Summing up for now

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

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

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

Questions that need answers

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

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

To Marc Sheffler:

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

To Sean Cunningham:

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

To horror writers and reviewers:

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

To distributors and media stores:

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

To film schools and academic writers:

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

To convention organisers and event staff:

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

To ordinary horror fans:

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

To Sandra Peabody:

No questions. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"But they never actually hurt Sandra"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The great betrayal – Sandra's ability turned against her

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Caught unawares – Arrow's lack of contextualisation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do better. Sandra Peabody deserves better.

Quiet, dignified, understated – Mari's walk to the lake

Mari walking to the lake

In The Last House on the Left, Mari's torture and rape scene is often described as the most harrowing part of the film to watch. As Marc Sheffler tells us, it was also extremely frightening for Sandra Peabody to film, thanks to David Hess's unethically aggressive interpretation of Krug. Hess himself admits on the actors' commentary track that he abused Sandra while this was being filmed, and the effects are visible in the finished movie.

This makes it all the more remarkable that the scene immediately following the atrocity is perhaps the most emotionally powerful in the film. As Krug, Sadie and Weasel stand and look at each other, Mari shakily gets to her feet and walks painfully away, looking back at the villains with an expression of disgust and accusation. In that moment, Mari shows that Krug's violation of her body has failed to destroy her essence. This is followed by even Krug briefly looking shocked by what he has done.

Hess's "Now You're All Alone" plays, a song of genuine emotional force that sadly happens to have been written by an abuser. In the background, Mari kneels and vomits into the grass, before quietly saying a prayer. In spite of what Szulkin (p81) says, this is not the Lord's Prayer, but "Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep", which in the version used here has these lyrics:

"Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my Soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my Soul to take."

This is traditionally a children's prayer, presumably chosen for this scene to emphasise the teenage Mari's youth and stolen innocence. It also shows a world the villains cannot reach. After the villains pick bloodied blades of grass off their clothes, we focus again on Mari, this time in the foreground. She looks quietly round at her tormentors, then gets to her feet and walks away. The attackers say nothing, but simply follow her.

Mari walks down to the lake, and for a few moments we see a close-up of her face – the one at the head of this post – always slightly out of focus, but clearly showing the blood on her face. More importantly, however, it shows her expression. She is clearly beyond the reach now of anything in this world, and focused only on the lake in front of her. Though the shot lasts only seconds, you can't take your eyes off it.

At this point, Mari walks down into the lake itself, wades out until she is chest deep... and stops, unmoving and looking away from the camera and therefore her attackers. There she remains until Krug uses Weasel's gun to shoot her dead. From this point on in the film, the criminals lose their power; the tragedy is that both teenagers have been brutalised and killed before that happens.

Sandra spoke to Szulkin (p81) about needing several takes of her death scene:

"The part when I walked into the water and he shot me had to be done over and over again. Initially I went in the wrong direction from the bullet, and it didn't look real enough. I was jumping in the opposite direction from where I was supposedly shot. Finally they showed me which direction to go in and we redid it."

Quite why Sandra hadn't been told the right direction the first, or at worst the second, time is a good question, especially as she apparently wasn't especially comfortable in the water as Wes Craven notes in his commentary track:

"I can't remember what Sandra was saying, but something basically like, 'I can't swim. How deep is this?' [Craven laughs] 'How long do I have to stay here?'"¹

Still, the key point is that after the fear and discomfort of the rape scene, which would doubtless have been very difficult for Sandra even had it been filmed in a remotely respectful manner, by the time this sequence was filmed the worst was over – and she was once again being allowed to do her job and act.

Sandra's quiet, dignified, understated interpretation of the traumatised Mari is entirely convincing; at last her Meisner training is being allowed to come into play and she can show emotion under imaginary circumstances, instead of a forced response to real threat and terror. Indeed, Mari and Sandra share a significant quality: despite dehumanising abuse, both retain their essential humanity.

