. As I say so often, because it is the truth: Sandra Peabody deserves better.

¹ Commentary track featuring actors David Hess, Marc Sheffler and Fred Lincoln, available on multiple DVD and Blu-ray releases of The Last House on the Left.
² Commentary track featuring director Wes Craven and producer Sean S. Cunningham, available on multiple DVD and Blu-ray releases of The Last House on the Left.

For Sandra at Christmas

My heartfelt wish for Sandra Peabody, this Christmas and always, is that she has the peace, compassion, dignity and safety she deserves in her life.

Sorry seems to be the hardest word

By now we've firmly established that Sandra Peabody endured treatment in connection with her Last House on the Left role that was far beyond what an actress should expect while making a movie. She was psychologically and emotionally abused by certain others to an extent that was often not considered acceptable even by the lax standards of 1970s film-making, let alone today's more humane sets.

Marc Sheffler, who has spoken more than most of the surviving Last House veterans on the record over the last few years, said in his 2022 YouTube interview with Hollywood Wade that:

"[Sandra] was a sweet person [...] she was a particularly nice person [...] A sweet, kind, harmless girl"¹

Sheffler also shows empathy for her in his "Junior's Story" interview, saying that he doesn't blame her for being extremely frightened when David Hess "just went at her" during the filming of Mari's rape scene.

The Last House makeup artist, Anne Paul, described Sandra in her "Blood and Guts" interview as:

"A sweet girl. Young and sweet. A little skittish, you know? Who wouldn't be?"

Fred Lincoln, among others, mentions Sandra leaving the set and that sometimes "she was scared to death". Sheffler, corroborating this in his 2018 Without Your Head interview, says that Lincoln was sent to persuade her back, since he already knew her.²

Meanwhile, Wes Craven called Sandra "plucky" and said he "liked [her] a lot" when discussing her having "hung in there" despite being treated "very roughly" during the aforementioned rape scene (Szulkin, p79). He also praised Sandra in It's Only a Movie, saying:

"Sandra Peabody did a great job. She really put herself out there and she was a very sweet girl who was not some worldly wise [laughs] you know, uh, starlet, and we put her through hell."

As we can see, there is no real shortage of people willing to go on the record and express the opinion that Sandra was a nice person, that she was frightened, or that she endured sometimes very rough treatment. Sheffler himself is open about his holding her over a drop and threatening to let her go as a way to extract the desired performance.

What there is a shortage of – in fact, to the best of my knowledge, a total absence of – is anyone who was directly involved in the production of The Last House on the Left actually saying sorry or even expressing regret at what Sandra went through. We don't of course know what might have been said to her in private, but in public? I've found absolutely no sign.

Sheffler comes the closest, validating her fear of Hess in "Junior's Story" for example and telling Without Your Head that "anybody would be scared" at being held partly over a cliff. But in well over 20 years from the David Szulkin book's publication, he never seems to have taken the next step. Nor have I found any other member of cast or crew doing that, nor being prompted to by either professional or horror fandom interviewers.

It wouldn't even be necessary for such a person to admit to deliberate wrong-doing. A simple, public statement, in an interview or online, saying something like "I'm sorry that Sandra was so frightened" or acknowledging that they were inexperienced and made mistakes that caused Sandra distress would be significant in its own right. It could also be said without infringing her privacy.

Extraordinarily, the person who came the closest to expressing outright regret about Sandra's treatment was David Hess. At the end of his otherwise appallingly abusive commentary track story about the rape scene, he says:

"It's terrible the way we manipulated Sandra, it's just so… but she asked to be manipulated, buddy. She did!"³

The initial expression of apparent remorse is rendered worthless almost immediately by victim-blaming – but even this momentary recognition of Sandra's treatment is more than anyone else seems to have managed in decades.

I don't know why it has apparently never happened. Film-making and societal attitudes in general have shifted so far in half a century, especially in the last decade or two, that it is surely unlikely that loyalty to fellow Last House team members would still outweigh the simple compassionate humanity of openly regretting their colleague's fear and distress.

And time is running out. Hess himself died in 2011. Fred Lincoln died in 2013. Wes Craven died in 2015. Sean Cunningham is in his eighties. Even the youngest personnel who worked on the movie are now well into their seventies. The opportunity for one of them to go on the record will not be there forever. Sheffler, for example, an articulate interviewee who has repeatedly told the cliff threat story. 

Expressing apology or even simple regret, acknowledging that Sandra Peabody deserved better, would not wave a magic wand and remove the abuse she suffered in connection with her role as Mari on Last House on the Left. It would, however, be meaningful, and it would address what is by this point an increasingly sad and striking absence.

