Keep Telling Yourself It’s Only A Movie: Horror’s Most Controversial Films
By Aaron Posey
2. The Last House On The Left (1972)
This film was the late Wes Craven’s directorial debut. It tells the story of two girls who come upon a gang of murderous criminals. They are tortured and eventually murdered. The gang masquerade as traveling sales people end up at the house of one of the murdered girls. When her parents learn the truth about what happened to their daughter they exact a brutal and graphic revenge on the group.
The over the top graphic violence and the hard to watch scenes (including one of the girls being forced to urinate on herself) elicited a shocked reaction from audiences. Film critic Howard Thompson allegedly walked out of the film after 50 minutes and referred to it as “sickening tripe”