After two young women (Sandra Peabody and Lucy Grantham) are kidnaped by a gang of reprobates and abused, humiliated, raped, tortured and murdered, the killers take refuge in one of their victim's homes, where they are ultimately confronted with her viciously vengeful parents. Horror auteur Wes Craven's grisly inaugural outing is decidedly unsettling and helped fuel the backlash against 'video nasties' in the 1970s. By modern standards, the blood-letting is tame but the film has an almost documentary vibe (in part due to the at times amateurish acting and production) that somehow makes the entire story seem more 'realistic', and therefore more unpleasent, than slicker splatter pics. Despite a slow (and badly dated) start, the first half of the film is quite good, as Craven ramps up the perversity of the girl's captors and the helpless horror of their captivity. The 'last reel' slips a bit with poorly choreographed fights, over-the-top acting, and implausible behaviour (even within context). There is also some time-filling 'comic relief' involving incompetent cops that interrupts Craven's otherwise skilful building of tension and pointlessly undercuts the inherent viciousness of the core story. The fact that, unlike the 'supernatural' slashers that filled the screens in the late 1970s and the 1980s (such as Craven's iconic blade-fingered Freddy Kruger), there really are people in the world as bent, brutal and vicious as the killers in "Last House on the Left' and that (IMO) makes for a much more disturbing film. A genre landmark that is surprisingly watchable despite the disagreeable content (at least for aficionados). Apparently there are a number of versions in circulation, differing primarily by the amount of 'shocking' footage - the one I recently watched is on Tubi.