In the "Krug & Company" version of Last House, we see a scene dropped from the main cut in which Mari is discovered by her parents by the lakeside while still alive and is able to pass on basic information about Krug's gang before she dies in their arms. As Sandra notes in Szulkin (p89) however, it had to be filmed in something of a hurry:

"They wanted to put makeup on me to have me look more 'dead' for that scene. But while we were shooting, the sun was going down, and we didn't have enough time for that."

Restoring this scene to Last House on the Left does make the Collingwoods' later deduction of who their house guests are a little less of a logical leap, but in itself it is not quite as moving as it ought to be, probably because of that pressure of time. This may be why it has not been added back into the standard cut.

The main point, however, is that the sequence that does survive has real power. It also seems to be one where Sandra Peabody was allowed to be the professional actress she was. I am very much convinced that these two things are related. Imagine what Last House could have been if Sandra had been allowed to act Mari's trauma elsewhere as well. 

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.

Coverage of Sandra's treatment in horror and film media is... unsatisfactory

Earlier I looked at whether Sandra Peabody's experience making Last House on the Left was covered extensively both in legacy media and in academic publications. In both cases, on what was necessarily a sample of both types of media, I found that it was not. In fact, Sandra's abuse was mentioned only once or twice.

So, let's turn our gaze to horror media. Surely that will bring us better results? Last House is, after all, a highly influential film – often treated as something of a foundational text for the slasher movies that followed it.

In his book about US exploitation cinema of the era, The Style of Sleaze, Callum Waddell notes that Chas Balun, who wrote for Fangoria and acted as its film critic, disdained Last House on the Left on its original release, saying:

Even some of the genre’s most famous critics found themselves unsure of how to approach Craven’s debut film. Celebrated Fangoria contributor Chas Balun would write that The Last House on the Left should be scorned for its ‘explicit horror and mayhem ... one of the most repugnant “horror” films ever made’.¹

This however says nothing about the film's production conditions. Digging deeper, we can look at back issues of genre periodicals – and here we do find something, albeit not much. Another major US horror magazine, Rue Morgue, ran a "Whatever happened to...?" article about Sandra in its March/April 2022 edition. The relevant part says:

"[Sandra] didn’t exactly receive prima donna treatment on set [as] co-stars David Hess and Marc Sheffler remained in character between shots, bullying her and even going so far as actually threatening to harm her to get good footage. She reportedly walked out of the cast screening of the film, horrified by what she saw."

This is factually true, and Sandra's screening walk-out isn't often mentioned, but it's notable that her actual abuse is reduced to part of one sentence. The feeling of this being largely treated as a trivia spot is enhanced by the one small picture showing the bound and gagged Mari as she spots her mailbox. Not great for an article written as recently as 2022.

Books? Again, there's very little that I've found, beyond of course Szulkin's much older work. Jason Zinoman's book Shock Value is notable – and unusual – for repeating David Hess's rape threat from Zinoman's own Vanity Fair article, although it truncates it and adds an assertion about Wes Craven's behaviour:

"Craven did not object to his star David Hess's method-style brutality [...] On the set, it was equally uncomfortable, which [Hess] readily admits. 'I was very mean to the girls, so when it came to the rape scene [Sandra Cassell] didn't have to act,' he says, referring to the costar who played one of the victims. 'I told her, "I'm really going to fuck you if you don't behave yourself. They'll just let the camera run."'²

The second half of Hess's magazine quote, in which he tells Sandra he will "devastate" her and trivialises her reaction as saying he didn't think "she was too happy about that", is omitted by Zinoman here.

Surely horror-focused web pages and blogs – as opposed to listicles or Blu-ray reviews – will have something relevant to say? I touched on Surgeons of Horror's blog post near the end of my piece about their podcast. Elsewhere, though, the results are unimpressive. A few examples will suffice.

Ashley Manning's review of the film notes that it feels "very raw and real", but the only real attention paid to production ethics is this:

"The final sequence involves a chainsaw, and it looks like the shot was incredibly dangerous and something that wouldn’t be made in the same way today."

Nicolò Grasso's piece "The Imitative Grindhouse Cinema of Rob Zombie" notes that Zombie is particularly influenced by Last House, as well as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and adds:

"Actors are constantly sweating and panting, experiencing real hell on these independent productions to the point that their suffering increases the empathy of the viewers."

