There’s one key difference between that original classic and the current new batch of unpleasant, endurance-test movies. The modern pictures are trying to entertain you; The Last House on the Left, on the other hand, seems to adopt the position that nobody could be entertained by this. It’s job is not to amuse, but to upset. Instead of giving the audience what it wants, it points finger at the audience as they squirm more and more uncomfortably in their seats, and it fairly shouts at you: “You came here to be delighted by people being raped and tortured and brutalized and murdered? What in the fuck is wrong with you?” And that’s why it succeeds where others have failed.

As a title, The Last House on the Left is completely meaningless. There aren’t any houses on the left, first or last. What the picture’s actually about is two innocent young girls who are kidnapped by a gang of thugs. They’re sexually assaulted, painfully tortured and ultimately murdered in cold blood. The violence is gritty and in your face, the brutal sexuality is on screen and never tastefully done and the whole thing is basically an attack on your senses and your sensibilities. Everything that transpires in these sequences is absolutely horrible, and it’s all juxtaposed with slapsticky scenes of comedy and oddly cheery folk music. That’s how life is, isn’t it? One minute it’s laughter and gaiety, the next terrible tragedy.

Although he’s since become one of horror’s top names, this was writer/director Wes Craven’s very first picture. A low budget and a crop of amatuers means there isn’t the flash and pizazz of a Hollywood movie, increasing your belief that what you’re seeing on screen is really happening. The grainy 16mm film further adds to the notion that this is a documentary rather than a simple movie (in spite of the now famous tagline “Keep repeating: It’s only a movie.”). And of course there’s the title card at the beginning that says the movie is based on a true story, which is a complete and utter lie. But hey, it keeps you guessing.

It’s hard to come up with anything more to say about this picture, because it’s really just an affront to all things decent. But it’s a good movie. It endures because it makes a statement, and that statement is: “Why would you sickos wanna look at this stuff? You should be ashamed of yourself, getting all excited over violence.” It’s that message that has caused it to rise above its imitators.

In his intro to the DVD, Wes Craven has this to say: “What you’re about to see is the most complete version of Last House on the Left that has been released to this date since the original theatrical release that was done previous to any cuts. And all materials that were removed for reasons of community standards or protests of censors and everything else has been restored, so you should be aware of that. Remove any small children or innocent animals from the room and take some sort of a tranquilizer yourself if you’re at all unstable in your psychological makeup.”

I think that about says it all.

Moviegoers in search of political satire have had a rough time these past few years, as Hollywood has backed away from the genre due to America’s contentiously divided electorate. Sure, the electorate has always been divided, but rarely with as much venom and animosity as we have seen in the 2000 era.

It’s not so much about policy or government anymore as it is about culture. Pickup trucks vs. Hybrids, Beer vs. Lattes — we see these divisions everywhere in America, and once you make politics personal, some are easily offended.

Enter Bud Johnson, the pickup-driving, beer-swilling underachiever who doesn’t much care about anything. Hollywood has put it’s faith in him, thinking that perhaps his story can ease some of America’s political pain.

Bud is played by Kevin Costner, who hasn’t been as funny and charming as he is in Swing Vote for decades. Only his performance in Field of Dreams compares in terms of downright likability — and we do like him. Costner’s Bud doesn’t care about his job, his friends, or even his (broken) family, all that’s left of which is his adorable little daughter Molly (Madeline Carroll), but we somehow manage to care about him.

Maybe it’s the pure bipartisanship of his apathy, but his “loser” ways are completely endearing. And his delightful daughter is, of course, his polar opposite: hyperinvolved and ultrapassionate about not just politics, but civics, the economy, the world. It’s because of this that she registers Bud to vote, frustrated by his acerbic lack of interest in the election, and thus seals his fate.

Through a voting error, Bud’s vote ends up not being recorded — but they do know that he voted. And after the electoral college results in a tie, the world is waiting on one little county in New Mexico to decide the next President of the United States: Bud’s county. Then, Bud’s county results in a tie, leaving only one option — Bud must recast his vote, and decide who will lead the free world.

