Psychological torturer or serial fantasist? The David Hess problem

When it comes to significant incidents involving Sandra Peabody and The Last House on the Left, most are corroborated from multiple sources, as I noted the other day. There are only a few exceptions to this. One is the story about David Hess's night-time knife stalking, which comes from Sandra herself, while Fred Lincoln's comment implying that Sandra and Lucy Grantham were transported bound in a car trunk seems almost certain to have been an off-colour joke.

Sandra's intense fear of David Hess in particular is corroborated. The rape scene being rough and distressing is corroborated. Hess remaining in character outside filming periods is corroborated. Sandra's deep upset at the forced lesbianism scenes is corroborated. Sandra leaving the set is corroborated. Marc Sheffler holding Sandra over a cliff and threatening to throw her over it is corroborated.

There is however one major class of incidents for which we only have a single person's word: the stories of sexualised intimidation and threats from Hess, for which again and again the only direct source is David Hess himself. To list these:

• Direct rape threat admission one, in Vanity Fair
• Direct rape threat admission two, on the commentary track
• Presenting the emotionally shattered Sandra as a sexual opportunity, in "Scoring Last House"
• Asking "Can I?" and causing Sandra to "freak", in Celluloid Crime of the Century
• Admitting scaring Sandra leading her to "probably" fear rape, in "Krug Conquers England"

We have no direct corroboration for any of these stories. Even in the commentary track example, where Lincoln and Sheffler are present, those two never challenge nor even comment on the threat itself. They follow up with a variety of jokes and observations about the scene in question, but they never directly address the threat that Hess has just related in a way that is both highly explicit and demeaning to Sandra.¹

It's very noticeable that all the stories listed have something to do with the filming of Mari's rape scene – a scene that we know was very rough and frightening for Sandra. In all but the Vanity Fair version of the rape threat story, Hess mentions removing Sandra's pants. In both the rape threat stories he ties coercion to the threat: "...if you don't behave yourself" in one, "...if you don't do this right" in the other.

Hess states on the commentary track that he "had so much fun with Sandra", holding character with her for four weeks and pushing her to the point of "run[ning] away". If he is telling the truth about his threats of rape, and if he did indeed keep up this level of intimidation and threat through multiple incidents, then what is already very severe abuse would escalate to the level where it could fairly be described as psychological torture.

Given the moral weight of that term, we should ask ourselves whether at least some of those incidents may actually be the same incident, just told in different ways for different audiences. A detail that suggests this might be the case is this: if Hess had ripped Sandra's pants off on four separate occasions, it might well still have been frightening but it would not have had the shock value that Hess's storytelling implies it does. We know pants removal in itself happened at least once, as it's in the filmed scene.

If Hess threatened Sandra with rape even once in a way that she found credible, then that is extreme abuse in and of itself. Indeed, all the examples in the list above are abusive in that they treat Sandra as a dehumanised object for Hess to manipulate by causing her genuine, sexualised, non-acted fear. There is no circumstance in which behaving like that is a legitimate acting technique, Method or otherwise.

We can guess that at least some of the disturbing stories Hess tells may be at least partly true, using circumstantial evidence such as his absolute refusal to display compassion or regret to Sandra even in the last year of his life. We can also consider the fact that abusers frequently frame stories about what they've done to elevate themselves and undermine the survivor.²

But we cannot say that we know, because we have no evidence from anyone else. All we know for sure is that Hess repeatedly told these stories, on two occasions going so far as to represent himself as a man who threatened a young actress with rape and treating that as an artistic achievement. That in itself is reputationally and emotionally abusive, injurious to Sandra's dignity, and highly dangerous in that it risks normalising such behaviour.

Sandra Peabody had no control over the content of these stories, no realistic way to stop Hess representing her bodily autonomy as being something under his control, and no way to respond without compromising the peace and privacy she has chosen for so many years. So perhaps the fairest conclusion we can draw is that David Hess bragged about what, if true, we could reasonably call psychological torture. That is damning in itself.

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.
² Flannery, Shelley. "Whan an Abuser Controls the Story". domesticshelters.org (17 June 2020).

"You probably won't die, but you might get cracked up" – 2018 and 2022 versions of Marc Sheffler's cliff threat

We've already covered several versions of the story Last House on the Left star Marc Sheffler has told on multiple occasions, in which he took Sandra Peabody, held her over a cliff or ledge, and threatened to drop or throw her over as a way of getting her to produce the level of anxiety required for the scene in which Mari tries to get Junior to release her.

We've looked at the Celluloid Crime of the Century version, the harsher commentary track version and the brief allusion to the incident in Szulkin (pp75–76) and Sheffler's 2020 statement on what happened. Today, we'll consider two further tellings by Sheffler, one from a 2018 interview for Without Your Head, and one from a 2022 interview with Hollywood Wade. ¹ ²

Looking at the earlier interview first, the host says he's been asked by someone to ask Sheffler whether the cliff story is true. Sheffler immediately answers, "Yes, that is true," and the host laughs. Sheffler then explains the setup of the scene and continues:

"Wes shoots my single, which is me alone in the frame [...] and sets up to do the reverse, which is her [Sandra] and she's not rising to the level of tension [...] she's not pushing me hard enough, she's not scared."

He then continues with the story we've heard before, about him getting the idea to tell Wes Craven to watch for a signal and to start filming when he gets it. Sheffler states once again that he grabbed her and put her "[a] little over the cliff" and then:

"And she got scared, you know, anybody would be scared at that."

If Sheffler believes anybody would be scared at that, it implies that this wasn't a minor drop, and indeed he gives an estimate of the distance in the next part of the quote:

"If you don't do this then I'm [...] gonna just push you. I'm crazy, I'm on drugs, I'm crazy, I'm gonna push you. And, um, you know, it's not that far, it's 10, 15 feet, 20 feet, you probably won't die, but you might get cracked up."

