Shock Value - Jason Zinoman [1]
What he saw was a curly-haired maniac named Krug, wide-eyed and scowling, sitting on the chest of a girl in the middle of the woods. Her face was a mask of terror and disgust. Krug carved the word “Love” into her chest. A crowd of hooligans cheered. With a half-crazed sneer, Krug, holding a knife, stared lasciviously at the struggling girl. Then he drooled all over her. This wasn’t scary movie stuff that would make your girlfriend cuddle up on your shoulder. This would send her running out of the car. Cunningham didn’t know what to make of The Last House on the Left, and he couldn’t believe that Craven had directed it. A father of two kids who left his job upstate as a literature professor, Craven was shy, cerebral, and very, very mellow. Rarely angry or overly emotional, Craven betrayed the habits of a small-town academic whose mild rebellions included long hair, pot smoking, and avant-garde theater. He was more likely to make a terrible pun than to offer a harsh insult. He hardly seemed to fit the part of the bomb-throwing provocateur.
Craven asked one his former students, Steve Chapin, to drop by to discuss working on the music for the movie. When Chapin came in and saw what was on the screen, it made him think of the mayhem caused by Charles Manson, whose recent murder trial had made him the most famous criminal in America. “It’s a thriller,” Craven told him. “Tough stuff.”
Chapin, who had the laid-back affect of a downtown folksinger, watched Krug carve his initials into the body of his victim. There were no cutaway shots, no suggestion, just a graphic, vile assault, shot with the discretion of a snuff film. “You guys sure about this?” Chapin said in a thick Brooklyn accent. “Are you allowed to do this? Are you allowed to do this in America?” Maybe he didn’t really know Craven after all.
Trying to reassure him that everything was respectable, or at least as much as such entertainment usually is, Cunningham said, “Don’t worry: it’s just a joke.” For him, the point was shock value; Chapin later asked to be removed from the credits.
Cunningham struck out into movies when there were not many independent feature companies operating out of New York. He was a natural showman, and his great insight as a promoter was in his advertisements subverting the usual puffery (“Scariest Film of All Time!”) that no one believed anymore. Instead, he told the audience to stay away—for their own good. “Not recommended for persons over 30” the poster for The Last House on the Left warned. For those brave enough to attend, the ad urged: “Just keep telling yourself: It’s Only a Movie. It’s Only a Movie.” Craven, however, was not interested in offering such comfort. To him, the point was to make the horrific violence look so real that you might entertain the thought that maybe this isn’t just a movie. Wes Craven was serious.
He wasn’t the only one. On the West Coast, around the same time, another few aspiring filmmakers were watching a maniacal-looking man with scraggly hair wield a knife over a young girl. Dan O’Bannon, the actor playing the sweaty brute with an authentic-sounding southern accent, appeared at first in shadow, a dark shape walking down a hill. The director cut to a virginal babysitter sitting in the living room by herself when she answered the phone. She hears only heavy breathing. Silence. The phone rings again, more breathing. “Is this one of your jokes?” she says, the television blaring in the background. Suddenly the perspective shifts to a shaky camera shot outside the suburban house where the potential victim appears through the window. The phone rings again, but it’s the operator this time: “The killer’s inside the house!” The lulling tone shifts into hectic cuts and a synthesizer