¹ "Marc Sheffler sits down w/ Hollywood Wade to discuss the infamous Horror film Last house on the Left", Hollywood Wade | Crime & Entertainment, YouTube, 4 Sep 2022. Timestamp 36:21
² "Marc Sheffler of Wes Craven's Last House on the Left interview". withoutyourhead, 4 Apr 2018. Timestamp 28:55
³ Commentary track featuring actors David Hess, Marc Sheffler and Fred Lincoln, available on multiple DVD and Blu-ray releases of The Last House on the Left.

Psychological torturer or serial fantasist? The David Hess problem

When it comes to significant incidents involving Sandra Peabody and The Last House on the Left, most are corroborated from multiple sources, as I noted the other day. There are only a few exceptions to this. One is the story about David Hess's night-time knife stalking, which comes from Sandra herself, while Fred Lincoln's comment implying that Sandra and Lucy Grantham were transported bound in a car trunk seems almost certain to have been an off-colour joke.

Sandra's intense fear of David Hess in particular is corroborated. The rape scene being rough and distressing is corroborated. Hess remaining in character outside filming periods is corroborated. Sandra's deep upset at the forced lesbianism scenes is corroborated. Sandra leaving the set is corroborated. Marc Sheffler holding Sandra over a cliff and threatening to throw her over it is corroborated.

There is however one major class of incidents for which we only have a single person's word: the stories of sexualised intimidation and threats from Hess, for which again and again the only direct source is David Hess himself. To list these:

• Direct rape threat admission one, in Vanity Fair
• Direct rape threat admission two, on the commentary track
• Presenting the emotionally shattered Sandra as a sexual opportunity, in "Scoring Last House"
• Asking "Can I?" and causing Sandra to "freak", in Celluloid Crime of the Century
• Admitting scaring Sandra leading her to "probably" fear rape, in "Krug Conquers England"

We have no direct corroboration for any of these stories. Even in the commentary track example, where Lincoln and Sheffler are present, those two never challenge nor even comment on the threat itself. They follow up with a variety of jokes and observations about the scene in question, but they never directly address the threat that Hess has just related in a way that is both highly explicit and demeaning to Sandra.¹

It's very noticeable that all the stories listed have something to do with the filming of Mari's rape scene – a scene that we know was very rough and frightening for Sandra. In all but the Vanity Fair version of the rape threat story, Hess mentions removing Sandra's pants. In both the rape threat stories he ties coercion to the threat: "...if you don't behave yourself" in one, "...if you don't do this right" in the other.

Hess states on the commentary track that he "had so much fun with Sandra", holding character with her for four weeks and pushing her to the point of "run[ning] away". If he is telling the truth about his threats of rape, and if he did indeed keep up this level of intimidation and threat through multiple incidents, then what is already very severe abuse would escalate to the level where it could fairly be described as psychological torture.

Given the moral weight of that term, we should ask ourselves whether at least some of those incidents may actually be the same incident, just told in different ways for different audiences. A detail that suggests this might be the case is this: if Hess had ripped Sandra's pants off on four separate occasions, it might well still have been frightening but it would not have had the shock value that Hess's storytelling implies it does. We know pants removal in itself happened at least once, as it's in the filmed scene.

If Hess threatened Sandra with rape even once in a way that she found credible, then that is extreme abuse in and of itself. Indeed, all the examples in the list above are abusive in that they treat Sandra as a dehumanised object for Hess to manipulate by causing her genuine, sexualised, non-acted fear. There is no circumstance in which behaving like that is a legitimate acting technique, Method or otherwise.

We can guess that at least some of the disturbing stories Hess tells may be at least partly true, using circumstantial evidence such as his absolute refusal to display compassion or regret to Sandra even in the last year of his life. We can also consider the fact that abusers frequently frame stories about what they've done to elevate themselves and undermine the survivor.²

But we cannot say that we know, because we have no evidence from anyone else. All we know for sure is that Hess repeatedly told these stories, on two occasions going so far as to represent himself as a man who threatened a young actress with rape and treating that as an artistic achievement. That in itself is reputationally and emotionally abusive, injurious to Sandra's dignity, and highly dangerous in that it risks normalising such behaviour.

Sandra Peabody had no control over the content of these stories, no realistic way to stop Hess representing her bodily autonomy as being something under his control, and no way to respond without compromising the peace and privacy she has chosen for so many years. So perhaps the fairest conclusion we can draw is that David Hess bragged about what, if true, we could reasonably call psychological torture. That is damning in itself.

