... aka: Last House in the Woods, The
... aka: Last Refuge, The
... aka: Out of the Woods
Directed by:
Gabriele Albanesi
Little Andrea (Francesco Lopez) and his parents are traveling down a
country road late at night when they pop a tire on broken glass, go off the road
and hit a tree. Dad is instantly killed, so mom and son start walking. Instead
of pulling over to help, a car heading their way runs over the mom, who
strangely doesn't even attempt to move out of the way with a speeding car
barreling down on her. A man dressed in a trench coat and hat gets out, finished
her off with a rock and then throws her in the car and takes off. The boy
witnesses it all and then wanders into the woods. We next meet teenagers Aurora
(Daniela Virgilio) and Rino (Daniele Grassetti) and that turns out
to be a very unfortunate thing as it takes both all of two minutes to make us
hate them with every fiber of our being. During a flashback to better days, the
insecure, whiny and needy Rino demands to know all of Aurora's past sexual
partners; a list so extensive that even she cannot keep it straight. He
then tells her, "I want you to make love... but I want you to draw... It'll be a
masterpiece" (?!) And yeah, well... OK... that happens. Since those bygone days
of experimental art, the magic has worn off and the two have parted ways. Kind
of. They're still kind of fucking and he's still kind of trying to force a
relationship with her even though she's not the least bit interested since she's
pretty much an insensitive bitch. Can someone please chop these two up already?
After Aurora and Rino create another "masterpiece" in a parked car out in the
sticks, a trio of extremely obnoxious, thuggish, foul-mouthed ("I wanna fuck a
virrrrrgin!") drug dealers accost them. Rino gets knocked out and Aurora is
dragged off to the side of the road. They dry hump her, put a switchblade to her
neck and then the ringleader, Cesare (David Pietroni), forces her head
into his crotch and says "First things first, you give me a blowjob right here
and now. Nice and sweet like an appetizer." Thankfully (she thinks), middle-aged
couple Antonio (Gennaro Diana) and Clara (Santa De Santis) come
along just in the nick of time. Antonio pulls a gun, chases the thugs off and
invites the traumatized duo back to their home. Antonio offers to let Aurora use
the phone to call the police and report the incident, but she declines: "No,
that's alright. I'd rather forget about it." Next thing she knows, Antonio is
heading after her with a syringe trying to sedate her. She runs off, finds her
pseudo-boyfriend tied up in one of the rooms and instead of, you know, untying
him, she cries and kisses him for a few minutes before escaping out the window;
just leaving him there to be killed.
After running around in the woods for a spell, Aurora finds a camper, goes
inside and then encounters the deadly couple's two grown "sons." One is a
spastic hillbilly retard with a half-burnt face and the other has a ridiculously
huge boil on his neck. Aurora is knocked out, brought back to the house and tied
to a chair, where the warped family are sitting around a table watching their
youngest child Giulio (Fabiano Malantrucco) eat. You see, Giulio has a
jacked-up grill which means he's not so much interested in things like Gogurt
and Pop Tarts. Instead, he wants to eat raw human flesh. Being the loving
parents they are, ma and pa are eager to comply with his his wishes because when
your child demands something, even if that something is killing people so he can
eat them, you just have to give it to them, right? So junior eats a leg. The leg
belonged to Rino. The Leatherface wannabe son then lays into him with the
chainsaw, severing one of his arms and ripping open his chest from top to bottom
in the process. It's worth pointing out that after this occurs, every time they
show the dead Rino, the massive stomach wound has mysteriously disappeared and
his shirt is perfectly intact. At the very end, our heroine even goes up to him
and tries to engage him in conversation, believing he is still alive despite the
fact he's had an arm and leg hacked off, was gutted, sprayed about three gallons
of blood directly in her face and hasn't budged in the past three or four hours regardless of all the commotion going on around him.
The rapist thugs eventually show up at the house, so the family starts
slaughtering them and they start slaughtering the family and then there's some
prepubescent Boxing Helena and then all the pain finally goes away.
