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.