Two young girls, Lisa and Margaret, coming home for Christmas, make the acquaintance of Blackie and Curly, two thugs. Blackie has already seduced a widow in the train and, soon, the five protagonists decide to share the same compartment.
After a while, Curly, who’s on drugs, starts to harass the girls, hits them and finally rapes Lisa with a knife. Margaret escapes from the compartment and jumps from the train only to die on the rocks beneath the railroad line. Then, the three criminals throw Lisa’s body out of the compartment’s widow.
When they arrive to their final destination, they manage to be invited by Lisa’s parents, Giulio and Laura Stradi, who are still waiting for their daughter. Giulio Stradi listens to the radio and understands that his guests are murderers. He decides to take the law into his own hands. —Allwatchers.com
Aldo Lado (born 5 December 1934) is an Italian screenwriter and film director. He was born in Fiume, Italy (now Croatia). He wrote 21 films between 1968 and 2004. He also directed 16 films between 1971 and 1994. —Wikipedia
Poorly paced (downright dull for the majority of the first fourty minutes) and more conventionally plot-driven than most Euro-cult thrillers, still stylish and enjoyably sadistic Last House rip-off. Macha Meril is pretty fantastic though, just a bit of a slug to get to the good bits (and they are amazing, Sade would be proud). "She's as tight as a frightened asshole!"
I don't know what exactly I was expecting from this (I have some appreciation for Lado's *Short Night of the Glass Dolls*), but the viewing experience was, in a word, awful. No reason to watch the film again (and, in hindsight, no reason to watch it in the first place). Even the presence of so many Argento regulars provided no saving grace from its particular form of unrelenting (and pointless) despair and sleaze.
Rape/revenge movie billed as an unofficial sequel to The Last House on the Left. Just as depraved as that film but done with more technical skill, which just makes the whole thing more uncomfortable (which it should be). The transformation of an early victim into an assailant is the most disturbing aspect.
Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring had been hailed one of the most controversial foreign films of the 60s. Not surprisingly, the 1972 remake of The Virgin Spring, titled The Last House on the Left… read review