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 Outdated terms for racial groups, for example, or attitudes towards LGBT people that have largely fallen by the wayside since the Seventies.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.
No comments:
Post a Comment