Sure, it’s unlikely. But consider that the 2000 election was decided by fewer than 600 votes in Florida. In New Mexico, it was just over 100 votes that decided the state. Unlikely, but not impossible.

What results is a media and political maelstrom swirling around Bud’s life as he prepares to cast his vote. And so begins the satire-fest. Everyone wants to know what he’ll decide.

The media hounds him for any tiny soundbyte or opinion that might be a clue as to how he’ll vote — blowing everything he says monumentally out of proportion. The politicians react, campaigning directly at him, and selling their political souls in the process. Republican candidate Kelsey Grammar endorses gay marriage after Bud says he doesn’t care what two grown men do on their own time. Democratic candidate Dennis Hopper rails against abortion when Bud says that he doesn’t like it.

In this way, and through some very clever and hilarious faux-campaign commercials, the movie lays bare our political process for what it is: one, long, media-obsessed popularity contest, with voter manipulation and false-choice gimmickry as the orders of the day. And not only does it make politicians lie, the movie teaches us, but it also makes regular people believe in the wrong sorts of things for the wrong sorts of reasons.

But the film is also bipartisan, and bends over backwards to prove that it’s not lobbying for any one side over the other. While that might be it’s greatest strength at the box office, it’s also its greatest weakness in terms of effective satire. Without a clear target on which to train its sarcasm, the film ends up targeting politics, the media, and America as a whole, and that sarcasm essentially turns into cynicism.

As politicians are made to be stupid, self-important fools, and the media portrayed as cutthroat and unprincipled, the movie takes on the same air of arrogant apathy that Bud was displaying at the outset of the movie As a result, as he learns to care about “the system,” the audience is duped into disliking it more and more.

But, in the end, the film is not about political satire, and that’s why so many political wonks are finding it to be callow and dissatisfying cinema. I never got the impression that politics was the objective, though. The objective, clearly, was about having hope for the future, and doing what you can to make that future better.

Sure, it’s gushy. But so was Sex in the City, and at least this movie has a point.

It’s by no means great, but it’s pretty okay. If you go to the theater wanting to see an above average action-adventure movie, you’ll come away satisfied. If you go to the theater wanting to see a movie that’s as good as Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, you will probably be disappointed.

I’ll start by discussing some of the flaws—and unfortunately there are a few—so we can get them out of the way and move on to the good stuff. Most of the worries I had when I imagined what the movie would be like turned out to be justified. Indy (Harrison Ford, if for some reason you didn’t know) was often too extreme in the things he did, more like a superhero than the regular guy we’d come to know before, achieving his goals through equal parts resourcefulness and desperation. There was far too much lame, goofy humor, just as I knew there would be. Spielberg and Lucas both have shown, as the years have gone on, an inexplicable and ever-growing fondness for inserting scads of flat, silly attempts at jokes into otherwise serious movies, and they do it here a lot. (This should come as a surprise to no one; even Last Crusade suffered from this, and it’s only gotten much more extreme over the past two decades.)

And then there’s the problem so many movies suffer from these days, especially those that bear the stain of involvement from George Lucas: fakey-looking creatures. Among the fakey-looking creatures are some gophers that act like they were taken right out of Caddyshack, and I hated their brief moments on the screen more than anything else I’ve ever seen. But the particular bummer in the world of fakey-looking creatures as it applies to the Indiana Jones movies, is the essential “gross animal scene.” You remember them from the other movies, the snakes and the bugs and the rats. In this one we’re given some oversized, man-eating ants with a look that stretches suspension of disbelief to the breaking point. If the crazy supernatural stuff in the Indy movies doesn’t convince us, that’s okay—we know all that stuff is a trick. But something we loved about the other films was knowing that Harrison Ford and John Rhys-Davies really were surrounded by snakes or that Kate Capshaw really was shin deep in creepy crawlies. That feeling of excitement is missing from the analogous scene in Crystal Skull.