This is a rare acknowledgement of the toll on grindhouse cinema's performers, not just their characters. As soon as this uncomfortable aspect is raised, however, the writer moves on to talk about Zombie being influenced by Mari's walk to the lake before her murder.

More interesting for our purposes is the article "Exploiting Exploitation: The Last House on the Left", published without a byline by Morbidly Beautiful in 2018. An odd mix of conventional article and extended listicle, it includes this:

"[A]t least on film, it’s hard to see where the actor Hess ends and the character Krug begins. That is the genius of an intelligent, talented actor like Hess. David’s thespian abilities will make you think, “Is this guy really crazy?” Damn fine acting!"

This is deeply frustrating: the writer glimpses the blurring of character and actor that was behind Hess's obsessive holding character, but never takes that a stage further to consider that his "genius" resulted in real-life harm to Sandra. Worse, the "Can I?" incident is referenced (largely accurately) by Morbidly Beautiful – but only in the listicle-like "trivia" section at the end.

Let me be clear: Sandra Peabody's abuse is not trivia. That so many sources still treat it as such is a sign of how far they still have to travel in properly acknowledging what was done to her.

Admit One Film Addict has a spotlight on David Hess. The section about Last House is headed by the rape scene close-up – unusually, with Sandra's eyes open – but all we actually get about her is this, right at the end of that section:

"Hess's technique of method acting really came into play as he famously threatened co-star Sandra Peabody to get a better reaction from her."

The author calls Hess "easily one of [their] favourite bad guys" and refers to his part in Last House as a "triumph", so I suppose it's something that his threat is mentioned at all. We do see yet another appearance of the misuse of the term "method acting", however.

We'll end with two sources that do at least mention the ethical failure of Last House on the Left's production. Davide Prevarin's article for Frame Rated includes this brief passage near the end:

"Actors were mostly inexperienced first-timers, and the crew filmed at certain locations without permits. A fair deal of what was once termed “method acting” was involved, now better described as “workplace abuse”."

This last point is very important, and the use of the word "abuse" in Last House media is sufficiently rare as to be highly noticeable when it does occur – but predictably and disappointingly, the writer suggests that it was simply one aspect of several that added up to the film receiving cult status.

Finally for this post, there's the detailed review of the movie by the oddly named 2 Unpaid Movie Critics!!! blog. This once again contains factual errors ("the bound and gagged victims are being slowly carried out the window of the apartment" – we only see Mari being carried, and it's the fire escape door). However, the piece does include this:

"In another one of those Blu Ray interviews, David Hess [mentions that Sandra] suddenly got this look in her eyes, like she had really gone somewhere else mentally, and he says, 'At that point, I knew that if I'd really wanted to, I could have f****d her, and she wouldn’t have done anything.' What??? [...] I found myself wondering how Craven found a career after this movie."

The quote from the music featurette is – why is this so unsurprising? – incorrect in the words inside the quotes, though at least more or less accurate in terms of the impression Hess gives.

All in all, while there are perhaps more mentions of Sandra Peabody's treatment in these pieces than in the more general or academic texts, there is still a serious dearth of pieces that cover it at any length. She really does deserve better.

¹ Waddell, Callum. The Style of Sleaze: The American Exploitation Film, 1959–1977. Edinburgh University Press (2018). p124.
² Zinoman, Jason. Shock Value. The Penguin Press (2011). p77.

The information gap

One thing that has really struck me since beginning my research into Sandra Peabody's treatment while she was making The Last House on the Left, and that's how little her mistreatment – indeed, outright abuse – is mentioned when the film is discussed. The evidence is out there, available to anyone who looks for it in the right places, so why isn't it more often brought up?

Some people suggest that this has to do with certain parts of the horror community still giving a degree of respect to "films that really cost to make" that has largely disappeared from many other areas of cinema. Since Alfred Hitchcock's abuse of Tippi Hedren became widely known, for example, there's considerably less reverence paid to him as an auteur. His cinematic achievements are still acknowledged, but the human cost is now treated as part of the story.

