Family frictions: Marc Sheffler with Jeramie Rain and David A. Hess in Last House on the Left

In September of 1971, I was cast in the role of “Junior Stillo”, in a film then entitled The Sex Crime of the Century.  In its original visioning, it was supposed to be eighty some minutes of torture, slasher porn and nothing more. Although, Wes (Craven) did tell us at some point, that he intended us to push the boundaries of film violence and make the audience experience human on human viciousness up close and personal. Apparently, what he and we did thirty-eight years ago in the Connecticut woods succeeded.

Since participating in Last House I back in 1971, I’ve been extremely fortunate and have had an actual career in television and film. I’ve learned a great deal and am now infinitely smarter regarding the process of filmmaking. However, the foundation of what I now know was acquired during those four weeks in Connecticut and I am grateful to Sean and Wes for providing me that opportunity.

Now we come to Dr. Claire Henry’s article, which I believe is brilliantly written. She makes her points precisely and logically, and articulates them deftly, but with the luxury of intellectual hindsight. Every point she proffers makes perfect sense.  The problem I have is its REDEMPTION OF THE REMAKE premise, because it relies on certain assumptions made about the original.

Generally, I am not a big fan of film re-makes.  I’m down for sequels, but not remakes. Re-making films is as ridiculous as re-writing novels.  Imagine strolling into a bookstore only to find a large cardboard white whale hawking, Moby Dick (2013)?  That’s why I avoided seeing Last House (2009) until I was asked to write this commentary. 

Films are a unique art form. Because the finished product is the net result of an extraordinarily amount of hard work by a lot of people, many of whom individually, are not thought of as artistic: Electricians, Grips, Drivers, Craft Service people, etc. In other times, in other art, they could’ve been the guys who built the scaffolds so Da Vinci could lie flat on his back and paint the Sistine Chapel, or, the ones who brought Leonardo his lunch. Did these people paint the Sistine Chapel? No, they did not, but did they work on it? Yes, they did. And in their individual effort, set Leonardo free to paint the best damn Sistine Chapel there is.  Making a film is no different. First a writer, then a producer, then a director, then actors, editors, DP’s, Ads, Grips, Gaffers. It’s the melding of all these people during this process that determines a film’s soul. Some make out better than others. How much a film cost to produce is irrelevant.  Last House 1 cost about $91,000.00 to make in 1971, and was done by a majority of people who hadn’t done much film making at all.

Well, clearly something went right, because it’s 2013, forty-two years later, and people are still writing about it, trying to figure it out.  Last House 1 has become what it was because it’s a raw, way out of the box film, shot in a guerilla film making, semi-documentary style by semi-amateur film makers. Nobody told us what we couldn’t do, so we did what we wanted.  The only restriction we had was money. We didn’t have a lot of it to waste so we had to make pretty much everything work – at least most of the time.  Our innocence bonded into a passion and our individual souls melded. Cast and crew fed creatively off each other. Trust me. I’ve been around a long time. Those kind of miraculous moments in time are rare, which is why they are nearly impossible to duplicate. They either happen, or they don’t.  But if lightning does strike, as it did with Last House 1, trying to do it again never works. 

This is why I challenge the validity of Dr. Henry’s premise with the following question: If Last House 1 did not exist, would anyone give Last House 2009 a second thought forty-three years from now in any other context than its relationship to last House 1?  If the answer to that question is not a resounding “Yes!” then I believe, respectfully, that Dr. Henry’s premise is flawed. Last House 2 cannot be redeemed, because it’s not a film that stands on its own two narrative feet. It must lean on its predecessor to remain upright.  When LH1 opened, it was unique, different, controversial, and unlike any film it the marketplace of its day. This is why it had the impact it had. That was a moment in time that’s gone forever. It can’t be repeated. Last House 2 was cast with several well-known actors with prominent film and TV careers.  Last House 1 was cast with actors who had no careers whatsoever. Nobody knew who we were, and that anonymity contributed to the semi-documentary, this could be real quality of LH1.