The drug reference is odd; perhaps it was intended as a reference to Junior's heroin addiction. As we've previously seen, a fall from even the lowest figure given – ten feet – is sufficient to activate trauma protocols, ³ and 15–20 feet can easily lead to broken bones. "You probably won't die" is not reassuring wording, either.

At this point, the host laughs and Sheffler continues, presenting his version of what Sandra said in response to his threat:

"She's, 'No no please don't no no please no no please don't come on you're cr- don't don't.'"

Those are not the words of a woman who is slightly nervous; they are those of a woman who is genuinely fearful for her safety. Sheffler then finishes by saying what we've heard before: that he picks her up and gives Craven the signal, then the director starts the take that is in the film. The host laughs – again – and says, "It all worked out for the best, right?" which feels somewhat insensitive.

The 2022 Hollywood Wade interview is a little different in tone. At 35:43, Sheffler talks about Sandra's walk-off and her fear of David Hess. Notably, he calls Sandra "sweet", "nice", "kind [and] harmless" which is considerably more sympathetic and less grumpy than his "She was a pain in the ass" on the actors' DVD commentary track.

Then, at 37:04, the host brings up the cliff threat story, albeit slightly indirectly, to which Sheffler responds:

"Yeah, that's got all blown out of proportion."

It might be asked whether the person who had earlier claimed he'd told Sandra she'd be "fucking mangled" might just perhaps have been doing some of that "blow[ing] out of proportion" himself, but still. The host says he figured, but would like Sheffler's take.

Sheffler says, as he did in the 2020 statement, that it was late and the light was going. Again he estimates the height as:

"I dunno 10 feet, something, 20 feet, not high enough that anyone could get really hurt if they fell, but it looked like that, right, and it was all like sand on the bottom."

Once again: that is high enough to get "really hurt", and while sand might have a slight cushioning effect it certainly wouldn't make the drop harmless. Anyway, Sheffler goes through the part about telling Craven about his signal, then says:

"So I looked at her [Sandra] and I said, 'Look, I could push you over here' or something along those lines. And she got scared, right, and she said, 'You wouldn't do that' and I said, 'Well, I might, if you don't get this right. We gotta get going.'"

This is a milder version than 2017's above, and much milder than the commentary track version. "You wouldn't do that" is also a very different reported response from the panicky-sounding one from the interview five years earlier.

Sheffler goes through the usual comment about how Sandra was worked up, how he gave Craven the signal, and how the scene in the film is "that disturbing 'cause that's when she's the most upset". However, he adds an extra portion that wasn't in the earlier interview:

"[T]hrough no fault of her own, it was just experience—"

It's worth noting here that Sheffler himself was only in his early twenties at the time. He goes on:

"—she wasn't getting upset, it wasn't reading real, right? [...] So in a safe manner, without really meaning her any actual harm... I need to say that these days, because I didn't—it's not me, but I just wanna make that very clear, I helped another actor achieve a much better performance."

There's never been any serious suggestion that Sheffler actually intended to hurt Sandra. But lack of malice alone does not make an action right. Certainly today, whether such an action is unethical is generally defined by what the victim credibly believes, not simply the private intentions of the person making the threat.

The host jokes, rather insensitively, "She just needed a little push", then Sheffler closes by acknowledging that:

"I think I've said that the most PC I've ever said that."

Certainly in the five versions of this particular Last House anecdote I've come across (six if you count the brief allusion in Szulkin) this 2022 version is the one where Sheffler spends the most time reassuring his audience that Sandra was not in real danger, and telling them that he was doing it to help her acting.

The core of the story – consistent across two decades – always includes some form of threat and Sandra being frightened by it. The story also always features some justification or explanation from Sheffler for what he did, based around the pressure of the clock and/or the need for Sandra to act convincingly scared and anxious for the scene.

What I have so far not found is any public expression of regret or apology to Sandra for how he scared her. Given the number of times Marc Sheffler has told this story, and given his willingness in more recent years to call Sandra "sweet" and "kind", that absence of something beyond mere acknowledgement of her fear is particularly disappointing.

Here, too, Sandra Peabody deserves better. 

¹ "Marc Sheffler of Wes Craven's Last House on the Left interview". withoutyourhead, 4 Apr 2018. Timestamp 24:34
² "Marc Sheffler sits down w/ Hollywood Wade to discuss the infamous Horror film Last house on the Left", Hollywood Wade | Crime & Entertainment, 4 Sep 2022. Timestamp 37:04
³ Nau C, Leiblein M, Verboket RD, Hörauf JA, Sturm R, Marzi I, Störmann P. Falls from Great Heights: Risk to Sustain Severe Thoracic and Pelvic Injuries Increases with Height of the Fall. J Clin Med. 2021 May 25;10(11):2307. doi: 10.3390/jcm10112307. PMID: 34070640; PMCID: PMC8199183.

"David was... brutal with her" – Marc Sheffler on Sandra's fear of David Hess

Today I'm looking at another of the extras on my Arrow Blu-ray of The Last House on th Left. This is "Junior's Story", a 15-minute piece that's billed as an interview with Marc Sheffler but is more of an edited monologue as we never hear the questions. This was recorded in 2017 and directed by none other than David Szulkin.

Sheffler talks about his early acting experiences and how he got on board with Last House in the first place, but the part we're interested in here – the part about Sandra Peabody – starts at 08:10 on my disc. He confirms that David Hess really did stay in character the entire time they were filming:

"[Hess] became Krug on set and off set. Twenty-four hours a day, all Krug, all the time."

Indeed, Yvonne Hannemann corroborates this in Szulkin (p51) when she says:

"[The actors] stayed in those characters for a few weeks! [...] David Hess was really fearsome. David truly was this menacing character throughout the shoot." 

At 08:22 in the interview, Sheffler talks about Mari's rape scene. He provides vivid and frankly disturbing detail of how this was filmed, starting with this:

"The rape scene is what freaked Sandra out the most, I mean, because... David was... brutal with her."

