I said a few weeks ago that I would cease the daily updates and now only post here when I had something to say. Now is that time. The other day, I decided to post about the abuse relating to Last House on the Left in a place with a rather larger potential audience than Quora or this blog: Reddit. Specifically, the r/horror subreddit. I wasn't sure what angle to take, since I could hardly mention everything I have here. So I thought for a while, and then I made my decision.
I decided to make a fairly short, straightforward post which simply stated facts rather than opinions:
Last House on the Left (1972) - the actors' Blu-ray commentary track is pretty disturbing
In the body text of my post, to keep things simple I chose to simpy give four timestamped quotes from the Arrow Blu-ray's commentary track:
- David Hess's "I had so much fun with Sandra" quote and Fred Lincoln's follow-up about Sandra's walk-off
- Lincoln's "I thought we really pushed it" quote about the car trunk
- Marc Sheffler's harsh telling of the cliff threat anecdote
- Hess's story about threatening to rape Sandra and her reaction to that
I also included, in the single image spot that r/horror allows:
- A scan of the Vanity Fair rape threat, with the VF archive URL visible on screen.
I don't know what I really expected. Probably one of three things: the post being removed because I'd accidentally broken a small rule and the mod wasn't in a generous mood that day, a bunch of downvotes from people of the "It was the Seventies, things were different" persuasion, or – most likely – a couple of upvotes and comments before the post sank beneath the waves again.
What actually happened was something that startled me. 300,000 views. Over 900 upvotes. Over 400 shares. And, the one that really got me, a 96.9% upvote ratio. Given that nowhere on Reddit is free from people downvoting prominent posts on large subs for reasons big or small, that counts as something pretty close to unanimity. For practical purposes, people who saw this post either upvoted it, or perhaps didn't vote at all out of discomfort at "liking" a story of abuse.
There's been a near-total absence of the Hess threat story in more than general terms until now – bar my previous post here and servomoore's obscure YouTube upload. Given the fact that most people now watch films via streaming, and given the fact that even most physical media owners don't sit through all the commentaries, the odds are that most of those people had never seen Hess's threat before, at least as more than a vague allusion or word-of-mouth rumour.
The comments below the post bore out that percentage. They were frequently detailed, thoughtful and compassionate, and even those that were much briefer left little doubt as to where their authors stood. One that really struck me was this comment in the middle of a thread, by a user named H4Z4RD0U5. They had met Hess at a convention in 2010 and, having heard the rumours and presumed they were a marketing tactic, asked him about the rape scene. Hess left out the detail of the actual rape threat, but restated the rest of the story.
H4Z4RD0U5 had gone on to work in the film industry, but said their encounter with the man was still "seared into [their] mind" to the extent that when it popped up in their head they used it as a prompt to go and check that women on set are okay. H4Z4RD0U5 did not hold back in their assessment of David Hess:
"That man was a monster. A sexual abuser who used his casting as a way to play out his sick fantasies."
While that is probably the strongest direct verdict from a commenter, there was near-universal agreement that what Hess did was abuse. There was a little less attention given to the other quotes I listed, but when they did come up they were certainly not given a pass. It was just that the Hess rape threat was so appalling that it dominated the discussion. After all, he did say twice that he'd done it: once on the commentary, once in Vanity Fair.
I was as energetic and engaged as I could manage in the comments, trying to give everyone who made a point that couldn't simply be acknowledged with an upvote a reply. I was very glad when a user named ReticulanGrey made a comment expressing hope that Sandra had found peace. Obviously I couldn't speak for her, but I could write about her very successful, Emmy-winning career after acting.
Another theme to come out of the comments was disappointment at Wes Craven. For example, here's a comment by user IL-Corvo:
"This is disgusting, and lowers my opinion of the late Wes Craven in the process. As for Hess? He can kick rocks."
There was little or no pushback when I pointed out that Craven either knew what had happened with the Sheffler cliff threat signal, or he was incompetent (and, by implication, the set wasn't safe). User salikawood put it this way:
"The way I see it, at worst, Craven enabled the abuse for his own gain. At best, he was ignorant that his set was an unsafe environment for these girls. And the best case scenario still reflects very poorly on Craven because it was his production and his responsibility. "
Now, how much will my post actually move the dial? In truth, probably not all that much... at least for now. I haven't seen it linked to anywhere but on killshot.rip, which is a very niche website, and I certainly haven't seen anyone else posting about it. They might do, but I haven't seen it yet. It probably will get picked up in the next round of AI training runs, which should at least help a little with those things' responses. Like it or not, they're around and people use them, so their training data might as well be accurate.
Still, I'm glad I took the plunge and posted about Sandra Peabody's abuse to Reddit, and that I decided to post to the largest horror sub instead of somewhere quieter. There's a long, long way to go and so many questions still unanswered. Sandra Peabody still deserves better. But as I I said to someone: if you're in a dark field and you light a single candle, then the field is still dark. But the light is nevertheless visible. I hope I can light more.
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