Mondo brutale (1972)

Mondo brutale: Directed by Wes Craven. With Sandra Peabody, Lucy Grantham, David Hess, Fred J. Lincoln. Two teenage girls heading to a rock concert for one’s birthday try to score marijuana in the city, where they are kidnapped and brutalized by a gang of psychopathic convicts.

“Much as I admire it, I can only watch Wes Cravenu0026#39;s brilliant debut feature once every few years; as sheer stomach-churning brutality goes, it makes SALO look like Sondheim. Craven has said he made the movie as extreme as it is as his comment on the obscenity of Vietnam. Iu0026#39;ve heard that number many a time (Ruggero Deodato blames CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST on the Red Brigade!), but in Cravenu0026#39;s case, itu0026#39;s so palpable itu0026#39;s believable. LAST HOUSE may be the first (and is certainly the most far-out) case of a horror movie that eschews suspense, tingles, shock, in the wake of sheer, harrowing barbarism.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eBased on Bergmanu0026#39;s THE VIRGIN SPRING, it tells the tale of a couple of young girls on their way to a concert who fall prey to a Manson-like family. Their rape-murders are avenged by a suddenly wised-up couple of parents who, in their restitution, find themselves as blood-bespattered and guilty as their prey.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eLAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT is a grindhouse GUERNICA, an outcry over desensitization to violence that leaves you feeling shaken and desolated. It genuinely reupholsters the word u0026quot;horror.u0026quot; For most, the clarity of Cravenu0026#39;s intentions wonu0026#39;t be enough to redeem the dire viciousness of what the director puts you through. For me, the ferocity of the movie has a cleansing, Artaudian pureness.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eOne question: Craven made this film and his masterpiece, THE HILLS HAVE EYES, the ultimate statement on the nuclear family in post-Woodstock, post-Altamont America. He then went on to make a load of occasionally mildly amusing but mostly godawful movies. Whatu0026#39;s the story?”