We know from both Wes Craven and Hannemann in Szulkin (p79) that the scene was very rough, that it was distressing and that Sandra needed consoling, but Sheffler goes a step further and calls Hess's playing of the scene "brutal". He then explains how Craven's directing allowed Hess to behave as he did:

"the way Wes covered it, he pretty much locked off the camera and let it play, and David knew that. You know, so he wasn't trying to hit marks or anything, with movement, so he just went at her."

The director himself, speaking in Celluloid Crime of the Century, concentrated on the technical side of this approach rather than its human impact. He said that he had taken a "documentarian" decision in deciding how to film the scene:

"[I] essentially said, I'm going to stage, we're going to shoot this three times. We're going to take it from beginning to end, and I'm going to put the camera in three different places, just as if I were had three documentarian cameras at a real event. And then somehow I'll cut it together."

The result was that Sandra was expected to endure Hess's aggressive interpretation of Krug's assault for unbroken minutes at a time. Hess himself told Szulkin (p79) that he "got pretty physical with her" and that she "couldn't back off when the camera was running". Sheffler is quite open about the effect this had on Sandra:

"[A] lot of what you see from her is real. Because she was scared shitless, and I don't blame her."

This is notably empathetic – although as far as I can tell, nobody on Last House's cast or crew has ever publicly expressed regret at how the rape scene was staged or how frightened Sandra was. But Sheffler's comment, along with Craven's own observations on her fear, make it clear that she isn't just acting terrified on screen when you watch that sequence: she is terrified.

Sheffler goes on to talk about Sandra leaving the set and hitch-hiking back to New York City; he further corroborates what we already know in terms of Fred Lincoln going after her and "convinc[ing] her that he would make sure nothing bad ever happened to her." Sadly Lincoln was not able to control Hess's comments about Sandra on DVD and Blu-ray extras in the 2000s.

Slightly oddly, Sheffler says "it got to be such" that Sandra walked off, which phrasing might imply that this happened later on in filming – except that we already know from Lincoln in Szulkin (p50) that it was perhaps only a day or two into the Connecticut portion of the shoot. There's no specific evidence either way about whether Sandra was already frightened during the earlier-shot scenes, such as those with Mari interacting with her parents.

What is certain is that Sheffler talks about how Sandra's fear led to her walk-off, and the way he describes it goes well beyond mere nervousness:

"She couldn't take it. She couldn't take Hess. She was... frightened of Hess to the core of her existence. She couldn't... be in the same room with him without her blood pressure going up. She was utterly intimidated."

As with his choice of the word "brutal", this is very strong language from Sheffler. If an actress was frightened of a co-star "to the core of her existence" today, it would be grounds for immediate intervention. In early 1970s exploitation film-making, things were often very different, even when as in this case the director was no monster.

Marc Sheffler's interview solidifies the view that the way the rape scene was shot left Sandra vulnerable, with only minimal protection from the man playing Mari's rapist. Even without Hess's own claim on the commentary track that he threatened her with actual rape, the scene was enough to leave a man only partially involved (Junior stands uncomfortably on the sidelines) sympathising with Sandra Peabody's terror.

Sheffler doesn't blame Sandra for being terrified at Hess's behaviour during the rape scene. I don't blame her either. 

"I'm wanting to get something from her which wasn't coming" – David Hess on the rape scene

One of the extras which features on my Last House on the Left Metrodome DVD set but not my Arrow Blu-ray – it is on the three-disc limited edition – is "Krug Conquers England". As a caption at the start of the video informs us, this covers the first public screening of Last House in the UK, at the Phoenix Arts Centre in Leicester, on 25th June 2000. The interview was packaged and released as a featurette in 2003 by Divine Productions.

Much of the featurette is pretty straightforward stuff, including the expected comments about BBFC censorship and some guitar playing by Hess. Inside the first minute he tells us that "I've never hurt anybody in my life, that I know of", but that leads straight into the opening credits.

But later, about 13 minutes in, Hess starts to talk about the scene in Last House where Krug rapes Mari. He first tells us, "It was a difficult scene for me to do." As so often for Hess, the idea that it might perhaps have been an even more difficult scene for Sandra Peabody doesn't get a mention.

Hess then goes off on a bizarre tangent about how he's never paid for sex and how allowing yourself the vulnerability inherent in making love and "having a real relationship" is hard, and "something we all need to work for". But then there's this:

"In this scene... um... she was like a lox [dead fish]. She… there was no reaction at all from, from, from… from Sandra Cassell. For, for, for… for hours we tried to film this scene."

Hess mostly tells this story fairly straightforwardly, but when he says "hours" he raises his voice for a moment and shows real emotion, a flash of anger, even. I'll merely observe that most people on seeing a woman emotionally unresponsive to a scene as traumatic as this would be concerned for her well-being. You didn't need an intimacy coordinator to tell you that. Hess, however, wants to tell us about his solution:

"So… the reaction that you see on the screen is that I scared her. I ripped her pants off during the filming... and she probably thought that I was gonna penetrate her. I had no intention of doing that, absolutely not."

I'll pause briefly here to allow you all to ponder on what it says that a man needs to specifically tell us that he wasn't about to rape his co-star on camera. But let's continue:

"But that's the reaction you see on the screen, and that's why people react to it so much in terms of the violation of a woman. But at the same time, it's… it’s, it’s, it’s a film. It's a film. I'm, I’m, you know, I’m an actor that, you know, and I'm wanting to get something from her which wasn't coming."

So was Krug.

"I mean, you either do it or you cut the scene."

This sentence is the other time in the interview where Hess gets really animated. There were apparently no other options he could think of. Collaborative acting, perhaps? Just a thought.

Hess rounds off his complaint with:

"There’s no point, there’s no point to making it if you can’t do it the way it should be done."

