"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 This is a fundamentally incorrect and outdated idea of what harm actually is.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).

"But Last House on the Left is important"

One reason why there is resistance in some quarters to serious criticism of The Last House on the Left is that the film does, undeniably, have a place in the horror pantheon. It is highly influential, along with several of its contemporaries from the 1970s, perhaps most notably Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

But acknowledged influence should not insulate a film from serious criticism when it deserves it. The aforementioned Texas Chain Saw features a plethora of ethical concerns, and Marilyn Burns' decision largely to lean into those and participate in the film's fandom does not erase them.

These range from filming in extreme heat to repeated unsafe stunts to lesser-known but perhaps even more concerning events. One was the post-production incident when Hooper deceived Burns into attending the editing suite for "a few photos" of her eyes, only to keep her there for hours, resulting in such emotional exhaustion that editor Larry Carroll, who was in attendance, was shocked:

"I think for Tobe, the performance that he wanted, about the only way he knew how to get it out of [Burns] was basically torturing her, and he did. It was horrific."¹

As with Last House, the way the production ethics of TCM get talked about tends to be limited. Noting the dangers of having a live chainsaw on set, or the legendarily harsh 26-hour dinner party shoot, those are often discussed. But the incident described above, or the moment when Gunnar Hansen briefly thought he was the murderous Leatherface, those tend to be skimmed over if mentioned at all.

A lot of fans are far more comfortable in the case of both films when the conversation turns to the movies' influence. Whatever you think of the merits of either, that they were influential on their genre is undeniable. Here, for those fans, we are back in safe territory: Last House, like TCM, is certainly "important" in that sense.

The trouble comes when that importance is used as a kind of get-out card: "Yes, bad things happened on set, and that wasn't okay, but look at what the film gave to the genre!" Given that "what happened on set" in the case of Last House was that Sandra Peabody spent weeks in fear, was driven to start hitchhiking to get away, and was threatened with being pushed off a cliff, including that "but" at the end of the sentence risks implying that Sandra's mistreatment was unfortunate but excusable.

It wasn't. What happened to Sandra was the single most important feature of the making of Last House on the Left. Especially now that we're in the 2020s and should all understand that abuse is not restricted to incidents where one person literally says, "I want to hurt this other person", centring Sandra is not an optional extra. It is fundamental to reckoning with the film in a way that begins to do justice to the woman who was harmed.

A truth that many in the horror world seem not to want to confront is that it is Wes Craven's name and later reputation that has protected Last House for many years. His later existence as a thoughtful, humane man who created films that spoke more profoundly about violence than horror historically had does not change the fact that in the early 1970s he was something very different.

Craven is protected by the air of glamour that surrounds the auteur even today, despite recent years having confronted us with the dark side of men like Alfred Hitchcock and his outright abuse of Tippi Hedren.² Unlike Hitchcock, Craven did not himself abuse his female lead – but if Marc Sheffler's description of the cliff threat is even remotely accurate, the director knew that something was happening with Sandra and yet apparently did not investigate.

Craven is indeed important to horror. But that is not a reason not to look at his first horror feature film with clear eyes. Indeed, it is a reason to do exactly that. As I have already said, a man who "got better" at handling actors must by definition have started out worse. Today, for example, we would consider his decision to allow a situation where Hess "just went at" Sandra during long, locked-off takes of Mari's rape scene to be ethically insupportable.

The Last House on the Left is indeed important to horror too. But, again, that gives us a greater responsibility to examine it critically and honestly, not less of one. Horror fandom is not always good at this: witness how Ruggero Deodato's undeniably innovative Cannibal Holocaust (1980) tends to be criticised often for its on-screen animal killings, but considerably more rarely for very serious concerns surrounding the age and level of informed consent of the indigenous girl who plays the victim of a violent gang rape.

As we have seen on this blog over an extended period, Sandra Peabody was abused in connection with Last House on the Left. We can and should recognise Last House for its influence on horror and for launching Craven's career. But as with the other films I have mentioned, this profound ethical failure must not simply be ignored because of the movie's fame or the identity of its director.

