I should correct something that Quint said in his introduction to Capone's review, that "having Sage Stallone in it is almost a stamp of approval" because of Stallone's involvement in restoring and releasing gorey Italian movies. By now Quint has probaly heard that when Stallone signed up it was to work with his friend David Hess (from LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT... what an incredible coincidence!) who was playing the sheriff. When Hess was fired a few days into production Stallone tried to quit but couldn't get out of his contract. And this has apparently led to at least one humorously tense panel discussion at a horror convention. It's not clear to me whether or not the cast really signed on thinking it was an official remake, but whatever happened, you can't deny it's a brazen daylight robbery.

To me that's the biggest strike against the movie, that it's an unnecessary and not very good remake of LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, and that they won't even admit it. The only big difference is that they dumped the booby traps the parents made in the original and changed the ending. In their version the cops try to get the dad to put down the gun he has to Chaos's head. For no reason, the sheriff shoots the dad in the forehead! Then the mom shoots the sheriff, Chaos shoots the other cop, then shoots the mom and cackles as we fade to black.

The ending is actually kind of a relief because after so much sadism you get to laugh at these idiots and their attempts to be shocking. Craven was pretentious when he made his movie but that's better than this moronic Insane Clown Posse type "dark" bullshit. OOOOOH! He's laughing! because he's EVIL. And not only that, he's CHAOS. EVIL CHAOS. Zip-a-dee-doo-dah. You can probaly be an idiot and get away with making a "fun" type of horror movie, but you gotta have a little bit of intelligence behind this grim nihilistic stuff if you don't want it to be laughable and sad.

I guess because of that dumbass change to the ending they have convinced themselves that their movie is not a ripoff. In fact, nowhere on any of the extras do they ever mention LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT. It's almost as if some sort of lawyer had advised them not to mention it. They do mention being inspired by "all those '70s drive-in movies" but they're careful to always specify that this means TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE. TEXAS CHAIN SAW is of course named as the inspiration for the chain saw fight at the end, even though it happens to be exactly like the chain saw fight in LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, which came first. The closest they ever come to mentioning LAST HOUSE is on the commentary track when Bernheim gets defensive about the parents' revenge at the end:

SJB: "And this is a theme that dates back to mythology, to folklore."

DD: "Yeah, it's a public domain story."

SJB: "it's a theme that, that, you know, a revenge theme. It's not the principle focus of the movie."

Of course, all of us remember that old folk tale about the father whose daughter and her friend get raped and killed in the woods by a gang of fugitives (one female, the rest male) and there's the two wacky cops looking for the girls and then the fugitives come ask to stay at the father's house and he notices that they have an article of his daughter's clothing and they must've killed her so he attacks them with a chain saw. I think it was called "Anansi the Spider" or something, I forget, but it was a good folk tale. And public domain. Don't worry about it.

On the commentary track they go on and on about how they were trying to make a movie that depicted violence as ugly and not glamorous, as if they had no idea that Craven was going for the same thing with his movie almost 35 years ago, or that he described his goals similarly on his commentary track. It's like they live in some alternate universe where LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT doesn't even exist.

That must be it because how else do you explain an extended debate with Roger Ebert about violence in horror movies that never mentions his 3 1/2 star review of LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT? He called it "a tough, bitter little sleeper of a movie that's about four times as good as you'd expect," and compared it to WAIT UNTIL DARK and STRAW DOGS. If DeFalco and Bernheim lived in a world where LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT existed, they could bring up this review and say, "Hey, you liked the exact same thing when Wes Craven did it, you're such a hypocrite." But then they'd have to wonder if that meant it wasn't just the gruesomeness of the movie that was bad. It was the movie itself. Craven did it better, smarter, and three decades earlier.

But Craven's biceps are much smaller than DeFalco's, he always wears a shirt, and he never went into a morgue and flexed his muscles, yelling shit about demons. So you guys can be proud about that one. Way to go fellas.

If you must watch this movie - and believe me, you mustn't - just find somewhere to download it. Then if they get mad because you downloaded their movie just say "What? This isn't your movie. It's totally different. And besides, I'm watching it to, perhaps, save lives."

--Vern

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I’ll let you guys figure out in talkback which line made me laugh so hard I woke up my wife who’s in a different room in the house. God bless you, Vern, and hats off to the single best review I’ve ever published.

"Moriarty" out.