This whole thing lasts around a minute. Hess was clearly still nursing a grievance about all this almost 29 years after Last House had wrapped. I'd pick the red flags out of it, except that there's scarcely a word of it that would remain.

By coincidence, this interview with Hess was recorded in the very same month (June 2000) that the second edition of David Szulkin's book appeared. As far as I know, it's the earliest of any of the multiple public comments by Hess on this rape scene that are included on commercial Blu-rays today.

Sandra Peabody herself appears only in this monologue as an obstacle to Hess's acting genius, an object to be manipulated, a prop to be forced until she breaks. She never once appears as a partner in a scene.

David Hess was not the person having clothing torn off without warning or consent. David Hess was not the person being put in fear of the simulated scene becoming real. David Hess was not the person being forced into genuine terror to produce a realistic image of "the violation of a woman".

Sandra was all of those things. It is she who comes out of all this with her dignity intact, with her character unsullied, with her courage unquestioned. The most important person in a rape scene is the person playing the victim.

Sandra Peabody deserves that to be known and understood.

Sandra Peabody deserves better.

The "Krug Conquers England" featurette is available on YouTube at the time of writing, albeit under a different name. The section I've covered in this post is at 13:51 in that video and can be watched here.

The abyss – David Hess and the commentary track extract nobody talks about

Content warning: explicit, sexualised, threatening language.

I don't as a rule use content warnings here, but I'm making an exception today. We've already seen that in the relaxed setting of a 2000s DVD commentary booth, the male villain cast of The Last House on the Left – David Hess, Marc Sheffler and Fred Lincoln –are not always shy of saying things they might otherwise be wary of uttering in public. Considering what Hess in particular does say elsewhere, that's quite a challenge.

Sadly, he outdoes himself here, with the other two playing bit parts. As far as I can tell, this extract has never been reproduced online until now. It begins at 44:53 on my Metrodome Region 2 DVD (46:12 on the Arrow Blu-ray), as Krug is undoing Mari's trousers immediately prior to raping her. David Hess talks about Sandra:

"I gotta tell the story of what happened here, when... this we also did a few times. And finally, apropos of what Marc did, I whispered in her ear and I said, I said to her, I said, 'I will put my fucking dick in your cunt if you don't do this right.' I swear to God. 'I will fuck the living shit outta you,' I told her. And now watch what goes on here [in the film], now watch her face. 'Cause I ripped her pants off! Look at the reaction on that—she actually—she didn't know whether I was screwin' her or not, I don't think."

This tale of degradation and cruelty from Hess, which continues well into the rape scene itself, is followed by Lincoln joking offensively with him back and forth for several lines. Then Sheffler, who has not spoken in the exchange up until now, says of Sandra that:

"her being was violated, not just her body."

This is perhaps the only worthwhile comment any of the men make in this entire section of the commentary track, showing some actual understanding of how severely Sandra was being abused. Almost at once, though, it's back to Hess:

"It's terrible the way we manipulated Sandra, it's just so… but she asked to be manipulated, buddy. She did!"

After Hess's display of apparent remorse – the only time Sandra's name is uttered – undercut immediately with victim-blaming, Sheffler brings this section to a merciful end with a line that lands like a verbal shrug:

"Look, we were out there makin' a movie, you know. You do what you do."

I don't think there's any need to dignify all this with further editorial comment. What it does do, however, is to emphasise even more strongly the truly extraordinary resilience and courage that Sandra showed in completing Last House, and in giving a performance which is widely considered the most emotionally affecting in the film.

David Hess gloried in his extreme abuse of a frightened young woman.

Sandra Peabody chose the quiet dignity of "No comment."

An audio-only extract from this section of the commentary track, containing the whole of Hess's initial quotation, was uploaded to YouTube in 2012 by user servomoore. I have chosen not to link it directly, but searching for "David Hess servomoore" (without the quotes) will bring it up.

"Just wanted to make the day" – Marc Sheffler's 2020 cliff threat statement

Avatar and username obscured; everything else left as posted

We've already seen the versions of the cliff threat Marc Sheffler told in the 2000s, in the Celluloid Crime of the Century documentary and on the actors' DVD commentary track.¹ As I said at the time, those were not the only versions of this story Sheffler has told. Today we'll look at a more recent example. The basics, such as the fact that this happened after multiple takes of the scene where Mari is trying to get Junior to help her escape, remain the same in these, but the emphases differ.

This one is in a slightly awkward format. In the 2019 YouTube video DRUMDUMS EXPLORES THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (1972) – all caps – the uploader (Drumdums – not all caps) gives a fairly detailed 13-minute review of Last House. From 8 minutes 8 seconds for a little over a minute, he talks about what he thinks is "the most interesting" thing, stating that the actors "went method". He notes David Hess's "Can I?" story and also says that Sandra's "life was actually threatened" by Sheffler at the cliff.

On 7th February 2020,² a user commented on this video to say Marc Sheffler was their father, and began by saying:

To clear up the story of my dad threatening to push Sandra Peabody off the cliff here is a statement in his own words 

The comment should be highlighted if you follow this link. I have no way to check their claim of a family relationship, but I have no particular reason to doubt it either. It's a fairly long comment, so I've embedded a screenshot of the whole thing at the top of this post so that you can check I'm not misrepresenting it. For clarity here, I'll treat the statement as coming directly from Sheffler rather than having been relayed.

Sheffler begins by saying that they were on:

a natural ledge, overlooking a creek, about 15 feet below us. (I could be wrong about the distance.)

That last note is reasonable. People can forget exact distances over almost half a century. Nobody forgets the difference between 15 feet and six feet, but 12 or 18 they might well. Sheffler then gives some technical details and says his over-the-shoulder close-ups were completed in "only a few takes". But, he says, it was a different story for Sandra:

Take after take after take, she wasn't there emotionally, meaning, she wasn’t acting like a girl in fear of her life.

