I never hated a movie as much as I did that night. Over the next few years, I read and re-read the bad reviews and crucifixions of writer/director Meir Zarchi and his awful bastard son of an exploitation flick. But a funny thing happens over the years. You see movies that you never dreamed could exist in high school. You see movies that are grittier, nastier, more misanthropic and hostile. Plus, you hear stories on the origins of movies – why they exist, what the makers wanted you to know and feel. Throughout all those years, Last House remained something to revere, but is it really so great? There was only one way to find out. So, after all those years, I’ve decided to quit my goddamn Fox Newsing and exercise some actual, if not liberal, journalism. So, submitted for your approval, here is my final verdict on Last House on the Left and I Spit on your Grave, through calm and war-weathered eyes.

I flipped a coin and it said to begin with Wes Craven’s Last House. Still hailed as one of the most disturbing movies of our time, it was heavily inspired by Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring. The story, which is allegedly based on true events, is simple and brutal. Mari Collingwood and friend Phyllis Stone are two carefree young girls who are spreading their adolescent wings by going to a rock concert. Phyllis, the wild one to Mari’s beautiful innocence, unwittingly leads them into the clutches of two escaped murderers – Krug and Weasel - and two accomplices – Sadie and Krug’s illegitimate son Junior. The sadistic foursome kidnap Mari and Phyllis and take them with them in their escape to Canada until their car breaks down… in front of Mari’s house. The four fugitives, led by the horrifying Krug, drag the girls into woods, where they humiliate, torture and eventually kill them. They clean up and seek refuge in Mari’s house! Eventually, her parents find out what has happened to their daughter and seek a vicious revenge.

Last House was released in 1972, the same glorious year the Miami Dolphins romped to the only perfect record in pro football history. Unlike Warfield, Buoniconti and Cszonka, Last House isn’t perfect. If suffers from an odd pace and, hands-down, the most inappropriate comic relief in the history of horror, most of it coming from a pair of clueless cops who run out of gas on the way to pursuing the criminals. Were those dim-witted cops just disgruntled second-unit guys who broke into as many scenes as possible to force their way into the film’s final cut? Was comedy a completely different concept in the 70s? I’d like to know. Another big problem is the ending in which Dr. Collingwood, Mari’s very 70s dad, pursues and cuts up Krug with a chainsaw. I can appreciate a low-budget film and all, but please, don’t use a chainsaw if you’re not going to turn it on. I was always under the impression that chainsaws moved, gave off smoke and, you know, had a moving chain on the end. At least Leatherface’s wasn’t a toy.

That’s enough bitching, though, because Last House delivers when it cuts to the heart of the matter. For starters, Krug (played adeptly by David Hess) terrified me like no movie villain ever has. In somewhat limited screen time, Hess conveys misanthropy, sadism and even a little humanity, all without taking it over the top into “mad supervillain” territory like some shitty Bruce Willis movie – or any Bruce Willis movie, for that matter. The rest of Krug’s gang follows suit, though none come close to capturing the silent terror that Hess’ screen time oozes. Hess even does the music for the movie, which ranges from tremendous (The Road Leads to Nowhere is one of my favorite movie themes ever) to damn goofy. The female victims, especially Mari, are perfect foils to their evil. Last House avoids the number one problem in such movies: To care that the characters are being tortured, you have to first give a shit about the characters themselves. The acting in this movie is extraordinary – if you forgive the tragically unnecessary bumblings of the local police. In a relatively short amount of time, Craven’s torture and murder scenes chillingly illustrate the deconstruction of the victims as Krug and Weasel strip Mari and Phyllis of their humanity before ending their lives. The rapes, though tasteless by their very nature, are quick and much is left to the imagination. The deaths are brutal – especially Phyllis’ deathbed disembowelment at the hands of Sadie – and the Collingwoods’ revenge does the trick, though Hess again steals the show by taunting his own son into a bloody suicide. So, even after all these years, Last House was indeed as terrifying to me as it always was, though its odd pace and unnecessary attempts at comedy take away from the overall effect. Although I wasn’t around at the time this movie was made, I’ve always imagined that Last House captures the nihilism of the early 70s as the Vietnam War was in its final years and Watergate became the scandal of the decade. People didn’t know what to do or who to trust and that’s the time when humans are the most dangerous. After all, it’s not werewolves and monsters and devils that I fear, because I don’t think they are real. The real terror is in your fellow man and what he can do to you, or worse, the ones you love.

Six years after Last House shocked fragile moviegoers across the nation, I Spit on Your Grave, originally titled Day of the Woman, came out and pushed on-screen violence to another level. Its story is even simpler than Last House’s. Jennifer (Jenny if you’d like) Hill is an author from New York who rents a country home for the summer. Once out there, she catches the attention of a four-pack of rednecks, which beat and rape her repeatedly one day. She recovers and kills them horribly one by one. There, the beginning, middle and end of the movie.