¹ Commentary track featuring actors David Hess, Marc Sheffler and Fred Lincoln, available on multiple DVD and Blu-ray releases of The Last House on the Left.
² Flannery, Shelley. "Whan an Abuser Controls the Story". domesticshelters.org (17 June 2020).

10 Listicles That Mention Sandra's Last House Experience – How Do They Fare?

Now that I've come to the conclusion that Sandra Peabody was abused, in psychological and emotional terms, in connection with her work on The Last House on the Left, it's time to turn to a form of online media which occasionally uses that very word: the listicle. A listicle is an online article which is essentially a list, usually with a title along the lines of "7 Ways Last House Changed Cinema".

Let's have a look at some popular listicles about the film and see how well their claims stand up.

WhatCulture: 10 Horror Movie Scenes More Real Than You Think (Josh Brown, 2021)

• "[F]ew people involved in the production actually had any fun making it" – false; Szulkin (p45) says "Most of the cast recall having a good time on the set."
• "[David Hess and Marc Sheffler] boasted about their treatment of Peabody, explaining how they really threatened her before shooting, with Hess allegedly threatening to sexually assault her for real while shooting the rape scenes while Sheffler threatened to kill her if she didn't give a convincing performance after a bunch of failed takes." – reasonably accurate, except that Sheffler doesn't boast in the same way as Hess and never threatened to kill Sandra; the harshest he got was "you'll be fucking mangled".

WhatCulture [again]: 10 Horror Movie Scenes That Genuinely Terrified Actors (James Egan, 2023)

• "[W]hen Sandra Peabody had to shoot her gang-rape scenes" – false; Mari is raped by Krug with other gang members looking on; she is not gang-raped.
• "In the scene in question, Peabody's character is bound, gagged, and violated" – false; by the time Mari is raped, her restraints have been removed.
• "Hess constantly harassed Peabody off-screen, to ensure she looked disgusted in any scene where they shared the screen." – "disgusted" is a very strange choice of word.
• "Hess was so nasty to her, the young actress walked off and tried to quit the production." – true.
• "Peabody [...] refuses to discuss her experience on The Last on the House on the Left [sic] since." – not quite accurate; she spoke to Szulkin in for his 1997/2000 book.

Buzzfeed: Men Getting Away With Alleged Abuse Of Women On Set (Hannah Marder, 2021)

• "According to the documentary Celluloid Crime of the Century and the book Wes Craven's The Last House on the Left, Peabody (who went by the name Sandra Cassel at the time) was horribly mistreated by her male costars." – points for referencing the sources, but it's a real stretch to say the book says she was "horribly mistreated", even though it reads disturbingly in places now.
• "Marc Sheffler admitted to threatening to throw her off a cliff to try to rile her up for a scene (though in 2018 he stated she was not in real danger)" – correct on both counts, though it suggests Sandra not being in danger reduces the severity.
• "David Hess allegedly threatened to actually assault her in a rape scene they were about to film" – apparently a reference to the commentary track, though the inline link leads only to another listicle. "Assault" is a euphemism; the writer shrinks from the word "rape".
• "The documentary doesn't directly say this, but numerous actors and crew members, including Hess himself, talk about how they believe she was scared he might actually hurt her, and how all her reactions were real." – "numerous" is generalising too much, although Sheffler at least suggests it.

Looper: Horror Roles That Really Messed Up The Actors' Heads ("Looper Staff", 2024)

• "As actor Marc Sheffler recalled on the film's home release commentary track" – followed by an accurate, slightly shortened version of the commentary track cliff threat story.
• "David Hess doubled down on the threat approach by saying he'd actually assault her to get a better result from her reaction" – apparently referring to the same commentary track, though as usual omitting Hess's explicit and degrading language.  Again, we see the euphemistic "assault".

Listverse: 10 Horror Films That Were a Nightmare To Make (Lorna Wallace, fact checked by Darci Heikkinen, 2023)

• "Sandra Peabody, who played Mari, feared that the scenes of rape and torture might actually cross over into reality" – we don't know whether Sandra thought this.
• "David A. Hess says that during his rape scene with her" – followed by an accurate, full version of the "Can I?" story.
• "Craven says that Peabody “often wasn’t acting.”" – true.
• "He explains that Hess would stay in character while not shooting, meaning “Sandra really was afraid of him, and probably of Fred [Lincoln] a bit too.”" – true, stated in Celluloid Crime of the Century.
• "Marc Sheffler also threatened Peabody when she was struggling with a scene they had together." – followed by a shortened but accurate version of the cliff threat story.