As in the versions of this story we've met already, Sheffler notes that people on the set were getting restless and frustrated, and that he went to Wes Craven and told him he had an idea and that he'd signal for Craven to start shooting. Sheffler then says:

I returned to my position next to her and pushed and held her a little over the cliff. Immediately, she got scared. That's when I told her quietly that if she didn't get it right this time, I was going to push her over completely.

Sheffler follows up with:

It wasn't so high up that she'd get hurt seriously, but the fear on her face in that moment was real. I then gave Wes the signal, and boom, take shot, and it's the one in the film.

Sheffler's statement then ends with another reminder that he saw this as a product of impatience and frustration, and did not do it out of malice:

Nothing malicious. Just wanted to make the day and get out of there before the light faded. she was never in any real danger. Just the perception of it.

That, of course, is exactly the issue. As I pointed out when we met the first version of this incident, if someone thinks you're going to hurt them, then saying "It's okay, I didn't mean it" afterwards doesn't erase the ethical problem. And Sheffler himself tells us that "the fear on her face [...] was real." Sandra was sufficiently frightened to convince in the take as the required "girl in fear of her life".

As for the height, it seems that back in those woods in 1971 and even in 2020 Sheffler believed that a drop of 15 feet (~4.5 metres) was not "so high up that [Sandra]'d get hurt seriously" – but in that he was unfortunately mistaken. As this piece³ on the website of the [US] National Library of Medicine informs us:

the level 3 guideline of the German Society for Trauma Surgery (DGU) recommends trauma team activation for fall heights greater than 3 m[etres], which is in line with the guidelines of the American College of Surgeons 

Of course Sheffler did not intend actually to push his co-star over the cliff. Nobody reasonable has ever suggested that. But when the man himself tells you that he saw "mak[ing] the day" and fading light as justification for inducing real fear in Sandra, and that the result of this is "the [take] in the film" people watch today, then it raises questions about this aspect of The Last House on the Left's production ethics.

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.
² Thanks to Hadzy for getting me the exact date.
³ Nau C, Leiblein M, Verboket RD, Hörauf JA, Sturm R, Marzi I, Störmann P. Falls from Great Heights: Risk to Sustain Severe Thoracic and Pelvic Injuries Increases with Height of the Fall. J Clin Med. 2021 May 25;10(11):2307. doi: 10.3390/jcm10112307. PMID: 34070640; PMCID: PMC8199183.

"Can I?" – David Hess asks his director for permission

We're back to Celluloid Crime of the Century once more, but this time David Hess is in the spotlight. Yes, again. Around 18 minutes into the documentary, Hess says this about his co-star:

Sandra was your archetype upper middle class Protestant–repressed Protestant, you know, and how do you deal with that? How do you deal with it? Well, you try to find ways of stabbing her and her repression.

I'll let you decide how likely it is that the star of Voices of Desire – released mere months after Last House – would be "repressed". If she was indeed "nervous, and uptight, and squeezed", as Marc Sheffler suggests on the actors' commentary track,¹ then it probably wasn't because she couldn't deal with sexual content. Hess's "stabbing" metaphor is slightly concerning for a man playing a violent thug, though.

Immediately after this, there's a separately recorded insert from producer Sean S. Cunningham, who acknowledges the difficulty of this scene from the perspective of the actress playing Mari:

So, when somebody is shaking you and threatening to rape you and carve his initials on your chest, and you’re lying on the ground and this person is over you it’s kind of a terrifying, ugly place to be.

Cunningham's words are straightforward and empathetic, conveying the situation for a woman who has that difficult role. But straight after that we're back to Hess, who decides what we really all need to know is this:

I scared the living shit out of her, man. She really thought I might—I started to pull her pants down, and grab her tits and everything, and I mean she really, I mean she—and I looked up at Wes [Craven] at one point, and I said, ‘Can I?’ And then she freaked.

Given everything we've seen of David Hess's approach to Sandra already, this further escalation is perhaps not enormously surprising. The rough physical aspects of this treatment of his co-star were present in his music featurette story too. But this time there is an additional aspect to his anecdote: the question.

The way in which Hess relates his story strongly implies that Sandra was already frightened before the question was asked. If she "really thought [he] might" then being scared would not be in the least surprising. Hess then reacted to that not by stopping what he was doing or reassuring his screen victim, but by asking Craven "Can I?" At which point, using Hess's startlingly casual term, she "freaked".

We can assume this happened during rehearsal, as asking that question would be completely out of character for Krug. It's not clear exactly what Hess was actually asking permission for, or even whether it was a genuine request or merely performative. This would not have been clear to Sandra in the moment, either.

Hess's story does at least give us the information that one man (Hess) was asking another man (Craven) what else he could do to a woman (Sandra) – and a woman who Hess was already being physically rough with in a sexualised way.

Is it any wonder that Sandra "freaked" at this point? We don't know exactly what went through her head at that moment, and it is not our place to speculate. But it was an absolutely valid and rational reaction. On the video Hess seems almost surprised that Sandra reacted so strongly. Given what we already know about her experience of the Last House on the Left set, he really shouldn't have been.

And then there's the matter of Wes Craven. Hess does not tell us what Craven responded to Hess's extraordinary question; perhaps he perceived it as a tasteless joke. However, for Hess even to have been able to ask tells us that Craven was close by – unsurprising for the director, of course – and must have noticed all the physicality that Hess was putting into his Krug. If as Hess implies Sandra was already clearly scared, then Craven must have seen that, too.

It's possible that Craven both gave a very clear "No" and strongly reprimanded Hess for even asking the question, despite having apparently allowed the rough physical contact that was already in progress. Today the question itself would be seen as a catastrophic ethical failure and would bring immediate and very forceful intervention. In the woods in 1971, an awful lot more depended on the director being strong enough to keep his actors from crossing lines. We must hope that Craven was.

Regardless, this incident – like the music featurette one – related to the filming of Mari's rape scene. Sandra therefore endured objectification and intimidation from the same man multiple times during production of this highly sensitive scene.