The only real rule Wes had was this: He always wanted the violence front and center, right up in people’s faces.  This was because he was hacked off at the watered-down news coverage of the Viet Nam War and wanted to “say” something about that.

But, was there any intention on our part to comment on the deep, sociological, constructing/de-constructing of the American family unit? I’m afraid not. Wes had the over the top violence goal going and the financiers of Last House 1 wanted a cheap, bloody, sex/porn movie, made especially for the drive-in cinema audience. This was we all set out to accomplish. 

Simple truths and instinctive filmmaking: constructing controversy in Last House on the Left

The simple, uncomplicated truth is, during those four weeks in Connecticut, we were all too busy, trying to make the day, (complete the scheduled scenes), smoke pot, drink and have as much sex as possible to be concerned with DEEP. On the set, we were mostly figuring shit out as we went along.  There was no thinking about what relevant comments on the dark side of the human condition this film might represent. All that depth and social significance came way after, mostly thanks to educated film analysts like Dr. Henry. I know my opinion may be in stark contrast to those who analyze LH1. But what do I know? I was only there. Trust me, we were all way too young. Profound hadn’t found any of us yet. But the irony is, though: Never intending to make any kind of lasting social statement whatsoever, apparently, that’s exactly what we did.

Horrific Scenes Go Hollywood
Much of what troubles me about LH 2, is that it seems to be a film without a soul, as if all of its key players came together for no reason other than it was a job on a random remake.  That’s why LH 2’s replication of iconic moments from the original seems thin, over-produced and ‘tricked-up’.  For instance, the Mari rape scene (circa 1971) has often been described as one of the most brutal, unrelenting, debasing ever-captured on film. 

Celluloid controversies: Last House on the Left and the notorious scene of violation

Because the camera held on Mari’s face for what seemed like unending moments of anguish, only cutting away to tighter shots of Krug’s (portrayed brilliantly by David Hess’) face pressing down on Mari’s cheek, saliva dripping from his mouth as he violated her inside and out. Then some close cutaway shots of the rest of us reacting to what’s happening.  Brilliant, right?  Maybe. But more truthfully, Wes had only one camera and enough film and light left to shoot the scene three times.  His cinematic story-telling instincts, though nascent, were sufficient to guide his placement of the camera in the three perfect positions to capture the actions and reactions sufficiently so they’d cut together into one cogent, yet terrorizing scene.  LH 2 had the luxury of better cameras, better lenses, better lighting, better everything. It was like a refrigerator stuffed with condiments, but nothing to put them on.  However, in contrast, the Mari rape scene (circa 2009) was tolerable to watch. And it shouldn’t have been. Our bodies house our souls. That makes rape the ultimate home invasion crime. It should never be easy to watch. Never ever! True to his vision, Wes got that one very, very right.

Through its screenplay, LH (2009) tries to message something it believes important. As Dr. Henry aptly states in comparison to the original, LH (2009) is “about celebrating rather than condemning violence, and reassuring the audience rather than implicating them in ethical questions raised by American actions in the ‘war on terror.”’ The screenplay for Last House (1971) is, in its own way, unarguably laughable and simplistic. But why shouldn’t it have been? Wes wasn’t an experienced or crafted screenwriter and neither was anyone else connected with the production.  That actual LH1 script was exactly what logic dictated it be; a thin skeleton narrative of scenes strung together and punctuated by barely competent, and at times, idiotic dialogue.  What ended up on the screen was largely improvisation. During the shoot, Wes told us what he wanted in each scene and we pretty much adlibbed until he was satisfied he had what he wanted.  But it was relevant to its times.

The screenplay for Last House (2009) was equally thin and moronic, … but it shouldn’t have been.  That’s what worried me about the film, because I had some expectation that the screenplay would be thirty-eight years of experience better.  Come on. This is Hollywood. There are tons of talented writers here. A better script could’ve been written.  It’s sad that there seemed no intention to improve on Last House 1971, other than with some visual bells and whistles.