MovieWeb: Why Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left Is Controversial, Explained (Zoe Dumas, 2023)

• "Last House’s realistic look has left a bad taste in many reviewers’ mouths over the 50 years since its premiere. To some, the approach and subject are exploitative and tasteless." – true, and unusual for such an article to mention.
• "[During Mari's rape scene] the film moves into a closeup of their two faces, Mari’s spirit slowly draining from her eyes." – another rare reference, to Sandra's disturbing "blank look".

The Mary Sue: 7 Scream Queens Who Were Traumatized by the Directors Who Made Them Famous (Dan Van Winkle, 2018)

• "On the movie’s home release commentary, actor Marc Sheffler [...] described threatening Peabody in an attempt to improve her acting abilities – followed by an accurate if slightly shortened transcript of the cliff threat.
• "David Hess—who starred as fellow gang member Krug Stillo—was also in on it, threatening to assault Peabody to get a reaction from her." – the wording here is very reminiscent of the Looper piece mentioned above. As there, "assault" is substituted for "rape".

Screen Rant: 10 Behind-The-Scenes Facts About Wes Craven's Last House On The Left (Jake Dee, 2020)

• "Sandra Peabody had a terrible time making the movie, as she was treated too aggressively by method actors David Hess and the others who constantly harassed and demeaned her throughout filming." – this frames outright mistreatment as "method acting", while "and the others" is vague.
• "Both Lincoln and Peabody refuse to speak about the film publicly." – true of Sandra (bar for Szulkin's book), not true of Lincoln who speaks on camera in Celluloid Crime of the Century and on tape in the actors' commentary track.

Mental Floss: 14 Facts About The Last House on the Left (Eric D Sneider, 2016)

• "Craven [...] first envisioned Last House as a hardcore film" – true (stated by Lincoln in Celluloid Crime of the Century)
• "The film was an uncomfortable and exploitative situation for [Sandra] anyway, but it was made worse when the actors who played her attackers stayed in character as cackling psychopaths throughout the shoot." – broadly true, though there's little "cackling".
• ""She was scared to death of us this entire movie," Lincoln said. "We put her through hell," said Craven." – both true (Celluloid Crime of the Century, It's Only a Movie).
• "Today, when actors from the film are interviewed about it, Cassell is usually conspicuously absent." – always absent, not merely "usually".

Horror News Network: Ten Things You Might Not Know About... Last House on the Left! (William Burns, 2015)

• "According to various cast and crew members, actress Sandra Peabody was genuinely terrified throughout most of the shoot, at one point walking off-set" – true.

Summing up

In general, the listicles do not make that many serious factual errors. However, what's most apparent is that the same stories come up again and again. Marc Sheffler's cliff threat, David Hess's threat of rape (often euphemised to "assault") and Hess and others staying in character and frightening Sandra.

It's rare for any listicle to break from the pack and list something truly different. The second WhatCulture piece and that by MovieWeb are notable exceptions, the first noting Sandra's set walk-off and the second mentioning both the film's arguably exploitative nature and Sandra's strikingly disturbing expression in the rape scene close-up.

If you've read this blog throughout, you'll note the complete absence in these ten listicles of, among others, Hess's knife stalking, the same man's music featurette comment, Craven's use of Sandra's fear, the cut forced oral sex scene, Lincoln's trunk joke and Sandra's walk-out from the pre-release screening.

And this is the problem. The same anecdotes get endlessly recycled and flattened, so that we reach the frankly absurd position where a man threatening to throw an actress off a cliff is treated as just one item of trivia among many, sometimes treated as if it were all of a piece with the movie's low budget or Hess acting alongside a live chainsaw.

Once again, the full gravity of what Sandra endured while making Last House on the Left is not made clear. Once again, her suffering is widely framed as "Did you know?" lore rather than a serious ethical failure resulting in harm to a real person. Once again, Sandra's own voice (via Szulkin) is barely present.

Once again, Sandra Peabody deserves better.

Is the evidence sufficient to conclude that Sandra Peabody was abused?

Over the last 40 or so posts, we've looked at a number of pieces of evidence concerning the way Sandra Peabody was treated in connection with her starring role as Mari in The Last House on the Left. It's time now to take stock and see what we can reasonably conclude from it.

For this post specifically, I have set three criteria, and I will only admit evidence to the dossier here if it meets at least one of them:

1. Mentioned by Sandra personally.
2. Mentioned by at least two separate people. 
3. Obvious by simple examination.

Keeping these requirements in mind, we can say that:

Sandra was frightened on set, of David Hess in particular. Meets criteria 1 and 2. Sources:

1. Sandra herself to a limited degree ("I was scared" regarding the knife stalking).
2. Wes Craven ("David was quite scary, especially to Sandra.")
3. Fred Lincoln ("I knew her for [...] years, and she was afraid of me!")
4. Marc Sheffler ("She was frightened of Hess to the core of her existence.") 
5. David Hess ("I think she was really scared [...] I wanted that reaction from her.")

