The Last House on the Left

Wes Craven's debut, loosely adapting Bergman's The Virgin Spring into something far uglier. Two girls are abducted, tortured and murdered by escaped convicts, who then unknowingly shelter with the parents of one victim, and the parents take a brutal revenge. It is crude, raw and upsetting.

The tonal control is a mess, goofy comic-relief cops sit beside real horror, but the assault scenes have a documentary nastiness that makes the film hard to shake. It launched Craven and became a video nasty cause célèbre.

Rough, disreputable, and more disturbing than its low budget should allow.