On the other hand, here’s something I was sure the movie was going to piss me off by doing but that I was relieved to find didn’t happen. I was sure that giving Indy this young pup of a sidekick, the self-styled tough guy Mutt (Shia LeBeouf), would inevitably lead up to a scene of Indy announcing, Danny Glover style, that he is too old for this shit. He’d then pass the torch to the new guy, who would go off and take care of the adventuring while Indy lived out his retirement years in blissful serenity. Much to my surprise—and delight—this scene never came; in fact, the movie ends with a visual statement that Henry Jones, Jr. will still be Indiana for a long time to come.

Of course, Mutt does turn out to be Indy’s son, which everyone has known would turn out to be the case since they first heard about the character. The fact that everyone saw it coming does not make the development any less pointless, unfortunately.

Despite my gripes (I even have a few more, but I’ll let them go), most of the movie is an enjoyable ride, certainly better than most action movies even if it isn’t as good as the other Indy flicks. The movie gives you everything you came for; in it, you’ll see plenty of thrilling stunts, adrenaline infused action sequences, exploration of dangerous temples, and patented Indiana Jones riddle-solving. An extended chase over land and water in a South American jungle is the standout action set piece, provided you ignore the moments where Shia LeBeouf transforms into Tarzan, which I intend to do. Everybody jumps from one vehicle to another and drives over cliffs and does all the stuff we want to see in a movie like this. There’s even a swordfight between Mutt and Cate Blanchett’s evil Soviet doctor that has them parrying and riposting while standing on the back of speeding automobiles, and that me like much much. A scene near the end of the movie that has Indy and his traveling companions running down a rapidly disappearing spiral staircase strikes just the right note, as well—fun in the grandest Indiana Jones tradition.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull takes a while to get going. The entire opening sequence in Nevada left me flat, and while a motorcycle chase shortly after that was pretty exciting, the movie doesn’t take off until Indy arrives in Peru and begins his search for the Crystal Skull and its associated Kingdom. Once it starts to move, though, it barrels along at a fair clip, providing the roller coaster ride we’ve all been promised without ever lagging or repeating itself so that the action becomes tedious. It keeps you entertained throughout, which is all it sets out to do. So it’s a fine way to spend two hours, and it’s mostly a good movie. The problems that arise in the course of the film aren’t grievous enough to pull this one down into the Realm of the Lousy, but they are noticeable enough to keep it from being as great as it might have been.

If you don’t like Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, you will also totally hate:

So yes, when a movie is adapted from a pre-existing novel, the novel is almost always the superior telling of the story. That’s not to say, however, that there haven’t been many great films based on great books. But one of the motion picture industry’s unique powers is to take a really fantastic book and turn it into a movie that profoundly sucks. Let’s look at a few of those.

GREAT BOOK: The War of the Worlds (1898)
SHITTY MOVIE: War of the Worlds (2005)
Directed by Steven Spielberg, who was apparently desperate to remind people that not every movie he makes is good, 2005’s War of the Worlds took everything that was awesome and thought-provoking in H.G. Wells’ 1898 novel and made it loud and stupid. Starring, against all reason, Tom Cruise, the film chronicles an invasion from outer space in such a clunky, by the numbers way that the material actually seems derivative of Independence Day despite the truth being just the opposite. Add the brain-shatteringly stupid notion that the aliens’ tripods were already hidden underground on Earth, and you’ve got yourself one painfully offensive movie. Oh, and Spielberg? We get it, divorce makes you sad. Give it a fucking rest already.

And speaking of sucky adaptations of the work of H.G. Wells…

GREAT BOOK: The Time Machine (1895)
SHITTY MOVIE: The Time Machine (2002)
From nonstop ridiculous love stories to stupid talking computers to hilariously laughable Morlocks, everything about this movie blows ass. Let’s never speak of it again.