In another inexplicable departure from LH1, is that the gang’s initial contact with Mari and Paige is completely accidental. As a screenwriter, that seemed convenient and unmotivated. However, in LH1, to placate Sadie and satisfy his own unchecked urges, Krug sends Junior out to bring back some “entertainment”.  That gave the audience insight into Krug’s malevolent character. It was his evil that drove LH1 to its conclusion.

On the whole, and to his credit, to Mr. Illiadis absolutely has made a far better motion picture than Wes ever did. He certainly had more toys to play with, so why not?  But he failed to make nearly as gripping a film as Wes. My sense is he was only concerned crafting “cool shots”, and not with telling a story powerful enough to survive without such smart moments. At its nightmarish essence, The Last House on the Left is an extremely raw tale, emotionally and physically. Couching its telling in long, smooth, “Hollywood” shots undercuts the visceral, unrelenting brutality as its essence.

The following quote is adapted from the abstract to Dr. Henry’s paper, where she states that “The article suggests that the remake ‘redeems’ the notorious The Last House on the Left for a post-9/11 audience through its assertion of family values; comically excessive ‘torture porn’ aesthetic of violence; redemptive ending; and its return to the moral clarity and ideological divisions between good guys and bad guys embedded in Craven’s source text, The Virgin Spring (Ingmar Bergman, 1960).”

While I applaud the author’s consideration of both films, and the cultural contexts which appear to have spawned them, I just don’t see any sociological connection whatsoever to LH2 and the events of 9/11 or beyond. In LH 2009, Krug and Company, (another short-lived title of LH1), were just your run of the mill, lowlife American scumbag criminals. They were not Jihadists. They believed in nothing but their own individual, (not philosophical), survival.

Okay, by now it’s clear that there’s a lot I don’t like about LH 2009. But to be perfectly fair, after being in the film and TV world for over forty years, there’s a lot about the original Last House that I also dislike.  None of us, including Wes or Sean, knew much about actual filmmaking. Sean had made one film prior to LH, a soft-core pseudo-documentary entitled Together (1970), and Wes had been scraping by editing small films on an old Steenbeck machine in Sean’s office.  The only exception to this was Fred Lincoln. (I’m writing this in February of 2013. Last week, I found out that Fred had passed away.) Fred actually knew a great deal about filmmaking and was exceptionally generous in his sharing of that knowledge.

The rest of us, including Wes, were literally babes in the woods stumbling around with one camera, one soundman, and some rudimentary, but clearly effective old-school special effects. What’s become Last House’s 1971 signature look of almost a documentary on the unfolding of a real crime was because it didn’t have the luxury of being a “Hollywood” film. Last House 2009 is too well made. To explore this a little more fully, let’s compare the two tag lines for these two films:

Last House 1971…

“To avoid fainting, keep repeating "It's only a movie...It's only a movie..." 

As per the above poster: Short, to the point, and just vague enough to be ominous.

Last House 2009…

“If bad people hurt someone you love, how far would you go to hurt them back?”

Long, perhaps not correct grammatically, and requiring an answer achieved by intellectual and emotional self-examination. And most importantly, NOT SCARY! It’s more of a question on a People’s Magazine pop psychology test, than the tag line of a horror/slasher film.

Last House on the Hess
Now that I’m not only a produced writer for the last thirty-some years, but also teacher of screenwriting at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, I’ve come to believe that the most pivotal scene in LH 1971 was the dinner scene. That scene raised the stakes from simple psychopathic, sociopathic criminal behavior to an outright declaration of class warfare.

Every aspect of that scene that could be controlled, was designed to highlight depth of the difference in obvious class/stature in life distinction between the Collingwood’s and Krug and his ersatz family. Even David’s dress-up clothes were meant to be ill fitting, in order to make him uncomfortable in them. That wasn’t an accident.  It was meant to show how different Krug really was and that even “normal” clothes do did not fit him. This is where Krug’s boundaries of behavior expand to include not only, simple, criminal disregard for the sanctity of life, but a narcissistic rational, justification for his past and future actions. They were and are anarchical statements, and violent volleys in this own personal class war of his.  His self-loathing fills the screen.