When it came out, this movie pissed off the entire world, most notably Roger Ebert, who has been condemning this movie since the day it came out. The rape scene, nearly a half-hour long, pulls no punches. It’s brutal, uncompromising and leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination. Jennifer (played by Camille Keaton, a relative of silent film legend Buster Keaton) is raped by each of the four rednecks over the stretch of a day, once on the ground, once on a big rock and twice on the floor of her home. Even though much of this sequence’s critical revile is exaggerated by prudes and righteous assholes, it is easily the most unpleasant part of a movie ever made. It’s powerful and decently filmed but is also largely a missed opportunity due to a complete and utter lack of character development. The rednecks are as close to cardboard cutouts as any movie villains I’ve seen. In fact, the only effort to develop any of them is that one of them, Matthew, is retarded. That’s a huge problem to a viewer, such as myself, who needs to hate a villain to really get into the movie. There’s nothing here to hate or fear because they themselves are nothing. I’ve seen Dragnet villains more developed, even the ones that are only revealed for a few minutes. On the other side of the offending penis, the Jennifer character is equal in its nothingness. Camille Keaton did a fine job with what she was given, but we never get to know her until the movie reaches its gory end. She’s a writer…from New York…that’s it. Even when she did get onscreen time pre-rape, she just sits there and stares ala Pia Zadora. Once the attack begins, she gets a few minutes to convey deep emotional trauma, but the attacks happen so fast and for so long that she becomes little more than a screaming blow-up doll.

Perhaps the reason for this lack of character development lies in the film’s commentary. Zarchi claims to have seen a woman running from the woods after being raped and beaten and he wanted to tell that story as a cautionary tale. So, since I’m in a charitable mood, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt that maybe he was trying to paint Jennifer as “every woman” and the four villains as “every man.” Nice try Zarchi, but characters are still important to movies, even with a good intent. Where Last House captures a time period, I Spit appears to be taking place in the 70s but that’s where it ends and it captures no era. It’s almost timeless, and in this case that isn’t necessarily a good thing. Zarchi may have had a good heart, but his ability to do anything other than show graphic violence is lacking. The most irritating sequence of the movie comes as Jennifer is spying on her attackers as she prepares to kill them. They show Johnny, the local gas station manager and leader of the attackers, with his wife and kids at his gas station. They even show him talking with his young son about going fishing. What the fuck is this supposed to mean? Are we being asked to feel sympathy for the filthy rapist? Congratulations Mr. Zarchi, you budgeted a whole five minutes of precious character development for your movie and you used 20 percent of your budget on one of the rapists! Derp!

Rather than call the police or go to a hospital after the attack, Jennifer decides to lay low in the home for a couple of weeks and seek her own revenge. And what a revenge it is. In order, she seduces and hangs the retard, seduces and castrates Johnny in a bathtub, buries an axe in one drifter and saws up a second with an outboard motor. The death scenes are acceptable, with the castration nearly reaching the rape scene in terms of unpleasantness. Trust me, you won’t feel too sorry for the assholes that get killed. For me, the most disturbing scene of the movie (yes, even longer than a 30-minute gang rape) is the scene when Jennifer is about to shoot Johnny but pretends to succumb to him after he explains to her how she “asked for it” by looking sexy and walking around in front of him. If you’ve ever seen or read the transcripts from a rape trial, seeing or hearing a defense lawyer explain how the victim brought it on herself is as terrible and infuriating as the act itself. Of course, minutes later the guy gets his dick clipped and bleeds to death in agony as Jennifer listens to classical music, so everything works out. Though her revenge is certainly warranted, Jennifer ramps up the repulsion by seducing and even fucking one of her attackers. Why she would go to these lengths is unexplored and nothing we’ve seen from her character to that point suggests that she would do these things. One other random complaint: the tagline talks about a fifth guy she kills. Did I miss something? Was there a fifth character in there somewhere? Maybe it was the butcher from the local grocery store? The young son of Johnny? A random passerby? A traveling salesman? Did you ever get the feeling you’re being lied to by movie distributors?

After it was all over, I reached the conclusion that Spit on Your Grave is undeserving of its reputation as a vile piece of garbage, as it delivers in many places and is better than most of the horror shit being made today. Unfortunately, it’s also undeserving of being taken seriously. This movie exists for no other reason but for some very sick individuals to get off on and some other very sick individuals to test their tolerance for extreme violence. Though Meir Zarchi may claim that he was trying to send a warning that this kind of thing is going on, I suggest that it’s more like Zarchi saw something that he thought would make a profitable movie. Why else would he wipe out every shred of humanity from every character and essentially film walking bags of meat performing unspeakable acts? It all spells pure exploitation and nothing more.

So, it appears that I was right all along about Last House on the Left’s superiority to I Spit on Your Grave, but the chasm between the two isn’t so pronounced as it once was. You may disagree, and that’s fine. But please, make your decision with an open mind. Don’t do like I did, though I should note that my irresponsible and biased journalism has netted me a recurring spot on The O’Reilly Factor, right here on Fox News. Since that has happened, I change my answer from “You may disagree, and that’s fine” to “You’re wrong fuckface! You dirty communist terrorist, burn in Hell! … If you’re a flaming intolerant asshole, will be in the Los Angeles area and you’d like to gargle the president’s cum with Bill O’Reilly, please write to…”