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.