To be able to continue when Hess had implied that her bodily safety depended on another man's will and not her own consent only underlines the immense courage, resilience and professionalism Sandra displayed in completing the scene, and indeed the movie as a whole, at all.

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.

The cliff threat redux – Marc Sheffler's commentary track version

I've already noted Marc Sheffler's story about threatening Sandra Peabody with being thrown off a cliff – as a technique for jolting her into hitting her marks – in my post about Celluloid Crime of the Century. As I noted there, Sheffler has told this story more than once, and today we'll look at one version he recounted at around the same time (early 2000s) as that documentary: the DVD commentary track he shares with David Hess and Fred Lincoln.

Again, this concerns the woods scene where Mari is attempting to convince Junior to let her go. On the commentary, Marc Sheffler says:

Ugh, I remember this scene. What a freaking pain. Do you remember what happened? With her not getting it and I had to hold her over the cliff?

After a brief and unrelated digression by the actors, Sheffler tells us that Sandra "wasn't at the anxiety level that she needed to be" for the scene, and that after multiple takes "everybody was getting annoyed". He adds that he asked Wes Craven to "give me a minute with her". Sheffler then notes they were over a cliff and says:

I took her and I put her over the cliff, I just grabbed her and I went like this. And I said, 'If you don't get this fucking scene right now, I'm gonna drop you, I'm gonna fucking drop you, right now. And Wes'll shoot it, and Vic [Hurwitz]'ll shoot it, and we'll have a different scene, but it'll work 'cause you'll be fucking mangled.' And I said, 'You better fucking get this.'

Given that this is necessarily an audio-only track, we don't know what "went like this" refers to. Vic Hurwitz was the cinematographer, a man who Sandra describes in Szulkin (p47) as "great" and "fatherly". There's no suggestion in either version of Sheffler's story that Hurwitz was involved in the threat or its setup.

Sheffler concludes his anecdote by saying that he signalled to Craven to roll the film, and that Sandra was "so nervous and so scared" when he brought her back up that she hit her marks.

David Hess adds a corroborating note immediately afterwards, saying they were all on the rock at the same time. Hess tells Sheffler that:

One of the things you said that I remember, ‘And the film will keep going. And the film will keep going!’

Hess adds of Sandra in connection with the above that "she al—" but he is then cut off by the others moving on to the next topic of discussion.

It's only fair to note that this is the harshest-edged version of the cliff threat story I have found; there are also versions of it couched in significantly milder language, and I shall certainly return to those. The "boys' club" atmosphere of a commentary track like this can sometimes result in its participants exaggerating details for effect; Sheffler does not usually swear to this extent in interviews, for example.

As with the Celluloid Crime of the Century version, Sheffler shows that he saw this as a way forward born of frustration, not malice. What it does add to our knowledge, though, is that Sheffler felt Sandra's anxiety level was insufficient for the scene, instead of the vaguer "she wasn't getting it" the documentary version included. He is also explicit that Sandra was "nervous and scared" when brought back up. Hess's addition to the story isn't in Celluloid Crime of the Century, either.

Both versions of Sheffler's story contain the details that he asked Craven for a short time with Sandra, and that this was when he took her to the cliff. However, the director himself says on his commentary track that he was the one whose pushing led to the scene working. For Craven to state that suggests that he did not enquire particularly closely about exactly what Sheffler had been doing during his "minute with her".

Looking at Szulkin to see whether this incident is recorded there, we find that it seems to be, albeit quite briefly (pp 75–76). Sheffler and Sandra both refer to the scene, but with different emphases. Sheffler tells us that "a lot of that [scene] was improvised" and that:

For some reason, for her that scene was a struggle, and I kind of bullied her a little bit to get a performance out of her.

He notes that the scene "required a lot of takes" – so the basics here match both the documentary and commentary versions Sheffler gives. "Kind of bullied her a little bit" is one of the milder wordings of this incident that I've mentioned already. Assistant director Yvonne Hannemann also reminisces:

I remember that Sandra was really very worked up about that scene. Quite enormously worked up.

Szulkin does however note that Hannemann's memories may be at least partly confusing this event with Phyllis's death scene, as she goes on to mention a detail that doesn't apply to Sandra's scene. Still, she does use Sandra's name, so perhaps she was conflating the two scenes, not especially surprising given she spoke to Szulkin a quarter of a century after the Last House shoot.

 We'll give the final word to Sandra herself, who provides only a short quote. In full:

I thought I was quite wretched in that scene.

"Wretched" is an ambiguous word. It can mean both "very unhappy" and "of poor quality". As such, we can't tell whether Sandra felt distressed or whether she was criticising her performance. All that can be ascertained from the movie itself is that Mari's desperation – entirely appropriate to the character's situation – seems highly convincing to this viewer.

An audio-only extract from this section of the commentary track, including the part beginning with Sheffler's "I took her and I put her over the cliff" above, was uploaded to YouTube in 2012 by user servomoore. At the time of posting, it can be listened to here.

"A knife at night" – David Hess's off-the-clock threatening behaviour

It's time now to return to the David Szulkin book I mentioned a few posts ago. If you recall, I titled that post "Sandra in her own words", and it cannot be overstated how important that is. Szulkin is the only place that Sandra Peabody has ever gone on the record with her recollections of The Last House on the Left. However, since the book has been out of print for twenty years, some of its details are barely if at all mentioned today.

One incident that is barely mentioned nowadays, despite being included in the film's Wikipedia page at the time of writing, is this one. As far as I am aware has not been included in any making-of documentary or interview. It appears on p50 of my second UK edition. I'll let Sandra herself take up the story:

One of the characters was a method actor, so he was trying to live his part... He'd come after us with a knife at night, trying to freak us out. This was the guy with the dark curly hair [David Hess] - he tried to play his role on and off the set. It was like, 'Lock your doors and windows at night, you don't want him to come get you!' I was scared: I thought this guy had really been a killer at some time in his past!