Last House on the Left is indeed important. But that is not a get-out card for those who would really prefer not to talk about its production ethics – because what happened to Sandra Peabody in its making is more important.

¹ Hansen, Gunnar. Chain Saw Confidential: How We Made the World's Most Notorious Horror Film (2013). p128.
² Specktor, Matthew. "The Baffling Cruelty of Alfred Hitchcock". The Atlantic (9 November 2023).

"But aren't you just judging the 1970s by 2020s standards?"

A point that sometimes comes up to writing today about events that happened some decades in the past is that it's not fair to judge – in the case of the Last House on the Left shoot – 1971 by the standards of 2025. On the face of it, that sounds like a reasonable objection, but in fact things are rather more nuanced than the common "it was another time" line might suggest.

There are certainly aspects of 1970s film-making that have changed a lot since then but which it would be unreasonable to criticise a shoot for. An obvious example is the absence of intimacy coordinators, which were unknown in cinema back then. And, indeed, for a good deal longer: the remake of Last House in 2009 did not use them, although by the standards of the day the film was made ethically and Sara Paxton (who played Mari) was treated well.

On the other hand, some things can still be criticised even at over half a century's distance. David Hess's admitted threat of rape to Sandra Peabody was not acceptable in the 1970s any more than it is today. There was never a time when threatening sexual violence was a legitimate acting technique, method or otherwise. What Hess did, or at least claims he did, was wrong in 1971 just as much as it would be in 2025.

Film-making in what might be called the "long 1970s" – between the collapse of the Hays Code in 1968 and the Twilight Zone tragedy in 1982 – was often rough-edged, all the more so in low-budget exploitation cinema. Many things that happened then would not be tolerated now, ranging from pressures on actresses for increased nudity to corner-cutting on stunt safety. But there were still lines beyond which almost no production went.

The main difference today is that any actor threatening sexual violence in the way Hess claims to have done would face immediate and very strong consequences. They would be removed from the set, production would halt, the authorities might well be informed – and, crucially, the victim of the abuse would receive professional care and protection, with their safety treated as a higher priority than completing the film.

Another response to the question in the title is that Hess did not tell his various stories in the 1970s. All of those I have covered here, ranging from the "Krug Conquers England" monologue to the Terror Trap interview, and including both the Vanity Fair and commentary track admissions of threatening Sandra with rape, as well as David Szulkin's book were recorded and published between the late 1990s and 2011.

Although the first decade or so of the 21st century had not yet seen the level of understanding of ethical issues in film-making that #MeToo and similar movements brought from the mid-2010s onwards, the old "anything for the shot" approach of some 1970s film-makers was already being seen as unacceptable. The understanding that a film set was a workplace, and that consent and safety mattered there as much as in any other job, had developed considerably since the exploitation era.

So the answer to the question is that yes, to some extent I am judging 1971's Last House on the Left set by today's standards – but so do all of us. Eugenics was widely considered respectable in the 1930s, yet almost everybody condemns it as dangerous pseudoscience today. Besides, as I noted above, when it comes to actively threatening a co-star with sexual violence, as Hess says he did, no amount of historical context can make that acceptable.

"But I met David Hess and he was such a nice guy!"

One of the things people often do when confronted with evidence about an actor that they really don't want to be true is to fall back on personal experience with that person. Usually it's simply a case of seeing interviews or reading articles by said actor in which they come across as thoughtful and reasonable, and even generous to their co-stars past and present.

Does this remind you of anything? Yes: David Hess's Terror Trap interview. As you will recall, he was overwhelmingly pleasant to almost everyone in that long piece. Even with those he had less effusive opinions of, he generally found something to say that was no worse than neutral, or mixed good and bad as he did when discussing Wes Craven.

Sandra was the exception. Among people he spent more than a few words on, she was the only exception.

In "Junior's Story", an interview with Marc Sheffler from 2017 that's included on the Arrow Blu-ray edition of The Last House on the Left, Sheffler talks about his time sharing a residence with Hess after the movie. After offering the distinctly odd detail that his flatmate kept an ocelot in the basement and that it was "subservient" to Hess, at 11:46 on my copy Sheffler continues:

David was as flawed as person as anyone I've ever met. But one flaw he didn't have was, he was your friend forever when he was your friend.