Mari and Phyllis were killed because they were victims and witness to some of Krug and Company’s other crimes, and they were killed and discarded for the safety of his gang – his family.

The dinner scene in LH1 makes a bad situation worse. Because it holds a mirror up to Krug’s face and he sees himself for who he really is: a low-class, never have nothing, never will have anything loser, scum.  Instantly, he’s reminded that all he ever had was trash, all he has now is trash, and all he has to look forward to is more of the same. This makes Krug is very angry, and worse, he’s offended. That personal affront causes him to sever completely from civilized society.  All bets are now, truly off.
 

Civilization and its monsters: Last House does dinner

Then, in the bedroom scene that follows, we see Krug’s fuse has been lit. He feels taunted and judged by the Collingwood’s. He expresses hatred for what he perceived as their superficial perfection: A successful doctor, a great house, and a pretty wife. These are all the things in life that Krug might want and fantasized having, but never will.  When Krug expresses his resentment of them, he is really telling the audience that whatever happens to the Collingwood’s from this point forward, is their fault just because of who they are. That’s quite a complex character and character shift that David Hess pulled off effortlessly out of sheer instinct.  

Garret Dillahunt is both an exceptionally talented actor, and a pal. But as ‘Krug 2009’, he was not as physically and psychologically imposing as David Hess. David and I shared an apartment in NYC during the release of LH1. There were one-sheets papered all over town. And I will tell you that when people saw him walking down the street, they would cross to the other side or turn around and go back the other way.

David Hess’s other significant contribution to the success of the original Last House was his signature, very non-traditional soundtrack and musical score.  The tone of his songs ranged from silly honky-tonk, “Weasel and Junior, Sadie and Krug”, - to hopeless, “The Road Leads To Nowhere”, to the haunting, “Now You’re All Alone”, which underscored the aftermath of Mari’s rape scene and preceded her killing. The poetry of David’s lyrics was nothing short of brilliant, and his music was likewise.  

My last point comparing the two films is about David Hess and his extraordinary contribution to the success and impact of Last House 1. Without David Hess as Krug in the original, it would’ve raised some eyebrows, but wouldn’t have had nearly the impact. Literally, acting on instinct, David carried off portraying a very complex character. He was a sociopath, a killer, a father, master manipulator, and sadistic leader of his pack of two-legged coyotes.  Certainly, as a character, a full time job.

Chaos or Lost Last House Links
In 2004, I got involved with another home invasion, crime film, entitled Chaos. As it turned out, Chaos became a more honest, re-telling of Bergman’s The Virgin Spring than did Last House 2009.

Unofficial renditions: David De Falco's Chaos

My involvement happened because of David. Dating back to somewhere in the late 1990’s, whenever there was a Horror Film Convention in the L.A. area, chances are Hess was booked to appear. He’d show up with his big black suitcase filled with production stills from Last House and his other films, his latest original music on CD’s, a special CD version of the Last House Soundtrack. He was a traveling all things David Hess store. Anyway, David would always ask me if I wanted to go with him and sign autographs for twenty bucks a pop?  It was at one such an event that I met David DeFalco, future writer/director of Chaos, and present and past diehard Last House fanatic.  He told Hess about Chaos and offered him a part. Hess accepted and was hired. (It was only during the course of pre-production that David was then released from his contract due to the characteristic personality clashes that can often mar independent productions.) I was offered acting role as well during this pre-production period, but declined.  But writer/director David DeFalco was a lifelong fan of LH1. Growing up in Boston, he told me that, as a kid, he’d seen it some thirty times at the Drive-In. He was amusingly persistent that I get involved with Chaos. He told me that his intention was not to make an “unauthorized remake of Last House on the Left”, ripping it off, but to craft an homage to a film that was such a large part of his youth.  And to have a member of the original cast on board with his film was a fantasy he hoped to realize. Even so, I kept declining to appear as an actor. Ever the wheeler-dealer, DeFalco offered me a co-producer position, which would include refining the script, among other creative responsibilities. That interested me, so I accepted.  

