- Year
- 1972
- Country
- USA
- Runtime
- 84 min
- Director
- Wes Craven
- Updated
- 10 Aug 2026
- Obscurity
- canon (10/100)
- Also known as
- Krug and Company · Sex Crime of the Century · Night of Vengeance · Crime of the Century
- Banned in
- UK · Norway · Australia · New Zealand
The Last House on the Left
A prosecuted DPP video nasty refused a BBFC certificate until 2008, and banned in Norway, Australia and New Zealand.
Bergman's Virgin Spring, brutalised. Genuinely unpleasant and knows it. Tonally a mess.
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.
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Legal options in USA
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Written about
- Banned, cut and confiscated
A Fulci print flown out of the country, an Australian rating that just means no, and a German court that filed The Evil Dead under criminal violence. Three states, three machines for making a film disappear.
- The video nasty panic
A drill on a video sleeve, a prosecutors' hit list of seventy-two films, and a censorship law that was void for twenty-five years on a filing error.
Filed alongside
▶ watchobscureTurkey Shoot
The budget vanished mid-shoot and they kept going. Chaotic, mean, fun.
▶ watchcultIsland of Death
Mykonos has never looked prettier or hosted anything uglier. Mastorakis dared himself to be banned and won.
▶ watch⊘ bannedcultSS Experiment Camp
A DPP video nasty far better known for its poster than for anything in the film.
▶ watch⊘ bannedcultCannibal Apocalypse
Vietnam veterans as cannibals. Sillier and kinder than the jungle cycle.
▶ watch⊘ bannedcultThe House on the Edge of the Park
Deodato points Last House at a dinner party. Grubby, mean, effective.
▶ watch⊘ bannedcultContamination
Alien via Rome, with exploding chests and a Goblin score doing heavy lifting.