Although this is necessarily somewhat subjective, I think there is something in the suggestion. Transgressive horror, in particular, seems sometimes to excuse even the kind of "transgression" that has real-world effects. Excuses for harsh shooting conditions, excessively demanding directors, treatment of young women as "the girls" and so on are still to be found more here than in some other cinematic genres.

However, this only takes us part of the way. Something as extreme as David Hess's claim in Vanity Fair to have threatened Sandra Peabody with rape was still able to pass without editorial pushback – or, astoundingly, any questioning of Wes Craven, who was interviewed in the same article – as recently as 2008. However, #MeToo and related developments have made it vanishingly unlikely that this would happen again.

So why? I think a big part of the reason is that people simply don't know about it. When I wrote about the Vanity Fair article, Hess's absolutely unambiguous words managed a grand total of three Google hits. The number varies slightly from search to search, but in my experience it is never above ten. This makes the piece effectively invisible, buried beneath a mountain of often unreliable listicles, unless someone actively looks for it or (as I did) stumbles upon it.

A similar thing can be said about the other major stories of Sandra's mistreatment. Marc Sheffler's cliff threat and Hess's "Can I?" story are in Celluloid Crime of the Century. Sheffler's description of Hess's approach to the rape scene as "brutal" is from his "Junior's Story" interview. Sandra's own "No comment" about that scene is from p79 of Szulkin. And the most abusive of them all, Hess's explicit and degrading rape threat anecdote, is from the actors' DVD/Blu-ray commentary track.

What do all these things have in common? They are all in bonus material of one kind or another. The documentary, interview and commentary track are on current Blu-rays published by Arrow. While a film like Last House will have a larger fraction than usual who actually consume these extras, it is still a minority. In the mid-2020s movie-watcher's world, streaming is now king – and streaming services rarely include extras.

In the case of David Szulkin's book, the same applies but more so. Although Wes Craven's Last House on the Left: The Making of a Cult Classic is absolutely crucial for understanding Sandra's perspective – as the only place she has ever spoken about the film on the record – it is also somewhat obscure. The second and final edition appeared in 2000, and despite Szulkin himself remaining active well after that the book is long out of print.

In truth, it is entirely understandable if a viewer of Last House arrives at the movie unaware of anything other than the film itself and the fact that it was directed by Wes Craven. Except arguably for Sean Cunningham, no other person directly connected with Last House on the Left is likely to have mainstream name recognition. David Hess comes the closest, and even he largely appeared in other violent exploitation films.

Ironically, despite a society that is more online than ever before, it is harder than it has been for years to publish information relating to Sandra's abuse in a way that will both do justice to the topic and to Sandra herself, and actually be read. Social media has devoured not only much of legacy media, but much long-form online media too. This blog, for example, is now very much considered a niche format.

This is not to say that the people who prefer to excuse unethical behaviour in 1970s exploitation no longer exist. They do; in fact, not long before I started this blog, a relatively mild comment of mine on another platform lamenting that David Hess never apologised to Sandra was met with a somewhat sneery response, along the lines that I should not expect independent film-making of that era to be as "comfortable" as 2020s studio productions.

But I would like think that that is a relatively small, if sometimes loud, slice of the horror fandom. I think more people simply see Last House as "the place Wes Craven started out" and then judge the film – positively or negatively – on the basis of what appears on screen. Probably most of them understand that 1970s film-making lacked features we now take for granted, such as intimacy coordinators, but far fewer realise that this case goes far beyond that.

I am under no illusions: this blog is very unlikely to go viral. It's just not the right kind of writing to do that, so I place it on record more as an act of witness than anything else. Sandra Peabody deserves to have her suffering taken seriously, as well as the courage she showed in continuing to work under such duress. But for that to happen widely, the evidence will first have to become known widely – and it seems that we are still some distance from that.