Because the movie really flings around the red stuff in its second half, the
genre press couldn't wait to break out the knee pads and get to work proclaiming
this the big return to the glory days of Italian horror. Dario Argento and
Sergio Martino still have red cheeks from the slap they received. Just like
junkies usually have people in their lives who will let them housesit and then
return home from vacation scratching their heads wondering why their jewelry and
fine silver are now missing, most of the horror press are enablers who not only
facilitate bad movie-making but actively encourage it by praising every other
load of derivative crap coming down the pike. It's no wonder independent
filmmakers don't tend to aim any higher than they do. Why bother when you can get
your ass kissed for delivering moronic, uneven, subpar work? If I could sit some
of these filmmakers down for a heart-to-heart, I'd ask, "Is it possible for you
to just write a screenplay and then make the movie from that and not fill
your entire film with direct, intentional nods to other movies?" This one stays
so busy "paying homage" to every other Argento, Craven and Hooper movie it never
feels like its own film. It simply feels like a pale imitation of numerous
better movies everyone has already seen.
The most ridiculous review came from Dread Central, which boldly stated "The
Last House in the Woods looks, sounds and feels as if it were made in the
heyday of imported slashers from the late Seventies and early Eighties." How
about, no, no and some more no? For starters, digital cameras weren't around in the
70s and 80s and this movie looks nothing like the films shot back then. While
the makers of this do attempt to emulate the patented Bava / Fulci zoom shots a few times, back in
the day they didn't simultaneously jerk the camera around uncontrollably while
they were in the middle of zooming. The review also calls it a "giallo"
despite the fact it does not have a mystery to solve, does not feature a police
investigation and has absolutely no whodunit element to it whatsoever. Actually,
plot-wise it has almost nothing to do with any major film churned out in Italy
during the 70s and 80s and is really nothing more than yet another clone of the
American Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise; even going so far as to
pilfer from the 2003 remake. The review continues to suck this thing off
with zingers like "It's fast paced..." (never mind the fact scenes are padded
and shots are mercilessly extended simply to pad out the time leading up to the
final half hour) and "...absolutely brutal in its unpredictability and
intensity." Unpredictability? Sure... if you're a complete newbie who's never
seen any of the classic films this is aping. Intensity? Well, I guess... if
you'd consider a scene where a guy is chainsawed, tries to stuff his guts back
into his stomach and randomly utters "The priest always told me I should behave"
(??) before keeling over as being intense instead of, you know, stupid like it actually is.
Though the dialogue is painfully awful, the plot is thin yet utterly senseless
all at once, scenes are dragged out far longer than they need to be, the
characters are complete morons, there's nary an original idea to be had at any
point in the film and it doesn't really work as a throwback, I'm still giving it
a little credit. Why? Well, I didn't totally hate the final half hour. After a
wretched and worthless first 50 or so minutes, it finally picked up the pace and
delivered on the blood and action. The thankfully non-CGI-enhanced old school
makeups are from Sergio Stivaletti (also the associate producer), who
needs no introduction to Italian horror fans for his work with Argento,
Michele Soavi and Lamberto Bava. The score is pretty good and there's also some
stylized lighting toward the end that's really well done (though much of the
rest of the film - particularly the stuff set outdoors - is horribly shot and
too dark). The revelation at the very end is somewhat interesting, as well. And,
you know, I really laughed a lot while watching this. The DVD from Ghost
House Underground comes with two audio options: an English dub and in Italian with
English subtitles. The former is so God awful it turns the whole thing into a
comedy, so it certainly came in handy. Any time I was getting bored I
went to the dubbed version to hear the horrible voice actors scream lines like
"Aren't you Ginger the ass kicker? Aren't you Ginger with the GIANT DIIIIICK!?"
and I was pretty much set from then on out.
Last House was filmed in 2005, debuted at the Ravenna Nightmare Film
Festival in Italy in October 2006, played a few American film festivals in 2007
and 2008 and made its U.S. DVD debut in 2008. Its wiki entry says it was a flop,
but a sequel - currently titled Kid in the Box - has been announced
regardless.
★★