GREAT BOOK: ‘Salem’s Lot (1975)
SHITTY MOVIE: Salem’s Lot (1979)
I know this movie has its adherents, and all I can say to those people is that they are wrong, wrong, wrong. You’d be hard pressed to find someone who enjoys the works of Stephen King more than I do, and ‘Salem’s Lot is my favorite of all his novels. But this movie, despite being helmed by Tobe Hooper, is as enjoyable as being bitten repeatedly about the face and neck by several species of venomous serpents. It pokes and plods along for three hours, taking forever to get anywhere and not doing much of anything when it finally does. A version exists that’s cut down to 112 minutes, and that eases the pacing trouble some but not enough. And no amount of editing changes the fact that the big bad vampire is not only totally different from the way he’s described in the book but a lot less scary as well. In the movie, it’s as though his helper is running the show and the vampire’s just a lackey, rather than the other way round. About the only thing I can say for this is that it’s not as bad as 1987’s A Return to Salem’s Lot, which has nothing to do with anything and is so intensely imbecilic that watching it can actually cause portions of your brain to spontaneously ignite and burn away.

GREAT BOOK: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979)
SHITTY MOVIE: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2004)
An absolute masterpiece of comic writing was turned into a meandering, unfocused and ugly movie that didn’t have any laughs in it. This is a problem. When someone reads Douglas Adams’ novel, they say, “Oh man, that book was funny, har har!” To take source material like that and make a movie that isn’t funny at all seems to me to be a serious misstep. The movie was made all the more disappointing because fans of the novel had been waiting so very, very long for a proper feature film version of the story, and this half-assed effort is all we got. Pah!

GREAT BOOK: Great Expectations (1861)
SHITTY MOVIE: Great Expectations (1998)
Here’s my advice: Don’t modernize Dickens. When you take most of his stories out of the safety zone of a place far away and a time long ago, they start to fall apart. We’ll buy the insane coincidences and ludicrous plot points when they’re tucked away in quaint old Victorian England; when you try and put the events of the plot in 20th century Florida, we’re less willing to accept the older mode of storytelling. Oh, plus there’s the fact that this screenplay is just terrible. Whatever essence the Dickens novel has that’s kept it in high school curricula more than 140 years on is absent in the screenwriting here. Even actors like Anne Bancroft and Robert De Niro can’t save this barrel of crap, so for your own sanity stay away from it.

I’ll be the first to admit I was skeptical about Horton Hears a Who. Theatrical adaptations of Dr. Seuss don’t exactly have the best track record, after all; How the Grinch Stole Christmas was lousy and The Cat in the Hat was an outright abomination before the Lord. Fortunately for moviegoers everywhere, I’m pleased to report that Horton is better than these by leaps and bounds.

The biggest reason Horton Hears a Who is a charming and enjoyable picture while the other Dr. Seuss movies suck out loud is that this one stays closest to the source material. Sure, Dr. Seuss worked in the genre of rhyming picture books for kiddies, but he was a genius nonetheless. The Grinch gave us pointless glimpses into the Grinch’s tortured past, The Cat in the Hat gave us disturbing images and Mike Meyers being totally horrifying in every way he could. But in this movie they don’t mess around making up all kinds of nonsense and bullcrappery. Thus, the story is lengthened without being padded, if you can dig that. It fills up the 90 minute running time without seeming stretched thin, but it also isn’t a stupid bunch of garbage.

In fact, this movie is very much not garbage. It’s charming and funny and delightful in the ways a good movie for kids should be. It’s youngster appropriate without being boring to the adults in the audience—a family film in the truest sense of the term.