With our mutual participations, Chaos evolved as a direct tribute to LH1. To this extent Chaos reproduced the theme of two girls waylaid by a gang of urban thugs who rape and abuse them before encountering the vengeful parents of one of the victims. In order to give the film a more contemporary edge, Chaos uses the backdrop of a rave as the place where the two female victims are abducted. We also chose to heighten the cynical view of the police authority that Wes referenced in the original, by making the local Sheriff a racist who fails to fully investigate the teenagers’ abductions because one of the two victims is of mixed race. As another important revision to Wes’ original tale, we also decided on providing an even more downbeat ending to the movie, which once again extends the moral ambiguities so central to the impact of Last House 1. By reproducing and yet contemporizing the themes of Last House, I feel Chaos went some way towards reproducing its most daring and unsettling elements for a more modern American audience. 

During its pre-production and production I had endless hours of discussion with David DeFalco about the original, its production processes and the end result. Regarding Chaos, David and I were determined to keep the violence raw, with the audience’s POV as if they raised a window blind, looked out and witnessed a horrific crime in process.

Raw terror: the visceral violence of Chaos

Like the original Last House, in order for Chaos to have any impact whatsoever, it had to push the envelope of criminal perpetrated screen violence. That was the film’s goal, and that visceral quest was achieved without question. There was nothing in LH2 that audiences had never seen before. But there were scenes in Chaos that repulsed and repelled the audience, mirroring the effect LH1 had on its audiences in 1972. For this reason alone, I believe it to be a truer re-envisioning of the original Last House than LH 2. Though only a bastard child of LH1, it carries much more of it’s paternal DNA than its more vanilla half-sibling.  Unfortunately, it was probably for that reason that Chaos was trashed by most of the critics who originally reviewed it.  However, these reviewers failed to also recall that LH1 was largely vilified critically as well when it was first released. What I would argue that Chaos managed to do, like its predecessor, is to brutally confirm that no matter where or when you live, there will always be very bad people committing unspeakable criminal acts on innocent victims. It’s an ugly reality contained within the whole of the human experience. Art, be it sculpture, paintings, books, music, or film has a responsibility to reflect that reality with no obligation whatsoever to always be pretty.

I’ve mentioned earlier in this piece that addition to teaching screen and television writing at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, I remain (with humility) a working screenwriter, producer and director.  The loss of a dear colleague and close friend such as David Hess has made me refocus on my Last House roots, as well as David’s roles in related home invasion greats such as House on the Edge of the Park (which I believe is covered elsewhere in this journal).  

Back sometime in the early fall of 2011, during one of our routine phone calls, this surrogate big brother, close friend, and verbal sparring partner for the last thirty-seven years mentioned that he’d be in touch with Ruggero Deodato, who was planning a new version of The House on the Edge of the Park, and Ruggero had promised him the starring role.  Of course I was thrilled for David who was really excited.  Him! Ruggero! Together again! I’d met Ruggero through David a couple of times at horror film conventions, and from what I saw, the two of them together was like watching an Italian Comedy Team.  I had no idea what they were saying to each other, but it was quite entertaining. Through the phone leapt Hess’s signature over-the-top mixture of certitude and over-enthusiasm! It was a treat to hear. And like any really good big brother, David would always include me in his plans. If he was going to make this new House on the Edge of the Park, he could guarantee me there’d be a part for me.  He would just tell Ruggero, that that’s the way it is, and that’s the way it will be.  Not a problem. 