Sandra's genuine fear is visible at times in the film itself. Meets criterion 2. Sources: 

1. Lincoln ("What you're seeing in her face is real fear.")
2. Sheffler ("The fear on her face [...] was real.")

Hess remained in character as Krug even outside filming itself. Meets criterion 2. Sources:

1. Craven ("[Hess] wasn't a nice guy between takes or anything like that.")
2. Sheffler ("Twenty-four hours a day, all Krug, all the time.")
3. Yvonne Hannemann ("[The actors] stayed in those characters for a few weeks!")
4. Hess ("I held character with her for four weeks.")

Hess was physically intimidating off-set. Meets criterion 1. Source:

1. Sandra herself ("he was trying to live his part... He'd come after us with a knife at night, trying to freak us out.")

Mari's rape scene was very rough and distressed Sandra. Meets criteria 1 (indirectly) and 2. Sources:

1. Sandra herself, via Craven ("My God... I had the feeling they really hated me.")
2. Hannemann ("really quite upsetting [...] really got very rough [...] Sandra needed to be consoled.") 
3. Sheffler ("David was... brutal with her. [...] She was scared shitless, and I don't blame her.")
4. Hess ("got pretty physical with her.")

The rape scene was filmed in long, documentarian-style takes with the camera locked off. Meets criterion 2. Sources:

1. Craven ("[I said] we're going to shoot this three times [...] from beginning to end.")
2. Sheffler ("[Craven] pretty much locked off the camera and let it play.")

Sandra was also distressed by the forced lesbianism scene in the woods. Meets criteria 1 and 2. Sources:

1. Sandra herself ("I actually cried a lot [...] it was very upsetting for me to do it.")
2. Craven ("Sandra was scared shitless here.") 

Sandra walked off set during filming in Connecticut, only returning when Lincoln persuaded her to continue. Meets criterion 2. Sources:

1. Lincoln ("She did run away, the night before shooting, I had to go get her!")
2. Sheffler ("[She] was hitchhiking back to New York [...] Sean and Wes sent Freddie to go find her.")

Sandra walked out during a pre-release cast, crew and backers screening. Meets criteria 1 and 2. Sources:

1. Sandra herself ("I was horrified and upset [...] I walked out.")
2. Marshall Anker ("She was very upset by what she was seeing.")

Sheffler held Sandra partly over a cliff or ledge and threatened to push her over to scare her. Meets criterion 2. Sources:

1. Sheffler ("If you don't do this then I'm [...] gonna just push you.")
2. Hess ("Marc, we were all on the rock at the time [...] one of the things you said that I remember [was] 'And the film will keep going!'")

Hess claimed he had threatened to rape Sandra if she did not perform as he wanted. The claim itself meets criterion 3. Source:

1. Hess: ("I'm really going to fuck you if you don't behave yourself.")

As we have only Hess's word for this, we cannot assert within our criteria that he actually made the threats he claims. For similar reasons, Hess's multiple other disturbing comments about Sandra on DVD/Blu-ray extras (music featurette, "Can I?", "Krug Conquers England") do not meet our criteria either.

As such, we can only admit the part which is obvious by simple examination of the Vanity Fair piece and the commentary track: that Hess says without remorse that he did these things. To appropriate a real person's identity for multiple stories of sexualised coercion and humiliation is abusive in itself.

Overall conclusion

Even if we confine ourselves to the above corroborated or obvious incidents, we can fairly conclude, to a reasonable ethical standard, that Sandra Peabody was abused psychologically and emotionally in connection with her work on The Last House on the Left.

I acknowledge that the recollections quoted were made some years after the film was shot, but this is unavoidable as to my knowledge no equivalent testimony exists from the 1970s. It would be most unlikely to in an exploitation-era film context. This is also why I have set the criteria I mentioned.

I am not here imputing malice or a deliberate intent to harm to specific people involved with the movie, but this is not required to reasonably use the term "abuse" in modern ethical frameworks. Nor am I claiming that every individual incident was abusive in and of itself.

This finding once again underlines the very significant courage, resilience and professionalism that Sandra showed in completing the extremely demanding role of Mari despite severe and justified fear and distress.

That since leaving acting she has spent half a century working to support young people – safely – emphasises what a remarkable person Sandra Peabody was and remains.

"We put her through hell" – Wes Craven as exploitation director

Although this blog is primarily concerned with Sandra Peabody, the person who is usually most closely associated with The Last House on the Left is its director, Wes Craven. There's a tendency among film fans and writers to retcon his early 1970s incarnation as being basically the same as the Craven of the Scream days a quarter of a century later.

