Wes Craven - Interviews

Interview

Wes Craven Interview

Jonny Dawson was in conversation with Wes Craven on the remake of his seminal exploitation classic‘ The Last House on the Left’ (1972).

Given the battle that you had with the original release of ‘The Last House of the Left’, fights breaking out in the cinemas, the fights with the MPAA - in the UK alone it was classified as a ‘video nasty’ and banned until 2002.

WC: I think that’s quite an amazing achievement to have a film that was banned in the UK for 30 years!

Absolutely, but why do it all again?

WC: I think that these are more tolerant times, there’s a practical reason which is my first two films – I retained the ownership of them and after 30 years the rights came back to me and the producer (Sean S. Cunningham) and we thought it would be very interesting to do a remake. Part of it was a business decision and we found it fascinating to say ‘let’s find the most talented young director that we can and see what he or she makes of the same basic story’. I made a very different movie from (Ingmar) Bergman for instance (The Virgin Spring) which was based on a Nordic fairytale, so it was interesting to see how different artists treat the same material.

Not many people are aware that you have a Masters in Philosophy and that you were a college lecturer prior to filmmaking. The original ‘The Last House on the Left’ confronted issues such as violence in the media and the Vietnam War, were there any similar issues that you wanted to confront in the remake?

WC: Well it’s funny, that when making the (original) movie that there was actually a lot of laughter, just excitement at being able to make a movie, it was like ‘hey you’ve got a barn, I’ve got a camera, let’s make a movie’, we had an opportunity through some theatre owners to make a scary movie for them and it was as simple as that. I think all the sensibilities of the time came into the film, it wasn’t like I sat down in anger to write the script, infact it was just a case of ‘how do you make something very very scary?’ Then as you write and as you build these scenes that you’re directing, the sensibilities of the time and the frustrations do come in and there was a sense that American cinema as much as anybody else had kind of trivialised violence, made it that everyone got punched/chopped in the head and fell dead very simply as opposed to the news which was on-screen and quite horrible, so there was more of a sense of let’s bring the reality of news coverage of Vietnam and everything else into the cinema and don’t cut away.

Although undoubtedly powerful, the original ‘The Last House on the Left’ does have its flaws. When doing the remake, was there any part of you that wanted to improve on your original film or was it a case of locking it away of and saying 'that's my film, make your version’?

WC: It was more of the latter and I thought that was an important thing to do rather than say ‘what I did was so perfect you must go out and duplicate that’ – that was a recipe for mediocrity and it was more of ‘this is the basic story, I want you to make it your own, and I really respect you (Dennis Lliadis) as a filmmaker’. There was a lot of reality to it in the sense that Sandra Peabody was not an experienced actress and she was really afraid of (the actor who played) Krug who was infact a completely professional actor and infact, many of the actors – the guy who played Weasel had never acted before and the woman who played Phyllis had never acted before, so there was a lot of reality to it.

As a debut, I would compare it to ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' in that it's rough around the edges, lightning in a bottle filmmaking and I would argue that we don't have many horror debuts of that power these days.

WC: It’s quite rare that you make something and think that you did something that no-one else had done but, I think there are films being made today such as ‘Audition’ and ‘Hostel’ which are something quite frightening and make you feel that the filmmakers are out of control. Dennis was a more finished director in that sense but he had a much larger budget, a budget that was 100 times more than the one we had, so there’s a lot of difference just in that.

When doing a remake of ‘The Last House on the Left’, the subject matter alone is going to provoke controversy. Were you aware that if you go too hard you’ll provoke the same response from the MPAA and that if you neuter it you’ll belittle the power of the original? Was there ever a discussion on getting a balance?

WC: That was one of the big tricks, how do you not betray the intensity of the first one? How do you get a picture that can be released under an ‘R’ rating? It was interesting that the MPAA’s reaction to the remake was that it was a great film, the problem is that the next thing they say is ‘you don’t need this rape scene to go on for so long’ which of course left us arguing that it’s a great film because of that scene, there was that struggle and they did make us cut about 30 seconds out of it.

What a great tactic by the MPAA!

WC: Well I have to say that I don't feel the scene is terribly reduced by what was taken out, the rape scene still goes on for a long time.

How and why was Dennis Lliadis selected to direct the remake?

WC: We did an extensive search of the current directors out there that are young and affordable, there were easily over 100 and there’s someone in my company who looks at every film he can look at, he goes to all the festivals and is constantly looking at films who we get from various agents and so forth. We thought Dennis’s film ‘Hardcore’ was very powerful and dealt with violence in a truthful way and (he) was able to get to the humanity of it, it was that combination of things.

I was surprised that given the subject matter just how touching it was and how great a performance he managed to coax out of the two female leads.

WC:  Absolutely, I think he (Dennis) really is a brilliant filmmaker. 

It's interesting because for your remake of ‘The Hills have Eyes’, you also selected Alexander Aja who made the outstanding ‘High Tension’, are you conscious of bringing Europeans to your projects? What do you think they bring to the table?

WC: I don't want to rescind American directors but I think that European directors in general, because of the size of the nations in Europe are exposed to all different cultures, they can easily travel from one distinct culture to another in a matter of hours -  you can drive for two weeks across the United States and you're in the same basic culture - so there is a certain breadth of understanding and sophistication that they bring to it and frankly, in some cases they are less expensive than American directors.

Do you think that an American director would be more restrained?

WC: I don't think necessarily so, no, we looked at plenty of American directors too and it just so happens that so far we've gone with Europeans.

Am I right in saying that throughout production that there was no intention to release the movie theatrically, that it was only due to positive test screenings that the decision was made to release theatrically.

WC: No that's not true at all the intention was always to release the movie theatrically, first time I’ve heard that one.

For horror cinema in general at the moment, the most startling debuts - more often than not seem to be coming from the European continent, is that something you would agree with and if not - why?

WC: Hmmm....I hadn't thought about that, weren't the Hostel movies from the United States?

Sure, there's been Hostel and Saw from the United States but I was thinking more about debuts such as High Tension, Inside, Rec, Them.

WC: Well there is unmistakably something a little bit more sophisticated about European filmmakers. I think there's more emphasis on art and culture in Europe than there is in the United States and I think that a lot of American directors and writers are just trying to copy other American horror films, they don't  pick up much in the way that European filmmakers do and I think there is more in Europe in the sense that films can be art as much as anything else.

What I actually find quite interesting is with that a lot of these new acclaimed European horror debuts, you see a lot of your influence from your early movies within them.

WC: That's true, Alexander Aja admitted to me that he was a fan of my earlier films

I like how it all comes full circle.

WC: (laughs)

Time for one last question?

WC: One sneaky question.

You've made some of the most iconic horror movies of the past 40 years - looking back, is there one scene in particular that stands out as a favourite?

WC: I couldn't think of one scene, many of my movies I think have scenes that are very powerful, the death of Mary in my version of ‘The Last House on the Left’ where she turns around and walks into the lake is very powerful and very distinctive, I thought Dennis's shot was a great shot also, but I think every film has its moments where you feel like you really got something. ' A Nightmare on Elm Street' where the first girlfriend is killed and goes up across the ceiling was wonderful to be done on such a low budget.

The Last House on the Left is out to buy on DVD on October 19th 2009