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Virgin Spring / Last House on the Left / Night Train Murders

posted 16 years ago by jockledoodledoo
8 replies | jump to latest

Wes Craven has always been very honest about the fact that his first film, Last House on the Left used a theme from Bergman's Virgin Spring. After watching last house it is interesting to watch Night Train Murders, which sees the story returning to Europe (where it came from). This is interesting.

Last House is a wonderful piece of Americana; the happy go lucky soundtrack, the warm fuzzy photography, the end of the flower power era. The sleaze in this film is indeed quite grim but far from surprising or shocking. What is shocking in Night Train Murders is the speed at which the sleaze starts.

Craven lets the threat of something awful linger over these girls for a while. We know something awful is going to happen, more than sexual assault. Night Train murders starts with a more voyeuristic slant - the scene where the demure lady drops a bag revealing a pornographic photo is excellent. Immediately this introduces the notion that she is not all she seems.

The introduction of this high society lady and two young thugs is first suggested as a rape, which leads to consenting sex. Say what you will about rape fantasy, but this woman certainly has one. She hooks up with the two on a hedonsitic, drug induced train journey that gets out of hand. If anything, it is interesting to see that she really is the main instigator of the nastiness that happens in this film (the vaginal stabbing, the dispatch of the bodies, the mastermind of the aftermath).

This film is far more of a social comment than Last House. While the two, presumably working class, thugs are dealt with - the 'demure' woman gets away with it. The link between the last scene (oddly hindered a bit by Demis Rousos) and her bag dropping earlier on are important. She has got away with something else, and will doubtless do it again.

[–] PolytheneSpam 15 years ago

Nice. Thank you for this. Some others seem to completely ignore the "lady" is an instigator.

[–] lazarillo 15 years ago

Yeah, the thing did with the bourgeois "lady" is interesting as is the middle-class, middle-age voyeur who joins the "party" and then calls the police after he's had his fun. There is a real class-conscious European theme to this film where the upper classes (literally) get away with rape and murder, which is not nearly as significant in the American film. The Bergman film on the other hand has a real strong Christian theme to it which is absent in both of the 70's films.

I like European and especially Italian exploitation films, and it really irks me when people dismisss them as "rip-offs" of American movies. First off, it often works the other way--"Last House" itself was a "rip-off" of Swedish film "The Virgin Spring" if you want to look at it that way. Second, Italian films may have often been inspired by American films or were trying to take advantage of the publicity surrounding them, but they could also be quite original. This was a very different, and in some ways better, film than "Last House on the Left".

[–] jockledoodledoo 14 years ago

I couldn't agree more. For some reason this film is really up there with some of my favourites - I can watch it again and keep returning to it. While I've watched 'Last House on the Left' twice and probably won't again.

What should be pointed out is the follow ups / rip offs of 'Last House on the Left' that actually starred David Hess - 'Hitch Hike' and 'House on the Edge of the Park', both of these (in my view) are very inferior when compared to 'Late Night Trains'.

[–] PostmortemG 14 years ago

Despite the fact that Hitch Hike and this film are different in many ways, i don´t think i can choose one over the other - House On The Edge Of The Park is the least of the 3, but not by much. Last House On The Left is a movie i haven´t seen since 2002, and i haven´t felt compelled to watch it again ever since. Maybe one day I´ll do that, when i have absolutely nothing better to do... like watch the numerous Italian ´rip-offs´ that are actually more enjoyable. =D

"Cain and Abel will go to Heaven... if they can make it through Hell!"
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[–] RetroRick 12 years ago

this isn't original either, but I got the feeling that the middle-age voyeur was meant to represent the viewer's own implication in the unfolding unpleasantness. The scene with the bourgeois lady in the toilet is dubiously consensual but she ends up assenting to what could otherwise have been her own rape. With the young girls it starts off sleazy but not beyond the pale. The girl being forced to masturbate the guy with the flick knife is unpleasant but the events in the toilet - the consent to assault - leads us to almost to accept this however uncomfortable this may be. All the girl has to do is to relax and accept. Except she doesn't and neither does her friend. The middle-age voyeur - representing our good selves - would never commit rape left to his own devices - but given the nod by a respectable middle class lady - he, like us, is drawn into what starts out as something erotic but quickly asserts itself as a crime. An assault, becomes a rape, and the voyeur, like the viewer is able to remove himself from the proceedings having taken what was permitted him. The raped girl with her naked lower half is clearly distraught from having been raped, but the culpability returns to the trio of the lady and the two depraved young men. The voyeur, like us, is seduced into the enjoyment of what the moment the act is over is demonstrably a rape, but it is only demonstrably a rape because the raped girl does not provide assent as the bourgois woman does after the crime is underway). Moreover the voyeur is able to distance himself from the 'real' crime, the hideous knife rape, for which the idea of consent arriving retrospectively would be absurd. I'm not sure any of this justifies anything - I found this an unpleasant film to watch and wish I hadn't watched it - but its consistent with Alan Lado's class commentary - watched this after watching the superior short night of glass dolls. Whether you agree with or not as social commentary it does make sense even if I'm not quite sure I can believe a nice middle class lady could behave like that....but then of course that's the point

[–] RetroRick 12 years ago

but as an addendum, the idea that the rape and murder of two young women by two depraved young men should be somehow instigated by and the responsibility of a perverted manipulated older woman.....I think it rarely happens that way

[–] Hey_Sweden 12 years ago

This has been an enjoyable thread to read. I definitely got the themes of this movie, but you all did a good job of summing it up succinctly.

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[–] tonymurphylee 12 years ago

Totally agree.

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