Ingmar Bergman died last year. I love his films and anyone with any sense should as well. My favourite's "
The Seventh Seal" but my pal Lin's favourite is "
The Virgin Spring". I guess that was ruined for me a bit as I knew the ending due to Wes Craven's piss poor attempt at remaking it as "
Last House on the Left".
"To avoid fainting keep repeating it's only a movie,
it's only a movie,
it's only a movie,
it's only a movie,
it's only a movie...
Nice tagline. Poor film.
Warning. This article compares two films and talks about the plot of both in depth there are spoilers and too many to use hide tags. If you haven't seen either "The Virgin Springs" or "Last House on the Left" (or the new remake of "
Last House of the Left") I'd recommend not continuing. I would also recommend watching Bergman's classic first.
To sum up two girls, Mari and Phyllis, head off to the city to see a band. Whilst in the city they ask a guy if he can score them some weed. Unbeknown to the girls the guy they are asking is a recently escaped convict's son. Krug and Weasel have escaped from jail with Krug's girlfriend Sadie and are hiding out. Krug's son, Junior, has been sent out to get some girls back for some "fun". Seeing we know both Weasel and Krug are convicted rapists, amongst other things, we know where this is leading.
Before we even get to this part we hear some awful dialogue. Sadie is described on the radio as being "cat-like". What sort of tin pot police department would use that as a description? Fucking hell. Nothing about age, height, build or colour of hair. I wonder if any furries were detained that night. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. It's truly cringeworthy the way people talk to each other in this film and Mari's father (played by Gaylord St. James) at one point comments on his daughter's lack of bra and sounds like an Austrian man about to make some adjustments to his wine cellar.
Anyway Junior leads them back to the flat and they are kidnapped. The next morning Krug puts them into his car boot and they drive into the country. The four felons, however, don't know they are heading where the girls come from. After some rape and torture both girls are disposed of and the killers dress up smartly and ask at Mari's parent's house if they can stay the night as their car is broke down. Mari's mother notices a piece of jewellery she'd just given her daughter as a present and decides to reap revenge.
The death of the girl in "The Virgin Spring" is just as shocking as the death of both girls in "Last House.." and doesn't need a visceral shock factor to achieve it. The killings are different although both have their similarities. In "The Virgin Spring" the girl is trusted by her parents to go to church and doesn't. Even in Bergman films the old horror "rules" applied and the innocent has to be shown to be imperfect before her death. Instead she meets three shepherds, including a younger boy. The two older sheperds rape her and then hit her on the head with a branch to shut her up. The sheperds seem shaken by the killing, the boy especially, and when the girl's father takes his revenge at the end of the film we feel no sense of justice being done and the father himself wrestles with his conscious, religion and sense of duty before and after the killings. In "Last House..." the girls are trusted to go to the concert but swing aside to get some drugs and this leads them to their killers.
The two sheperds roles are given over to Krug and Weasel and the child's role is given to Junior. Although in "Last House..." Junior becomes an adult we learn that Krug had previously got him addicted to heroin on purpose to have control over him. Junior struggles with his own conscience and his need for a fix constantly. Once joining Mari as she tries to escape and once trying to save Mari's father from Krug. Eventually confronting his father with a gun to stop him but ends up, torn by his own guilt and pressured by his own father, takes his own life with the gun.
Craven obviously felt Bergman's tactic of having the father kill the innocent boy at the end forced us to question the rights and wrongs of the father's actions didn't fit his own film. We would have been sympathetic towards Junior if he'd been killed in the name of justice and such deep thoughts have no place in "Last House..." Craven wants us to seek the death of the people who have wronged these people and deprived them of their daughter.
The DVD release has an extra disc showing the scenes recently unbanned by the BBFC but not on the release I have sadly. They aren't bad as you can watch them a still frame at a time on the extras disc and has Krug carving his name onto the Mari's chest and forcing the other girl to piss herself. The DVD release also has Craven discuss what he says are his motives to make the film. Comparing it to Vietnam and the horrors there, which was fresh in the mind of America at the time, as well as talking about making the viewer examine their own motives for wanting the death of the killers. Bullshit.
Firstly that was already done in Bergman's masterpiece, as well as discussing the impact Christianity had on Sweden as a whole at the time as it struggled to free itself of it's Pagan past, it questioned the family unit as well as the ideas of innocence, redemption and regret.
Craven removes all talk of religion, which is perfectly understandable, but when it shows excerpts from the original script, such as genital mutilations and in depth descriptions of the rape scene it sounds more like he was making some crap Euro-trash gore/porn exploitation hybrid. For a first time director/producer/writer team aiming for the drive-in market it's understandable that creating a lot of controversy would get the film noticed. At some point, however, he toned it down. Mostly due to the actors refusal to film a few scenes. Considering most of the actors had backgrounds in porn that may paint a picture of how sick it was.
Craven isn't a bad director however. As much as he's raped the ideas of the original to make a few bob he didn't totally lose all of Bergman's vision. Bergman's victim was the father's favourite while her adopted sister, pregnant with a bastard child, was shunned and seen as a bad influence the friend of Mari is seen as a bad influence by her father. Although Bergman's leading lady went astray of her own accord ours was seen as being led on a bit in order to get drugs. Bergman's killers showed great regret at their killing but were still cold enough to steal the clothes and jewellery from their killing. After the death of Mari we see Sadie, Krug and Weasel stare at the spot where the dead girl floats in the water for a few seconds with a hint of shame around them. The shepherds in the earlier film were joined by an innocent boy and Krug's gang has a man-child with them. The ideas of lost innocence, regret, revenge do remain but are diluted by the attempts at making the film as shocking as possible.
Finally Craven decided to put in two bumbling cops as "comic relief". Without doubt the stupidest idea any film maker has had since Jerry Lewis decided to make a comedy about someone trying to persuade little children to go to the gas chamber in a concentration camp (
a film I am determined to see by the way).
Aside from the awful dialogue, the dire acting, the poorly recorded and out of place soundtrack and the random insertion of the fucking
Chuckle Brothers into the film. Craven went on to be a more than capable, and perhaps the world's most famous horror director and showed some touches of it in this film. He developed them further in
"The Hills Have Eyes", which is a far better film than this one, and then again with the first "
Nightmare on Elm Street".
The film had a less glorious future. Originally released in the cinema it was banned as a video nasty in 1984. It was given a limited re-release in cinemas in 2000 and 2001 with cuts before getting a release in 2002 as an 18 with cuts. Only this year was it finally released uncut, including the scenes available on the two disc edition, thus ending a huge wait for sad bastards, perverts and anti-censorship campaigners alike. Like most things banned by the BBFC it was harsh. Like most films banned by the BBFC it was also no great loss.
Revenge films have two ways to go really. Like The Virgin Spring we can question the idea of revenge and turn the hero into an anti-hero. It's been that way since Odysseus got home and stabbed up some chancers or you can just forget about the morals and have us rooting for the bad ass mother fucker slicing, dicing and shooting their way through whatever group of people were cruising for a bruising. In doing so you can make some real heroes like
John McLean.
Deadbeat at Dawn is closer to the film Craven was probably trying to make from a revenge viewpoint. What you should surely never do is go halfway towards one and halfway towards the other. John McLean couldn't have said "Yippe kayay motherfucker" if we'd just seen him crying after taking another person's life.
Ach well. We'll let Craven off as it was his first time and he introduced us to Michael Berryman in his next film.
