I wonder, though, if casting a veteran director in such a light doesn't cause people to overlook the possibility of his/her inferior skills. Case in point: Wes Craven. Earlier this week, in preparation for Dennis Iliadis' vastly-effective, better-than-your-favorite-mainstream-critic-not-named-Roger-Ebert-is-declaring The Last House on the Left remake, I rewatched Craven's 1972 original. The plan was to compare and contrast the two after I'd seen this new one, but as I sat on the train home from the early screening, all I could do was beat Craven's predecessor down peg after peg. What I officially realized while giving the DVD another go was just how shitty of a film that '72 entry is, and that even the more visceral sequences have lost chunks of their force. Sitting through them back in the early '70s must've been one hell of a right hook to the senses, and a few scattered spots throughout the desecration-in-the-woods setpiece still pack a significant punch. But too much surrounding those punches is trite, meandering, and foolish. First off, Craven's decision at the time to cut back-and-forth from the rape images to two dumbass hick cops totally undermines the power of the girls' plight, a truth that's been hailed ad naus by all film critics and lovers. It's all the more obvious while watching Iliadis handle the sequence, though, showing just how damaging the viewing experience can be when you're at the mercy of an uncompromising, widely-talented visual filmmaker. Something that Craven was not.
Disclaimer: No, I do not enjoy watching rape. Chill. What truly makes the rape sequence in this new Last House soar through the roof, for me, though, is the way Iliadias and screenwriters Adam Alleca and Carl Ellsworth preface it. From the moment the four on-the-lam deviants encounter the two innocent gals in their hotel room, the tone of what transpires improves greatly over that of Craven's film. In Craven's the four criminals are insulting, coarse assholes with zero redeeming qualities, at times coming off a bit cartoonish. So when they toss the girls into the trunk of their car, there's zero mystery about what's going to happen. When the rape scenes comes, same with the murders, it's more of a climax than a revelation. In this remake, however, the only reason why this section also resulted in a climax is that I know the source material in and out; If I were a casual moviegoer, though, with no knowledge of the original, I would've been unsure as to the villains' intentions. There's a great scene in their SUV as they're driving the kidnapped, scared girls to God-knows-where that's as much a showcase for Iliadis' directorial chops as it is a testament to the remake's superiority. You can't tell what's going to happen, if the villains are going to kill the girls, or just one of them. Krug, the crew's ice-cold leader, shows a morsel of respect toward Mary, the stronger of their prey, and you think, "Maybe he'll let her go." But then Mary acts a bit too impulsively, fucks up any hope of salvation, and the villains have a diesel motive to move ahead with rape/murder.
The Last House on the Left 2009 has a slew of narrative changes such as that, and they're all for the better, which isn't to say that tweaks in the script are my justifications for proclaiming Wes Craven to be a hack director. There just wasn't even one facet of this remake that felt lesser than its original. And I recalled myself thinking the exact same thing about Alaexandre Aja's awesome Hills Have Eyes remake. So many flaws and missed-the-mark moments are abound in Craven's 1977 Last House follow-up that Aja, like Iliadis, was given ample room for improvement.
The point surfaces: the only early Craven film that is near flawless is A Nightmare on Elm Street, but otherwise there's not a "undeniably great" film in his lot. Each is spotty, uneven. Worth merit more for its after-effects than for its actual quality. Scream, of course, is great, but I consider that a rebirth for the guy, thus rendering it "out of contention" here.
On second thought, didn't he have a hand in writing that recent Hills Have Eyes 2, or as I like to refer to it, Worst Horror Sequel of the Last Ten Years? Pretty positive he did. "Rebirth, schrebirth," I guess, unfortunately.
Lest we forget that Craven directed a little piece of shit called Deadly Friend, too, a mess only saved by the quintessential death-by-basketball scene in film history. Or that he was responsible for Eddie Murphy's Vampire in Brooklyn, a laugher-for-the-wrong-reasons that explains itself in title alone. Blacula it was not.
And back to Aja's Hills Have Eyes real quick.....look no further than the trailer-attack. One of the most intense, stomach-twisting, perfectly-paced and scored sequences in recent memory, all to the credit of Aja. I not-too-long ago watched both that scene and its companion piece from Craven's '85 flick back to back (because that's the kind of thing I like to do on my spare time, yes), and it was quite staggering just how immensely more insane and devastating Aja's is, in the context of modern filmmaking advances or not. Neither scene is particularly showy in terms of effects, so the time-frame argument feels meaningless. Aja now is just a way better filmmaker than Craven then. That simple.
Listen....I respect Craven immensely, and I'm wholly aware of how much his contributions mean to my beloved genre. I'm just the type who tries to call a spade "a spade" as often as possible. Until some well-informed film head can break down the technical prowess of Wes Craven "the director," I'm sticking to my rifles. Ironically, the person most responsible for my realization is Wes Craven himself---he produced both the Last House and Hills Have Eyes remakes, and hand-picked eye-opening foreign filmmakers to commandeer the ships. So for that, I can admire the man even more. Who knows, maybe he'd agree with me that his early career wasn't the best of skill-flashing. He's repeatedly admitted that he had no clue what the hell he was doing while making his Last House on the Left. Just sucks that it shows more than ever now.
Craven's best at what, then? As a producer, clearly. He has an impeccable eye for talent, as seen in his picks of Aja and Iliadis. The versions of his stories that he's behind-the-scenes instead of the camera for thrive much more on character and delicate pacing. The guy knows what makes for good horror, and knows how to pull it out of others. Shame that he can't do the same for himself.
I'd be lying to myself if I didn't give early Craven kudos for this, though.....from 1985's foul-tasting Hills Have Eyes 2, comes..... a dog flashback!!!:
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