Lending their voices to the characters are Jim Carrey as Horton the Who-hearing elephant, Steve Carell as the Who that Horton hears, and Carol Burnett as a bitchy kangaroo with a really big chip on her shoulder. All do a fine job, but I do think—and I promise you I never in a million years thought I would ever be saying these words—that Jim Carrey actually underperforms as Horton. Horton usually seems the least energetic character despite his animation being as full of life as everyone else’s, and it’s because Carrey’s performance is kinda flat. (I know, it’s like the world’s been turned upside down, right?) Periods of listlessness aside, his characterization is good, just not everything it might have been. Carell and Burnett, however, are in fine form in their respective roles and the supporting roles deftly add comedy and cuteness to the proceedings whenever they are called upon.

The greatest thing about the story of Horton is its message, summarized in an oft-repeated line taken straight from Seuss’ book: “A person’s a person, no matter how small.” All of us, old and young, like to hear from time to time that we matter, and so Horton’s steadfast devotion to the ideals of equality and fairness and basic rights for all people—even for people he didn’t know existed—touches something in our hearts.

Horton Hears a Who is thoroughly charming. It’s a good story inventively told, it delivers a moral without being either heavy-handed or condescending, and it comes out in the end as the best children’s movie I’ve seen in a number of years.

Yes, even lower than it has traditionally been for the last fifty years.

As a movie/entertainment-based website, which regularly promotes other media, I feel like we at Melted Reel should address this sad state of affairs.

So, without further ado, here is my commentary, in true Hollywood fashion. Which means, with as little effort put in by me, and as little work required by you: a list!

Ten Great Movies Based On Books:

(In no particular order)

1.) Gone With the Wind

This is a film which details the most significant landmark event in American history, the Civil War, and it is equally bold for the point of view we see it through—a privileged young Southern girl, trying desperately to stay atop a wave of unearned success, even as the world crumbles beneath her. We see it all in this film: both the proud and beautiful–but exploitative–Southern culture, as well as its naive innocence on an individual level. We see both the mission of the North to correct social ills, as well as the personal fear and weary, brutal battles which ensue. And showing all of this through the eyes of the young and unlikable Scarlett O’Hara, clawing against the wrong side of history, is a choice not many Hollywood producers would accept without first seeing it in action. But it was genius. As a nation, we flee as Scarlett flees, and we despair as Scarlett despairs. We fall with Scarlett, and with Scarlett we rise up, proud—finally with reason.

2.) The Shining

Like Steven Spielberg, an entirely separate list could be compiled of great movies based upon Stephen King’s stories—but this one is the granddaddy of them all. Stanley Kubrick helmed the film adaptation, and his directorial style may never have worked so well as it did with King’s subject matter. Kubrick’s slow, inherently creepy, methodical style helped to make this understated psychological horror story one of the scariest films of all time. Generous portions of King’s original storyline were altered for the film version, but we retained the sprawling, isolated hotel—and that was his gift to us.

3.) The Godfather

This film — which many argue is the greatest film to have ever been shot — would never exist without Mario Puzzo’s enormous tome predicating it, let alone its sequels. Puzzo also co-wrote the script with director Francis Ford Coppola. There’s an argument to be made about whether or not a “gangster” film with such emotional resonance could ever exist without first existing as a novel. Sadly, it is now common practice to keep “book writers” distant from the process of adapting their work for the screen, likely due to too many volatile creative conflicts. Modern film may never recover.

4.) Adaptation

The screenplay for this film, based on The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean, was written by the always bold Charlie Kaufman. He was nominated for an Academy Award, and with good reason. Perhaps no film better indicates, or pays homage to, the relationship between book and movie. Kaufman wrote himself into the film, and detailed his grueling, neurotic process for adapting it. “It’s narcissistic, it’s solipsistic… it’s pathetic,” his fatigued character bemoans from the screen. We see the story as he writes it, and we see the pressure from his superiors to make it bold, make it entertaining, and make it quick. He laments the process, and eventually the book itself, even though we see its beauty growing as it destroys his life.