There's quite a bit to consider here, so let's proceed carefully.

First, we have confirmation from Sandra's own mouth that Hess remained in character even when off the clock – as she puts it, "on and off the set". She refers to him as a "method actor", a technique common in the 1970s – although Marc Sheffler states in a 2022 YouTube interview that Hess "knew nothing about acting, he was doing what he thought people should do, so he was in character 24/7 the entire shoot."¹

Second, Sandra uses the word "us". She doesn't specify who was targeted other than her, but the likely candidate is her fellow victim-actress, Lucy Grantham (Phyllis). Assistant director Yvonne Hannemann, who we will meet again as a perceptive and compassionate witness to events, notes in Szulkin (p51) that "[t]he girls were always afraid, and they would be cowering even during lunch!"

Third, Hess is coming after the actresses "with a knife at night", trying to "freak [them] out". Last House on the Left was an exceptionally demanding film for the two young women playing the teenage victims of the movie's scenes of extreme and often sexualised violence. Their on-screen attacker never properly switching off meant that they couldn't properly switch off, either. "He'd come after us" suggests Hess's night-time stalking wasn't a one-off.

Fourth, Sandra's comment about locking doors and windows could be read as a joke. But then we get "I was scared: I thought this guy had really been a killer at some time in his past!" We already know, from Wes Craven's comments in Celluloid Crime of the Century, that Sandra "really was afraid of" Hess. Even if the "killer" part of that sentence was intended humorously, it doesn't have to mean that the part about her being scared of "this guy" was.

Looking at what Szulkin's careful record tells us in retrospect, the picture becomes a great deal darker. We now know that the man with the knife was the same man who at some point before Mari's rape scene threatened Sandra Peabody with rape herself if she didn't "behave". In this anecdote, printed before that Vanity Fair piece, David Hess is depicted as a man pretending to be dangerous. In reality, to Sandra at least, he was dangerous.

¹ "Marc Sheffler sits down w/ Hollywood Wade to discuss the infamous Horror film Last house on the Left", Hollywood Wade | Crime & Entertainment, 4 Sep 2022. Timestamp 35:06

The cliff threat – Celluloid Crime of the Century

After having been denied a certificate for home media distribution in the UK for many years, The Last House on the Left was granted an 18 certificate (albeit with some cuts) by the BBFC in 2002. This was at the heart of the DVD era, and unsurprisingly Region 2 discs and collector's edition box sets appeared quickly. As part of the UK release, Blue Underground made a forty-minute documentary about the making of Last House which has become one of the most commonly included extras on the movie's physical media. This was Celluloid Crime of the Century.

The documentary includes contributions from nearly all the major cast and crew who worked on the film, from Wes Craven to Fred Lincoln. There are two notable absentees. One is Lucy Grantham, although she does appear on a Region 1 documentary called It's Only a Movie. The other is, unsurprisingly, Sandra Peabody. (She is sometimes credited in listings, but that's due to the inclusion of some footage featuring her from the film.) Some people talk about her, but she herself doesn't appear.

Celluloid Crime of the Century, a reference to one of Last House's rejected titles, Sex Crime of the Century, contains plenty of standard making-of anecdotes, such as Jeramie Rain lamenting the "scummy and dirty" state of a pool she was required to fall into after her character was attacked. It contains comments that would have passed unnoticed in the 1970s and to an extent still in 2002, but raise far more eyebrows today, such as Craven's comment that Sandra "very often wasn't acting" her fear and "really was afraid of" Hess.

But one thing that went well beyond these is a segment from Marc Sheffler, who played Junior in the film. Recalling the scene where Mari is trying to persuade Junior to let her go, the two of them sitting on a ledge above water, Sheffler says that he was getting "really upset" because they'd needed multiple takes and he "was hitting it all the time and, you know, [Sandra] wasn't getting it." He then continues:

So, I recall turning to Wes [Craven] and saying, "Uh, uh, shut... give me two minutes with her." And, uh, what happened was I grabbed her and I put her head over the cliff and I said, "If you don't get it right the next time, I'm going to throw you over here and like Wes will shoot it and it'll be great footage and you'll get hurt and you know, they'll take— call an ambulance and that'll be that. But you really need to do this cuz I will throw you over." And she got it on the next take.

That's the end of the story, after which Sheffler ends the segment with a smile and a little chuckle. "She got it on the next take" tells us that the scene we see in the movie – where Mari certainly looks frantic and anxious – was filmed almost immediately after Sandra Peabody had been threatened with being dropped off a cliff. And the way Sheffler tells the story ("give me two minutes with her") tells us that the threat was made away from Craven.

Several things now need to be mentioned. First: there is no suggestion of malicious intent and no reason to doubt Sheffler's statement that he did this out of frustration. Second, and something that differentiates him very clearly from Hess: this was a single incident, not part of a campaign of intimidation. Sheffler doesn't always speak of Sandra kindly (on a DVD commentary track he calls her "a pain in the ass")¹ but that's not the same thing.

Third: Marc Sheffler has told the story in his own words multiple times, whether in a documentary as here, on a commentary track, or in interviews available online. The details do vary somewhat, which is a subject we shall return to, but the broad strokes are consistent: he felt Sandra was not getting the scene right, he threatened her with being dropped over a cliff of some kind, then on the next take she hit her marks and he framed that as successful problem-solving.

This is where the problem comes in. While, again, there was no malice involved, there didn't need to be for this to be deeply problematic. As an analogy: if I produce a gun and threaten to shoot you in the leg unless you obey me, and only later reveal it was a dummy and I'd never have hurt you, that's still wrong. A threat which is received as at least potentially credible by Sandra, which it must have been or it would have had no effect, is in itself unethical.