Now, that sounds like a nice, uplifting anecdote about Hess – until you think harder about... well, most of it. The first sentence could cover a multitude of sins, and Sheffler doesn't expand. We have of course met some of Hess's sins already on this blog.

And then there are those last five words. When he was your friend. The corollary to that is that he didn't behave that way when he wasn't your friend. We saw in the Terror Trap interview what it meant for the woman who wasn't his friend: a chilling, remorse-free coldness that lasted to the very end of his life.

Although Sandra's experience is the one we're most interested in here, it wasn't only her who Hess treated poorly. Adrienne Barbeau worked with him on Swamp Thing (1982) – yes, Wes Craven invited him back a full decade after he'd terrorised his Last House co-star – and she had this to say in her memoir:

It doesn't help that the actor playing the bad guy [Hess] is a macho stuntman wannabe who throws me around like I'm an ex-girlfriend he's got a grudge against. I haven't been hit like that since Gorgeous George threw a chair at me in the ring when I was Miss Wrestling for Channel 18 in San Francisco. [...] My whole body is bruised and aching.¹

Nobody denies that Hess could come across as exactly the charming rogue you expected him to be – the image he cultivated. You only have to look at all the effusive obituaries for him from 2011 to see that. Your good experience with David Hess at a convention or a Last House on the Left festival screening means one thing and one thing only: that he was nice to you.

You weren't Sandra Peabody. 

¹ Barbeau, Adrienne. (2006). There are Worse Things I Could Do. Carroll & Graf Publishers, pp194–5

"But what if they’re just telling stories?"

I have now presented multiple examples of what certain of the male actors on The Last House on the Left have said about the woman playing Mari, Sandra Peabody. Generally, in this kind of situation, there are four options regarding what the person in question has been quoted as saying:

1. They actually did what they said
2. They exaggerated from a kernel of truth
3. They made the whole thing up
4. They were misquoted

In this case, we can immediately dispense with option four. Marc Sheffler tells the cliff threat story on camera for Celluloid Crime of the Century and on tape for the actors’ commentary track. David Hess gives “got pretty physical with her” in Szulkin and recounts the rape threat in Vanity Fair – both commercial print publications. He tells the “Can I?” story in Celluloid Crime of the Century and the “fatality in her face” anecdote in the music featurette – both on camera.

They were not misquoted.

Since Sheffler has told the cliff threat story repeatedly for at least two decades now, with varying emphases but with the core remaining consistent, it would be bizarre for him to have made it up. While Sheffler’s reminiscence is deeply unpleasant, it does not talk about frightening Sandra during the creation of a sexually violent moment in the film – Mari’s rape scene. All four of Hess’s quotes do. Let’s concentrate on him.

• If Hess is telling the truth, then he treated Sandra with great cruelty in using her as a dehumanised prop in order to force the terrified reaction he wanted from her.
• If Hess is making everything up, then he treated Sandra with great cruelty in using her as a dehumanised prop in a series of degrading sexualised fantasies.
• If Hess is exaggerating from a kernel of truth, perhaps by telling multiple versions of a story when not all of those events actually happened in the way he tells them, then a blend of options one and two.

Regardless of which is true, the very act of telling these stories is itself egregious. Over a period of a little over a decade from the release of Szulkin’s two editions in 1997/2000 to Hess’s death in 2011, Hess repeatedly and in public portrayed Sandra as requiring a performance forcing from her, instead of treating her as the professionally trained actor she was – and he was not.

The stories were also recounted by Hess with a complete lack of any noticeable remorse or compassion for Sandra – an absence we also saw in his Terror Trap interview. Telling those anecdotes in the fashion he did normalised the behaviour he claimed for himself, which included direct sexual threat and coercion in his Vanity Fair quote.

Whatever the veracity or otherwise of Hess's stories, they commodify Sandra's suffering and violate her dignity. Yet they are still often treated as light-hearted trivia or “tales from the grindhouse trenches”, including by significant numbers in the horror community, and are mostly ignored entirely by the wider film media. As I have said before: we will come back to this.

As I have also said before: Sandra Peabody deserves better.