This is not really accurate.

In It's Only a Movie, the 2002 making-of documentary that originally appeared on Region 1 DVDs while Celluloid Crime of the Century was brought to Region 2, Craven says:

"Sandra Peabody did a great job. She really put herself out there and she was a very sweet girl who was not some worldly wise [laughs] you know, uh, starlet, and we put her through hell." ¹

Craven doesn't say that last bit with any particular relish, but nor does he say it with any obvious regret or remorse. He smiles in that Wes Craven way as he says it, and though his face becomes more serious afterwards we only see that for a moment before the documentary moves to the next interviewee.

Right at the end of the show, Craven says this, which does not bring massive confidence in his ability to make quick, firm and clear decisions:

"I was stoned most of the time; I don't remember! [laughs]"

Again, this is said lightly as a slightly embarrassing recollection of the days when he and his colleagues were – as Sean Cunningham put it in Szulkin (p45) – "kids running around with a camera". However, given what I've covered here in terms of Sandra's treatment on set, Craven's "stoned" instead prompts more serious questions about his oversight of such a difficult and – for its time – extreme movie.

The US federal Occupational Safery and Health Act of 1970 had come into force in April 1971, just a few months before Last House production began, but enforcement on film sets was often weak until the 1982 Twilight Zone tragedy forced a major reassessment of set safety. A director's part in actor welfare was largely informal and verbal.

This was even more the case in exploitation cinema, which often operated on the margins of the law. Guerilla-style shooting without permits was common, and Craven confirms in Celluloid Crime of the Century that this may have unsettled Sandra:

"We had no credentials. [...] we didn't have any permits. I could see very easily that [Sandra] would be afraid that suddenly this is just going to take a turn – I don't know, It's a snuff film or something. 'What am I doing out here with these people?'" ²

A few listicles and poorly researched articles have suggested that Sandra genuinely believed that she might be in a snuff film, but there is no evidence for this. Craven's tone is jokey, although mentioned only a short time after he'd discussed her genuine fear of David Hess in particular.

What Craven does not discuss is how frightened Sandra was of Hess during Mari's rape scene specifically, a scene which multiple people from Marc Sheffler to Yvonne Hannemann to Craven himself have acknowledged as being very difficult for her. On his commentary track Craven notes more generally that she was "scared to death" and shortly afterwards says:

"To me, it still is one of the most realistic rape scenes I've seen because it's totally ugly and the guy looks like a total animal, and the woman is just in that place where she can do nothing about what's being done to her, and [...] she'll never be the same, and yet she somehow has more dignity than he'll ever have in the rest of his life, and it's very powerful." ³

While Craven does not explicitly link Sandra's fear and this scene, in 2017 Sheffler did just that – vividly and revealingly. His words imply that it was because of Craven's decision to lock off the camera for long takes that Hess was enabled to take the very aggressive approach he did; as Sheffler put it, "he just went at her" and severely scared Sandra.

There's also the forced lesbianism scene, which Sandra said in Szulkin (p73) was "very upsetting for [her] to do". As we have also seen, this was much longer and more explicit before cutting, and a scene where at least one of the most exploitative segments took a double-figure take count. We don't know why it required so many takes, but these were not done in a closed studio but in an unpermitted, largely unsecured outdoor setting.

There is no suggestion that Craven perpetrated any abuse himself, or that he approved of what Hess says he did. There is nevertheless strong evidence from multiple sources – including the director himself – that Sandra was severely frightened on set. There is not strong evidence that Craven chose to do much about it beyond consoling. Sheffler's cliff threat story also suggests a remarkable lack of interest by the director in exactly why his actress was suddenly so much more worked up.

This toleration of, and even use of, genuine fear by an exploitation film director was by no means unique to Last House on the Left. What it does do, however, along with the existence of the extended forced lesbianism scene, is to show that 1971 Wes Craven was not the same director as the Wes Craven™ of several decades later.

He was, rather, an inexperienced exploitation director, and – at least sometimes – he behaved like one. Arguments about the film's place in the horror canon or as a statement against violence make little practical difference if you are Sandra Peabody, "treated very roughly" (Craven's comment to Szulkin on the rape scene) by a man of whom, according to Sheffler you are "frightened to the core of [your] existence".

Steve Dwork, who was a production assistant on Last House, tells Szulkin (p50) in yet another anecdote from that book that reads uncomfortably when considered with a 2020s emotional toolkit:

"Sandra [...] often needed to be consoled or encouraged by Wes. [...] During some of the more demanding scenes in the woods, Wes spent a good deal of time with her, basically telling her, 'This is for God and country; you've got to do this.'"

