The Last House on the Left

Last House on the Left was torn limb from limb. When Wes Craven and Sean S. Cunningham set out to make a horrifically violent movie, they went at it with ...

There is also the extended version of the scene in which Mari and Phyllis are forced to “make it with each other”, which is briefly alluded to in most copies of the movie, before cutting back to the parents at the house. Given how thoroughly dissected and relocated the movie has been over fifty years, it is miraculous that so much of it has come out the other side at all. The second kind of lost footage - the kind that is not seen in any existing cut of the movie - is the Holy Grail found by Roy Frumkes. There are two kinds of lost footage when it comes to Last House - that which exists in some available cuts of the movie, and that which does not. It is entirely possible that in its long and troubled history, copies of the audio tracks or other exiled pieces of footage ended up somewhere, in an attic or garage, and still exist, just waiting to be found. The essence of the movie remains the same, but there are numerous subtle cuts that are so minimal that one might wonder what the point of their removal is in the first place. Although the sound is missing on all of this lost footage, it does appear that some of these shots are finished enough to have once been in a complete reel. This is the last remaining indicator of an infamous missing scene in which Sadie forcibly performs oral sex on Mari, a scene which according to some sources may have been in the original theatrical cut, and was unsurprisingly and rapidly excised. It is in this vein that the most mysterious and elusive lost footage of Last House is found. Many changes were made throughout the production process: some scenes never made it through to the second draft of the script, some were cut or fell through during filming, others made it through the editing room. Although Last House’s imagery seems tame in comparison to these titles, it really pushed the bounds of decency in its day, so much so that its most offensive scenes have not been seen in any cut of the movie in over forty years. The guys knew what they were doing, and in the early stages of development, threw around some really out-there ideas, including the