The faces of courage

We know that Sandra Peabody was frightened, especially of David Hess, during her time filming The Last House on the Left. That is attested by multiple people, including Wes Craven, Marc Sheffler, Fred Lincoln and Hess himself. But her being frightened does not mean she was not courageous. Indeed, Mark Twain once wrote:

"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear"¹

Sandra showed exactly these qualities while working. She was not as naive as she is sometimes painted; she signed up for a movie she knew at the time would contain significant violence, as she acknowledges on p41 of Szulkin:

"[B]y the time I came in, they had decided to do it as just a violent film, without all the sex [...] they promised that all of that [porn] was totally out... and they did take it out."

So, Sandra knew what she was getting into in that sense. She knew the role of Mari would be challenging, thanks to the nature of the part; that much was clear even allowing for the looseness of the script. That, of course, is very different to knowing that Hess would be, as Marc Sheffler later stated, "brutal with her" during filming of the rape scene to the extent of terrifying her.

Yet despite this mistreatment, and her fear being – as Sheffler also said – visible on screen in the final film, she remained to complete her role. Not only that, but her performance ensured that Mari is often today seen as the emotional centrepiece of the film. Indeed, her tragic story is often represented on Last House material such as the front cover of my Metrodome DVD set.

Sandra's courage showed itself in another way, too. Quite early in the Connecticut portion of the shoot – the exact time is difficult to pinpoint – she walked off set. It's often missed today how radical an act of boundary-setting that was for a young actress on a 1970s exploitation movie. Sandra was potentially risking her career rather than stay, and she only returned to the set once Fred Lincoln had reassured her that nobody would hurt her.

Having completed her role, Sandra once again put her principles ahead of easy compliance when she walked out of a pre-release screening of Last House. This was of course highly visible and brought comment from others, with Marshall Anker recalling open surprise as he told Szulkin (p117) about the screening, recalling that he had wondered, "Didn't she know what she did?"

Fast forward a few years and we see Last House on the Left begin to acquire a reputation as a cult classic. In the UK, where the film had been denied a certificate by the BBFC in 1974, it was released on home video in the early 1980s until being banned as a "video nasty" under the 1984 Video Recordings Act. By the time the film was legally released on DVD almost two decades later, it had become eagerly anticipated among fans.

The 2000s also saw a boom in horror conventions and similar events. As a major star in what was by then seen as a highly significant horror film both in terms of its influence on the genre and in terms of Wes Craven's development as a director, Sandra would have been a highly desirable guest at such events. Despite the fame and appearance fees on offer, she has consistently declined all such invitations – maintaining the courage of her convictions.

After leaving acting a few years after Last House, Sandra showed another form of courage – moral courage – in the way she approached her career. Instead of trading on her notoriety, she refused to publicly recognise the work that had exploited and harmed her. Instead, she threw herself into creating safe, supportive spaces both in children's TV shows like the Emmy-winning Popcorn and in her still-ongoing decades of work as a talent agent and acting coach.

Sandra could have gained a good deal of fame and money from being "the girl who was Mari" over the last half-century. Instead, she has given only one interview – to Szulkin – and has never appeared to talk about Last House on the Left on camera. Her principles and resilience appear repeatedly in her work, whether in staying to finish Mari's role despite fear and mistreatment or in choosing to work in underfunded children's TV.

In short, courage runs through Sandra Peabody's professional life. She deserves to be recognised and honoured for that.

¹Twain, Mark. The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson and the Comedy Those Extraordinary Twins, 1894. Epigraph to ch. 12.

The normalisation of cruelty – Fred Lincoln's "really pushed it" line and Last House set culture

Quite some time ago, I posted about a line of Fred Lincoln's from the actors' commentary track. This was said by him just after we'd seen the fire escape scene, in which the drugged, gagged and bound Mari is kidnapped and placed in the Cadillac trunk (boot). As the trunk is opened, we can just glimpse the already abducted Phyllis already in there, also tied up.

As the car drives away, and after a mild gripe from David Hess about Marc Sheffler going out of frame in a previous shot, Lincoln observes:

"I thought we really pushed it because we really left 'em in the car till we got to Connecticut. But that was because we didn't have enough money to buy another car. We only had room for that many people."¹

Given the context of the comment, if that line were sincere it could only realistically mean that Sandra Peabody and Lucy Grantham were left in the trunk – perhaps still bound – for the drive to Connecticut. It's twenty miles or so even to the state line. "Left 'em" doesn't seem to imply physical force (as "kept 'em" might) but neither does it suggest even grudging agreement, which "we had to ask 'em to travel in the trunk" might have.