This sounds more like coercion than partnership, and again it feels more like an exploitation director's approach than that of the later "Master of Horror" Craven. People will often insist that "he got better", and that is true – but that rather avoids the point about where he got better from. His expert handling of actors by 2001 was of little relevance to Sandra in 1971.

Craven was still alive and active when Hess's admissions (boasts, really) of extreme psychological and emotional abuse were published in the 2000s. Indeed, he was interviewed for the very same Vanity Fair piece. By this time Craven was massively influential and could have been published at will, had he issued a brief statement condemning Hess's words and expressing apology or at least sympathy for Sandra.

I have not been able to find one. I cannot say with absolute certainty that he never made one – but if he did, it has certainly not turned up in my extensive searching. Despite being the director of, and the man whose lengthy and starry career in horror began with, The Last House on the Left, in all my research Wes Craven has not appeared once in connection with any such comment.

Craven died in 2015, so no such statement will ever be possible. The opportunity is gone for good.

Yet again, Sandra Peabody deserved better.

¹ It's Only a Movie, dir. David Szulkin, 2002. Available as an extra on many DVD and Blu-ray releases of The Last House on the Left.
² Celluloid Crime of the Century, dir. David Gregory, 2003. Available as an extra on many DVD and Blu-ray releases of The Last House on the Left.
³ Commentary track featuring director Wes Craven and producer Sean S. Cunningham, available on multiple DVD and Blu-ray releases of The Last House on the Left.

To this day, Sandra remains true to her vocation

The most successful creation of Sandra Peabody's post-Last House on the Left career in TV production was undoubtedly her Emmy-winning Popcorn, but all good things must come to an end, and in 1993 the show was not renewed. After the cancellation, Sandra was laid off from KATU.¹

She certainly didn't stop there, of course. Even while Popcorn was still running, in 1988 she produced A Time to Care, a documentary about the Twin Oaks Care Center in Albany, Oregon. Sandra was interviewed for the Albany Democrat-Herald newspaper:

"It's a neat idea for a series because what they're basically saying is that more than ever people are reaching out to help others."²

Sandra told the paper that the first segment would look at how volunteers helped the home's residents. The show was picked up by Group W (Westinghouse) to be syndicated and distributed.

Her continuing interest in creating content for children and young people was shown in 1994 when she acted as casting director for Wee Sing Under the Sea, the ninth instalment of the long-running Wee Sing series of home videos. This was filmed in Sandra's home city of Portland, the last entry in the series before production moved to Los Angeles.³

Although in 2001 Sandra created and producing the public television series Zone In, a show which Szulkin (p197) says covered "tough issues for kids", by then she had begun to turn her attention to acting coaching, as well as acting as a talent agent to help young actors make their way safely in the industry.

In the late 1990s, Sandra taught the Meisner technique to the then-unknown Bret Harrison. Although he was only fifteen at the time, Sandra was sufficiently impressed with his early mastery of Meisner's "living truthfully under imaginary circumstances" and emotional openness to invite him to attend more advanced classes without payment.⁴

We've already noted both Harrison's and Alicia Lagano's success in starting professional acting careers after studying with Sandra. Another youngster who ended up on screen after being taught by her was Calais Radcliffe, who began with an episode of the sketch comedy series Portlandia while still a fifth-grader. Sandra helped her arrange to audition – successfully – for the show. Her mother reported that she was told Radcliffe was:

"really good, able to improv, and [...] comfortable talking to adults."⁵

Once again, Sandra's commitment to supporting young actors paid off. Similarly, Harrison reported that she "showed [him] what acting was really about" and was the one who had encouraged him to go to Los Angeles in order to further his career.⁶

I've said in the past that I don't intend to name the institution where Sandra Peabody currently works; she deserves peace. What I will say is that after more than a quarter of a century, she is still offering classes for both adults and children this winter – emphasising a "supportive environment", just as you would expect from the woman who's been creating those for half a century.

¹ Schulberg, Pete. "Where does news stop, advertising begin?". The Oregonian (19 February 1993). p46.
² Lopez, Cindy. "Sweet Home care center included in documentary". Albany Democrat-Herald (29 July 1988). p5.
³ Dickson, EJ. "‘Wee Sing,’ a Direct-to-Video Children’s Musical Series, Has an Adult Following Online". vice.com (13 April 2014).
⁴ The Oregonian (24 September 2007).
⁵ Turnquist, Kristi. "West Linn fifth-grader played the scene-stealing, bratty MTV exec on 'Portlandia'". oregonlive.com (8 January 2013).
⁶ Yim, Su-Jin. "Chicken-Winging It As An Actor". The Oregonian (17 January 2001). pB01.