Putting that in perspective, over the previous forty years, Hess had said the exact same thing to me about other projects with the exact same certitude, conviction, and enthusiasm, no less than one hundred times. I am not exaggerating.  That’s how David was. If he was doing something, real or not, He wanted me to do it with him.  So, like I had always done in the past, I thanked him for thinking of me, and told him that if there was a part for me, great. But don’t make it an issue. I reminded him that acting was something I had little interest in doing. If it works out, fine, if not, not a big deal. We talked a bit more. Wished each other well. At the end of every phone in excess of ten minutes, Hess would always tell me he loved me. I said it back, but not often enough.  And I’m not even sure if I said it this time. We talked a bit more, wished each other well and hung up

The not-so-bad-baddies: Marc Sheffler with Jeramie Rain, the late David Hess and the late Fred Lincoln

I didn’t hear from David for a couple of weeks. Then, on the ninth of October, my phone rang and I saw David’s name. I answered with my usual, “Hey Hess, what’s up?” Only it wasn’t David. It was his son Jesse, crying on the other end and telling me that David had died.  David had died? I just talked to him a week or so ago? Shock! My heart thumped like a base drum in a marching band.  It’s true. In moments like this time stands still. It just freezes. It’s funny how in life, things that feel much better, go by much faster.

On October 13, 2011, I drove from LA up to Marin County with my wife Pati and the actor Elya Baskin, who was also a close friend of David’s, and through him, a casual acquaintance of mine.  The ride up was a blend of shock, grief, and fascinating Hess stories, of which there are hundreds, if not thousands. Elya too, had been promised a part in every film Hess was involved with over the years. Like me, not one ever happened. We didn’t care. That was Hess.

His memorial service was in the early evening later that day, somewhere up a dark, windy, opening shot of a horror film road. Then the scary road ended and we were at a serene, peaceful, redwood thick forest, large log cabin retreat. What a contradiction – from that dark, scary road to this place - utter and absolute serenity. What a coincidence!  I don’t think so. That was David Hess. He was a man of infinite and instant extremes.  I will always miss him, always.

Why I mention the impact of David’s passing, is that I have been asked recently to write the screenplay and come on board as a producer for this new rendition of The House on the Edge of the Park, which will be developed with Ruggero and Giovanni Lombardo Radice. To honor the memory of David Hess, genre icon and my de facto big brother, I have accepted. Because of the intense sadness at losing one of the dearest friends I will ever have in my life, a great determination to draft a suitable and shocking story that would honor to this iconic genre actor has been forged, which we hope will do justice to the brand of intensity he brought to Last House and his subsequent roles.

Thank you for your time,

Marc Sheffler

After “Last House”,Mr. Sheffler decided to pursue a career in stand-up comedy, writing and producing. He has appeared at the Improv, the Comedy Store on Sunset, and his name is inscribed on the Comedy Store Wall of Fame along with contemporaries Jay Leno, Robin Williams, David Letterman and Billy Crystal.  His writing and producing credits include "Sister, Sister", "Harry and the Hendersons", "Who's the Boss", and "Charles in Charge" to name but a few. He's also been involved with many pilots, made for TV movies, and television specials, including "The Little Shop of Horrors" pilot, "The Happy Days Reunion Show" and "The Best of the Hollywood Palace" specials. Some of the well known Executive Producers Sheffler has worked with are: Norman Lear, (Sandford and Son) George Schlatter, (If She Dies She Dies), Don Mischer (The People’s Choice Awards), Steven Speilberg (Harry And The Hendersons, and Garry Marshall (Happy Days Reunion Special).  In 2002, Mr. Sheffler turned his attention to feature films and with Marlon Parry, produced David DeFalco’s controversial “CHAOS”. In 2006, he co-wrote and produced another horror film, GIRLS GONE DEAD. After over 30 years of writing and producing, he is now directing   In January of 2011, he joined the faculty of Loyola Marymount University’s prestigious School of Film and Television, where he will be teaching Screenwriting, Half-hour Sitcom Pilot writing and Writing The Situation Comedy.