Screenplay Sean S. Cunningham made his directorial debut with the 1970
white coater film
The Art of Marriage, which grossed $100,000. The film attracted the attention of Steve Minasian's company Hallmark Releasing, which had a distribution partnership with
American International Pictures. Cunningham made the 1971 film
Together as a "
better version" of
The Art of Marriage.
Wes Craven, who had no money at the time, was put on the job of synchronizing dailies for
Together and soon began editing the film with Cunningham, with whom he became good friends. Hallmark bought the film for $10,000, and it was considered a "hit", prompting the company to persuade Cunningham and Craven to make another film with a bigger budget; the company then gave them $90,000 to shoot a horror film. Cunningham served as producer, and Craven as writer and director, on the project. Written by Craven in 1971, the original script was intended to be a graphic "
hardcore" film. Craven later said that the actors were originally committed to that, although this was contradicted by Fred Lincoln. Jeramie Rain and Sandra Peabody both objected to the original script at their auditions and were assured it would be changed. The decision was made to edit the script to be less harsh. The next draft, titled
Night of Vengeance, has never been published; only a brief glimpse is visible in the 2003 making-of featurette
Celluloid Crime of the Century. Copies are available for viewing at the
University of Pittsburgh's Horror Scripts and Ephemera Collection. The plot was inspired by the Swedish ballad "
Töres döttrar i Wänge", itself the basis of
Ingmar Bergman's 1960 film
The Virgin Spring, which Craven admired. Craven envisioned a film in which the violence would be shown in detail onscreen, as he felt that many popular films of the era, such as
Westerns, glamorized violence and the "vigilante hero", and gave the public a misleading representation of death in the wake of the
Vietnam War.
Casting The majority of the cast of
The Last House on the Left were inexperienced or first-time actors, with the exception of Eleanor Shaw and
Sandra Peabody, who were
soap opera regulars and had prior film roles. Cunningham and Craven held casting calls for the film at Cunningham's office in
Midtown Manhattan in late 1971. Peabody, who was returning to New York after a cross-country road trip, signed on to the film after responding to a casting notice in the trade publication
Backstage. Cunningham and Craven originally wanted her to read for the role of Phyllis; however, after meeting her, they decided to cast her as the lead, Mari. Shaw was a prominent soap opera actress, and Towers worked as a talent agent in addition to acting. Although she did not recall the specific circumstances of how she became involved with the project, Lucy Grantham was ultimately cast in the role of Mari's best friend Phyllis. The role of the lead villain, Krug Stillo, was given to
David Hess, also a musician and songwriter.
Jeramie Rain, then twenty-one years old, was playing
Susan Atkins in an
Off-Broadway production based on the
Manson family murders. Although the original script called for an actress in her 40s, Rain was cast as Sadie.
Fred Lincoln, who had appeared in pornographic films, was cast as Krug's criminal partner, while Mark Sheffler was given the role of Krug's heroin-addicted son. Sheffler was a struggling 21-year-old actor and a client of Towers prior to filming, and he informed Sheffler of the auditions. According to Lincoln, he and Peabody were acquaintances and had the same agent at the time. While filming in Connecticut, the cast and crew spent much time at producer Cunningham's family's home. According to Craven, the lake sequence was shot in the town reservoir of
Weston, Connecticut. Craven sought a "
documentary"-style appearance for the film, marked by close-up shots and single-cut takes. Cunningham later described the film shoot as being "
guerrilla-style", with the crew spontaneously filming at locations and being forced to leave due to lack of permits; Hess recalled that much of the cast bonded closely during filming, since they were mostly inexperienced actors. In the 2003 documentary
Celluloid Crime of the Century, Lincoln, Rain, and Sheffler recalled similar memories which recounted the making of the film. However, both Hess and director Craven recalled that the on-set relationship between Hess and Peabody was turbulent. Craven recalled that Peabody "often wasn't acting" her fear during filming. Sheffler admitted that during a one-on-one sequence with Peabody, he had threatened to push her over a cliff if she failed to hit her marks. In a 2008
Vanity Fair article, Hess also admitted threatening Peabody, telling writer
Jason Zinoman: "I was very mean to the girls, so when it came to the rape scene, [Peabody] didn't have to act. I told her, 'I'm really going to fuck you if you don't behave yourself. They'll just let the camera run. I'm going to devastate you.' I don't think she was too happy about that." Speaking for a
making-of book in 2000, Hess revealed that he "may have frightened her a few times" by being "pretty physical" with Peabody during the filming of the rape scene, and that she "couldn't back off" when the camera was running. In the same book, assistant director Yvonne Hannemann described the scene as "really quite upsetting", with Peabody having to be consoled because it had become "very rough". Craven noted that Peabody had told him afterward, "My God... I had the feeling they really hated me", but her only direct contribution about the rape scene in her own interview was "No comment." Peabody stated that she was genuinely upset during filming as she felt unprepared: "I was upset because I'm an emotional person, and I reacted to what was going on as if it were real. I had a really hard time with some of the scenes, because I had come out of
American Playhouse, where it was all about preparation, and everything had to be real. I ended up doing a horrible job in the film. I was very upset, and I felt like I should have channeled that, but I couldn't... I was a young actress, and I was still learning to balance any emotions I had from outside of the film into my scene work." Peabody recalled, "One of the characters was a method actor, so he was trying to live his part... he'd come after us with a knife at night, trying to freak us out. This was the guy with the dark curly hair [David Hess] - he tried to play his role on and off the set. It was like, 'Lock your doors and windows at night, you don't want him to come get you!' I was scared; I thought this guy had been a killer at some point in his past!" Peabody stated that although she was unsure how many of the scenes would turn out, she trusted Craven and Cunningham's vision for the film.
Music The film's soundtrack was written by Stephen Chapin and
David Hess (who also played the main antagonist, Krug); Chapin wrote all the incidental music, arrangements, and orchestration, as well as all the contracting and producing musicians. The music was deliberately written to break with established, conventional horror film scores at that point, employing a mix of 1960s
folk rock and
bluegrass. It also ran counter to the horror film convention of punctuating moments of fright with shock effects; during some of the film's most violent scenes, music that is completely at odds with the visual content plays. In 2013, the soundtrack was re-released on vinyl, compact disc, cassette, and digital download through One Way Static Records. It was also reissued on a limited hand-numbered picture disc for
Record Store Day 2014. ==Release==