"A blank look on her face" – Sandra's disturbing gaze in Mari's rape scene

Note: A cropped image of the still discussed in this piece appears at the very end of the post. Please decide after reading whether you wish to view it.

Not so long ago, I wrote a post about Last House on the Left Blu-ray reviewers largely ignoring David Hess's commentary track admissions of abuse against Sandra Peabody. While I was researching for that, I went through a number of other reviews that didn't mention the commentary track, and those did not appear in that discussion.

One of those was by The Big Movie House in 2018. The reviewer, Jimmy P, did watch some of the extras, briefly touching on Celluloid Crime of the Century – "some great stories here (some creepy ones too)". However, his review of the film itself struck me more. It's a very negative one – he gives the film only one star – although he recognises its historical significance.

One interesting point he makes is one that many horror fans shrink away from, perhaps reluctant to accept that the Wes Craven of 1971 was not the Wes Craven™ most people remember from the Scream days a quarter of a century later:

"[Last House] is pure exploitation and revels in it."

What struck me even more, however, was something almost no reviewer ever mentions. Jimmy touches on the tragedy of Mari and Phyllis being "punished" for trying to score some pot, then says this:

"Sandra Peabody, who plays Mari, has a scene where she is raped by Krug. She has a blank look on her face which is her separating herself from what is happening to her body. This is one of the saddest performances in the film."

The close-up of Krug lying over Mari during the rape scene is frequently seen in Last House on the Left media, and because it's not explicit in the usual sense of the term versions of it were used even on advertising posters. Indeed, there's a thumbnail-sized picture of it on the back of my Arrow Blu-ray. That in itself might be considered ethically questionable.

Regardless of that, in the large majority of cases where the image appears, Mari (and therefore Sandra) is shown with her eyes closed. What Jimmy P has noticed – and it is hard to overstate how rare it is for anyone to mention this publicly – is the extremely disturbing impression when her eyes are open.

Normally, in a Hollywood rape scene, the victim-actress will be emoting heavily. She is likely to be struggling, crying, screaming, and so on. Sandra, however, just lies there and endures as Hess presses his face against hers and drools on her cheek. In the previous shot, showing her middle body from the side, Mari is weakly attempting to move her arms, though Krug grabs them to pin her down. Here, not even that.

Occasionally she screws up her eyes or bares her teeth, but even these movements seem far out of the norm for this kind of scene. They are in fact more reminiscent of dissociation, a common symptom of the brain being overwhelmed by an immediate and inescapable threat. In basic summary, as Jimmy P notes, it is the mind protecting itself by partially "checking out" from the body.

Hess himself mentions in the "Scoring Last House" featurette that Sandra "really gave in" and had a "look of fatality in her face". He frames this as a sexual opportunity, which is morally repugnant. He is, even so, the only member of the Last House cast to have gone this far in describing Sandra's expression at that moment.

It's extremely important to stress at this point that I am not a clinical professional, and that I am not making a diagnosis. Nor do I have the right to say what Sandra was experiencing in that moment; that is hers alone. But we do know from Marc Sheffler that Sandra was terrified by Hess during the rape scene, and Hess himself reported threatening her to the extent "she didn't know whether [he] was screwin' her or not".

Today, acting a character playing an emotionally very distressing role is understood as requiring professional support. Actor Care Specialist Alan Powell puts it this way:

"We need to support their wellbeing by checking in with them, being sensitive to the potential re-traumatizing and/or mental health risks their roles may expose them to. We should never assume that they will be okay when portraying a role with a trauma-based narrative." ¹

This kind of sensitivity was effectively unknown in the early 1970s, and all the more so when it came to exploitation film sets. It seems extremely unlikely that acting dissociation would have been safe for any actor under such conditions, all the more so a young and vulnerable one like Sandra Peabody.

As stated, we cannot fairly diagnose Sandra's feelings from a still. What we can say without appropriating her right to define her own lived experience is that the appearance of her face during the periods when her eyes are open – still, staring, almost expressionless – is so far outside the norms of what one would expect of a movie rape victim that merely watching her in those moments is deeply disturbing.

This part of the film, perhaps above any other single scene in Last House, underscores the very considerable courage and resilience Sandra Peabody showed to complete her role.

¹ Powell, Alan. "How to Support an Actor’s Well Being in Emotionally Distressing Roles", stage32.com, 2021.

The still in question follows the horizontal rule. Please scroll up if you do not wish to see it. Click on the small image to enlarge it if you wish to study it in more detail.

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Sandra Peabody in the scene discussed above