By Richard Winters
My Rating: 6 out of 10
4-Word Review: Road leads to nowhere.
Mari (Sandra Peabody) decides to go out to a rock concert with her friend Phyllis (Lucy Grantham) to celebrate her 17th birthday. On the way they decide to pick-up some dope and find a young man named Junior (Marc Sheffler) standing outside on the porch of a New York townhome. Phyllis asks him if he has any marijuana to sell and he invites them inside where they meet Sadie (Jeramie Rain), Weasel (Fred Lincoln), and Junior’s father Krug (David Hess). Unbeknownst to the girls these four have all escaped from prison and are dangerous killers. The ‘family’ soon overpowers the girls and takes them hostage into their car where they drive them to a remote forest in Connecticut. It is there that Krug forces them to play humiliating and sadistic games before eventually raping Mari and then killing them both. The four then change outfits and seek refuge in a nearby home, which to their surprise resides Mari’s parents (Richard Towers, Eleanor Shaw). Initially the parents invite the four in believing their story that their car broke down and simply looking for a place to sleep. However, during the night the parents become aware that these people have murdered their daughter, and they plan a violent revenge.
This film is considered by many to be a landmark as no film before this had ever been so violent or graphic, and it set a whole new bar for horror films that followed. At the time though most critics deemed it exploitive and gave it bad reviews with the exception for Roger Ebert who lauded it for its intensity and realism. Today it remains controversial with some deeming it a classic while others like horror novelist Stephan King calling it a ‘crapfest’. This also includes several cast members, like Rain, Lincoln, and Peabody, who have regretted their involvement and openly labeled it ‘the worse movie ever made’ The film though does have some good points, but is greatly affected by being directed by a young Wes Craven, who at the time was a novice behind the camera having only worked as a film editor on a soft core porn flick before this, and thus he approaches things in an extremely heavy-handed manner where the film’s tone shifts wildly from being brutal one minute and comical the next.
I remember watching this for the first time when I was 18 and being highly disturbed by the scenes shot inside the forest to the extent that I was affected by it for several days afterwards as it made me feel like I witnessed an actual murder, which no other horror movie had ever done before or since. A lot of the reason for this is that it gets highly drawn out. Most scare flicks have the killings occur in quick fashion where one stab of the knife is enough for the victim to go down easily, or the gore is presented in such an over-the-top way that it becomes cartoonish and thus entertaining. Here though it’s played up in a more realistic fashion where the victim’s make an effort to fight back and even try to escape but are eventually overpowered. When they’re stabbed, they don’t immediately die but instead suffer in pain for quite a while. The cutaways showing Mari’s dog barking loudly on a leash as she is killed hits home that these are like real people with real lives and families that care for them and not just the generic character types that make up the usual horror film and for this reason alone the film deserves credit for going deeper into the dark ugliness of violence and how it truly is ending someone’s life.
On the negative end the ‘comic relief’ scenes involving the bumbling sheriff (Marshal Anker) and his deputy (Martin Kove) was ill-advised and takes away from the grittiness. The soundtrack, composed by Hess, runs hot and cold. The opening song done over the credits, ‘The Road Leads to Nowhere’ has a haunting quality and is effective, but the up-tempo bluegrass music hurts the building tension and should’ve been excised. The news report that the girls listen to while driving in the car where it describes Krug and company having escaped from jail and him killing a couple of nuns and how Sadie is ‘animal-like’ comes-off more as unintentionally funny and I don’t feel was needed. The situation could’ve just been a drug deal gone wrong, which happens all the time, and having to incorporate a backstory to the villains doesn’t enhance the story, or plot.
The third act, which features the bad guys getting invited into the parent’s house is quite awkward as well. For one thing just because their car has broken down shouldn’t mean that they must spend the night. Why not just give them access to their phone so they can call for a tow truck? Allowing them to sleep in Mari’s bedroom didn’t make sense either. At this point they still didn’t know their daughter had been killed and for all they knew could be showing up at any second and she wouldn’t be too happy about finding these grubby strangers in her bed.
Why didn’t the parents call the police when they realized that they had murderers in their home as that would be the normal response of most people? Granted the cops were buffoons so maybe that made them believe they would have to take matters into their own hands in order to get things ‘done right’, but there should’ve at least been a conversation regarding this before deciding to immediately go ahead with the blood bath.
I also didn’t get why Krug and his ‘family’ needed to pretend to be civilized anyways. They certainly made no attempt to hide their evil instincts from the girls, so why not be the same way with parents? They could’ve easily broken into the home with their guns drawn and tied up the couple and then while ransacking the place they’d come upon pictures of Mari and realized that it was the home of her parents. Krug could’ve even taunted them about this. Then the enraged parents could’ve figured out a way to free themselves and set the process in motion for the revenge.
Spoiler Alert!
Having the mother feel the need to perform fellatio on Weasel as way to get back at him was pretty ridiculous too. How many middle-aged, surbanite mothers out there would be willing to put a stranger’s dick in their mouth that’s been lord knows where, she doesn’t even make him wash it first, when stabbing him with a sharp kitchen knife would’ve been so much more convenient?
End of Spoiler Alert!
With all this said the film still has enough working for it and broke enough ground that it deserves its place in movie history. Sure, it’s lost a lot of its edge, and jaded horror fans of today may even wonder what the fuss is about but for its time it was definitely shocking and paramount in helping to usher in the modern horror elements we know today.
My Rating: 6 out of 10
Released: August 30, 1972
Runtime: 1 Hour 24 Minutes
Rated R
Director: Wes Craven
Studio: American International Pictures
Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, Pluto TV, Tubi, YouTube