This is a different kind of incident from those we have looked at concerning David Hess. Most notably, it is not sexualised or predatory abuse. It is also situational: the threat was confined to a single moment. Nevertheless, it was a significant one – mention of an ambulance in Sheffler's wording shows us that the effect on Sandra was not intended to be trivial. That alone adds to the picture of a set which for her was a frightening and unsafe place to be.

Celluloid Crime of the Century is available on many DVD and Blu-ray editions of Last House on the Left. It is also accessible on YouTube. I have chosen not to embed it in this post, but at the time of writing it can be viewed here.

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.

David Hess admitted threatening Sandra Peabody with rape in Vanity Fair, and nobody noticed

p308, rendered unreadably small for fair use reasons. Hess's quote is between the black lines

Back in the March 2008 edition of Vanity Fair, there was a five thousand word feature article which went into considerable depth about horror cinema pioneers such as George Romero, Tobe Hooper and Wes Craven. The article was bylined Jason Zinoman and was titled "Killer Instincts". David Hess was interviewed for the piece and provided a few short quotes about his time working on The Last House on the Left, though one does get the impression he actually said a little more than made it to print. Still, the quote that matters here is this one:

David Hess, who played Krug with a coiled, maniacal aggression, approached the role with a Method actor's intensity. "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 a co-star 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. I'm going to devastate you.' I don't think she was too happy about that."

When I first came across this – stumbled over it, frankly – I just stared at it for a while. I'd never seen it before, didn't even know it existed. I'll come back to that point in a minute, but this is the closest we're ever likely to get to a smoking gun. This is David Hess, in print, on the record, in a mainstream publication with fact-checkers and a legal team, saying explicitly that he threatened Sandra with sexual violence in order to get a reaction. Let's not soften this by using the unhelpful American media euphemism "assault", either. "I'm really going to fuck you" is unambiguous. He means rape.

This quote also torpedoes the defence of Hess sometimes offered, and indeed the one hinted at in the extract above: that he was merely an extreme Method actor remaining permanently in character. It's not a good defence at the best of times, since that version of Method acting sometimes seems to treat other people's boundaries, consent and welfare as irritating irrelevances to For The Shot – but it fails completely here. Krug isn't making a movie. He would never have said "They'll just let the camera run." He doesn't even have a camera.

This isn't Krug threatening to rape Mari. It's David Hess threatening to rape Sandra Peabody.

That's also clear from his comment that because he was "very mean" (what a euphemism that is) to the girls – Lucy Grantham (Phyllis) presumably being the other – Sandra "didn't have to act" in Mari's rape scene. This is where I pause once again and ask you to consider. When a woman is playing the victim in a notoriously brutal rape scene, do you really think it's a fantastic idea if she "didn't have to act"? No, 1970s exploitation often didn't devote much time to actress welfare, but there were still limits. On Last House there doesn't seem to have been much of a boundary set by Hess short of "No actual rape." As he wasn't an actual rapist, that didn't bother him.

On top of all this, and that appalling and cruel "devastate" closer, there's the clear coercion revealed in the phrase "if you don't behave yourself". This explicitly ties Sandra's personal safety to doing what Hess wants. It doesn't matter ethically that he would not have followed through on his threat of physical violence; that he made the threat with the intention that it produce terror (she "didn't have to act") is enough to be abusive. The lack of any clear indication of what "behave" actually meant made it worse, as Sandra could not be sure which actions might be considered misbehaviour by Hess.

As I said, this was a five thousand word feature article. Hess's admission comes about two thousand words into the piece. Well, I say "admission" but it's lacking in any kind of regret or compassion. "I don't think she was too happy about that" is stomach-turning; you can almost hear Hess smirking.  Zinoman leaves the quote to stand without editorial comment, startling enough in itself from a 2025 perspective, but then goes on to discuss and interview Wes Craven at some length. The number of words devoted to asking Craven about his lead actor threatening his lead actress with rape on his film set?

Zero.

I'll be fair to Zinoman here and say I suspect that, given the culture of that magazine at the time, this was more of an editorial decision than a writer's. But even if we assume that is the case, it is a staggering ethical failure. I was an adult in 2008. If I'd said what Hess did in the course of my job, my feet wouldn't have touched the ground. I'd have been dismissed the same day for gross misconduct, and rightly so. Yet here's an article published in the mainstream media that same year where "I threatened to rape my co-star" is apparently treated as a snippet of colourful trivia from the old days.

I said I'd come back to my not knowing the Vanity Fair quote existed. That's because, apparently, almost nobody has ever mentioned it. If I do a Google on the terms "David Hess" and "They'll just let the camera run. I'm going to devastate you" (avoiding the swear word in case it's asterisked out in any sources) then guess how many hits I get. Go on, guess. It's been seventeen years, remember. No? Then I'll tell you.

Three.

One is the article itself. One is a 2012 academic paper by Allison Virginia Craig.¹ And one is this Quora post. And that last one was written by me a few weeks ago, just after I discovered the article. That's all. Allowing for the fact that there may have been some coverage in publications now lost or outside the scope of Google, that means that the entirety of the professional, semi-professional and fan horror media have either completely missed a star of a landmark horror movie openly admitting to a rape threat, which is very bad – or have seen it but decided not to cover it, which is even worse.

As we'll see as this blog continues, this is not the only time that a blatant confession of abuse in easily accessible Last House media has been repeatedly ignored. This may be the most egregious example of all, though, since unlike many of the others it would surely have been seen by fans not merely of Last House on the Left but of that era of cinema in general: Night of the Living Dead, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, etc. None of them seem to have posted about Hess's threat anywhere indexed by Google, either.

Outside of Vanity Fair itself, the only people who ever seem to have mentioned this are Craig and me. The people who've read her paper or my Quora post know, and now you know as well. Thank you for adding to their number. As with so much about this film, Sandra Peabody deserves better.

¹ Craig, Allison Virginia, ""Only a girl like this can know what's happened to you" : traumatic subjects in contemporary American narratives" (2012). Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024). 535. https://doi.org/10.54014/P20D-9BFW