5.) Jurassic Park

Steven Spielberg and author Michael Crichton teamed up to prove that all film adaptations are not created equal with this film. A two-inch-thick novel turned into a summer popcorn movie? There was only one choice for the job. Spielberg’s Jaws was also based on a novel (by Peter Benchley), and both films serve as testaments to his skill as a filmmaker. No one expected so much scientific information, nor so many clever characters (who would’ve thought–a role that’s actually perfect for Jeff Goldblum), to transfer as successfully to the film version of the story as they did. Spielberg has shown Hollywood time and again that movies can be both exciting and profound, both funny and deep. But they never seem to learn.

6.) Dracula (Any Version)

This tale of death and seduction has captivated and horrified audiences for over a century, and single-handedly spawned a science fiction mythology which will surely last for centuries more. Cinematic juggernauts such as Bela Lugosi and Francis Ford Coppola are just a few of the people who have taken a healthy bite of success from Bram Stoker’s masterful—and still remarkably original—fictionalized account of the notorious Vlad the Impaler.

7.) Schindler’s List

What’s this, a film about the Holocaust from a German’s point of view? And directed by a Jew? How did this train wreck make its way onto the list? Oh, that’s right, it’s fantastic. Directed again by Steven Spielberg, this account of Nazi Germany’s frail socio-political balance does what few works of art can ever do: it reminds us that we’re all in this together, good and bad, no matter how much we want to go it alone. We all know that our enemies are evil, our soldiers heroic, and the victims unspeakably tragic—but it takes something special and delicate to explain, in a hushed voice, that governments and armies are not individuals, and no one is 100% anything.

8.) The Lord of the Rings

Would such a beautiful and profound film about Hobbits and Wizards, Elves and magic, have ever been made without first being conceived and hugely successful in another medium? I argue that it would not. JRR Tolkien crafted for us a boundless world of magic which has been endlessly copied, but never duplicated, and the film is proving to be no different. The story is truly epic, its characters massive—but the message is simple: trust yourself, and love your allies. And, we can always appreciate a film which reminds us that there is a country called New Zealand, and it has funny-talking people.

9.) The Shawshank Redemption

Another nostalgic and powerful film originating in the creative mind of Stephen King. Never have the triumphs of humanity been so tangible as they are in and around the stone walls of Shawshank. The tale of then-beginning writer/director Frank Darabont’s budding relationship with the all-powerful Stephen King closely mirrors (metaphorically, of course), the tale of the film’s protagonist. A hero silent and meek, fighting oppressive injustices on all sides, consistently succeeds in freeing himself where others have failed, and for others who had never tried.

10.) Jaws

Another film by Steven Spielberg? You’re probably saying to yourself that I’m biased. And you’d be right. I’m biased in favor of film adaptations which prove they can be simultaneously subtle and entertaining. Don’t blame me—blame everyone who isn’t Stephen Spielberg. This film’s reputation has been somewhat tarnished, however, because it helped spawn an entire culture of movie companies looking to produce mindless summer blockbusters each and every year. Of course, it’s on the list because it isn’t mindless, not to mention that they wrote the book (literally) on how to make a perfect thriller: Don’t show (much of) the bad guy until the end, make our hero’s path long and hard to get there, and end the story right after he is defeated. Also, it never hurts to have your characters love each other, not just stand next to each other. It’s hard to believe that once Steven Spielberg is gone, the torch will be passed on to the likes of Michael Bay. Literally, by Spielberg himself (see: Transformers.)

So that’s the list. As with most movie lists, Spielberg is omnipresent and King remains King, but there are plenty more out there than just these classics. Hundreds of written works are optioned each year to become potential movies, and many of those released end up as some of the best stories ever put to film. So appreciate it!

This poll may encourage us to mourn the death of the reader in this country, but the important thing is that the novelist is very much alive, though his role may have changed. Great books get made into great movies, and the writer still gets his due and his much-deserved pay. Is this as fair to literature as it once was?

For me, it’s a toss-up. There’s nothing like a good book… but there’s also nothing like a great movie.