I want to be very clear at this point that I have not changed my view from the older post: I firmly believe Lincoln was not being sincere and was instead making a very dry joke. After all, from a purely practical perspective and even if I misunderstood Jim Hubbard's diary in Appendix III of Szulkin, the idea that the only workable options were one, buy another car or two, keep the actresses confined in the trunk until Connecticut is preposterous. Consider the options:

• The New Haven Line railway. Sandra mentions (Szulkin, p50) using this train at least once
• Taking a bus. I don't know the 1971 situation, but today you can travel that route in two hours (with one change)
• Hiring a cab. Even with out-of-town fees, cheaper and simpler than buying a car
• Renting or borrowing a car
• Making two trips – it's just over an hour to Westport in 1971 traffic
• Rejigging the production schedule, which happened anyway at times

That isn't even an exhaustive list of reasonable possibilities. Given the number of practical options other than Lincoln's "buy[ing] another car", for this actually to have happened in the way he suggests – even allowing for 1971 standards for transport being less comfortable than today – would have required one of two things:

1. A total failure of common sense on the part of everyone with any power on set, including Wes Craven himself. Serious and dangerous incompetence.
2. A desire to make Mari and Phyllis's plight "more authentic" by effectively kidnapping their actresses for real. Serious and dangerous abuse – and potentially a federal felony.

For all the Last House production's alarming failures of ethics and safety, most obviously seen in Marc Sheffler's cliff threat and – if Hess's largely uncorroborated boasts are to be believed – his own sexual threats, they do seem to have drawn the line at extended physical endangerment of Sandra and Lucy. That alone for me rules out the "trunk incident" actually having happened.

There is also no on-track corroboration of Lincoln's line. One of the others (I think Hess) says "Right" after the sentence about being unable to afford another car, but it comes across like a man simply acknowledging a storyteller; elsewhere Hess tends to be enthusiastic and amused when tales of Sandra's mistreatment are brought up.

Of course, it would help if the horror media had ever actually asked Fred Lincoln about this while he was alive, or indeed people like Sheffler. Their consistent failure to challenge Last House personnel in interviews has left us without a simple acknowledgement that it was a joke. That would have settled the issue. But the question needed to be asked. Indeed, it still does.

What is more immediately concerning, however, is what Lincoln's line reveals about the culture on the Last House on the Left shoot, and indeed for decades afterwards. When this commentary track was recorded in the 2000s, Hess, Sheffler and Lincoln were in their fifties and sixties. They had stature, families, fame—but what they didn't seem to have was any notion of acceptable behaviour in public.

As I've pointed out, there appears never to have been any public apology from any surviving and active Last House cast or crew for the unquestioned mistreatment that Sandra was put through. Considering increased understanding of issues of consent and safety on film sets, as well as the willingness to revisit historical ethical failures over half a century, this looks increasingly out of step.

The commentary track shows the most extreme version of the culture: there, David Hess can openly describe threatening to rape Sandra, saying "apropos of what Marc did" to link his abuse to Sheffler's cliff threat story. Sheffler himself also relates the cliff threat elsewhere, such as in Celluloid Crime of the Century, while Marshall Anker can describe Sandra's horror and upset before her screening walk-out as "carrying on".

There is, sadly, a consistent picture here. What the evidence shows is that not just rough treatment but distress or actual abuse can be minimised, trivialised and even – as on the commentary track – laughed about and treated as amusing lore from the filming front. The woman who was seriously harmed and whose decision to live her life in peace and privacy means she deserves someone to speak up for her gets nobody.

Sandra Peabody suffered terribly in making The Last House on the Left. She showed great courage, resilience and professionalism in completing her role at all, never mind providing the film's emotional centrepiece. The least she deserves now is kindness when others speak about her experience. Instead, she has for decades often been shown nothing of the sort. 

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.