Savage Friday: Killing Ground (2017)

[Warning: Spoilers ahead.]

Killing Ground (2017) is a grim, upsetting bit of cinematic business from Australia, and director Damien Power. The film is a superb example of traditional “Savage Cinema” standards, and involves two doomed camping excursions in the woods that -- over a period of four days -- both fall prey to amoral hunters.

The film’s elevated sense of artistry -- with pervasive cross-cutting deliberately taking the audience from one doomed expedition to the other -- helps to mitigate some of the film’s darkest moments.  

Still, Killing Ground is a very powerful, very disturbing film, and it ends with the suggestion, terribly, that a human infant has been left behind in the woods...to be eaten by wild pigs. It’s an especially horrible turn of events, since, for at least a while, audiences are left with the hope that the child has managed to survive the terror intact.

In terms of Savage Cinema standards, Killing Ground hits one of the favorite obsessions of the sub-genre pretty hard (and very effectively, too boot).

And that trope is, specifically, that through extreme adversity and terror, the protagonists learn their true natures.  

Here, Ian (Ian Meadows), a man studying to be a doctor, proves his inherent moral weakness. His girlfriend, Samantha (Harriet Dyer), by contrast, rises to the occasion and demonstrates her real strength and power. 

In this case, those two discoveries are in direct opposition. Samantha not only learns of her innate strength, she learns too, of her boyfriend’s total weakness. He isn’t someone she can count on when the chips are down. In a way, the set-up is not all that different from what we encountered in last week’s entry, Eden Lake. A professional young man and woman tread unwisely from the safety of civilization into nature, and encounter barbarous behavior of people less “evolved” than they are.

Killing Ground includes rape, the (off-screen) death of a child, and the murder and torture of innocent families and individuals, so there’s no doubt that it lives up to Savage Cinema label, but the quality that actually makes the film memorable is the sense, often found in these films, that life is meaningless, and death just one “wrong turn” down the road ahead.

At some point, fate has it in for us.

“We’re going to go for a little ride.”

Young physician-in training Ian and his girlfriend Samantha decide to go camping for the weekend. En route, she quizzes him on his knowledge of anatomy.  When they get lost, however, he asks a stranger at a gas station for directions. The stranger suggests Gungilee Falls as a perfect camping site, and provides directions.

When Ian and Samantha arrive at that location, they see another tent perched on the beach, but no sign of the campers who put it up. They set up their tent and start to enjoy themselves.  Meanwhile, the stranger, German, and his friend, close in, ready for a rerun of a murder spree.

It turns out, that just days earlier these hunters killed the family camping on the beach, after raping the teenage daughter, Em (Tiarnie Coupland). 

Now, the strangers must erase all evidence of their crime by committing another terrible act.

"Gone Hunting..."

Early in Killing Ground, Samantha tells a story about why she has never gone camping, at least since high school. She knew a boy whose tent caught on fire. This story suggests, perfectly, just how random fate is. A young man, with an entire future laid out before him, instead  wasforced to reckon at a young age with his mortality.

This story sets the tone for the action of the film.

It suggests, perhaps, that man proposes but God (or nature, if you prefer...) disposes. All our plans and dreams may come to precisely nothing if we take a wrong turn, and head down a blind, dead end.  

The story of the empty tent, and the destroyed family, only reinforces, strongly, this sense of cruel, purposeless fate. Young and vibrant Em goes camping with her parents, but suffers from bad dreams She sleeps outside her tent because of those dreams. Her parents go for a walk one day, and discuss “imagery rehearsal therapy” to help her overcome her nightmares. Specifically, this form of therapy will help the 16-year old “rewrite” her nightmares so they don’t come to terrifying ends.

This story, treated with great importance to Em’s (doomed parents) is a meditation on something that ultimately, doesn’t matter at all. Em ends up living a nightmare, raped and murdered by the hunters in the  woods. All her parents’ plans for her future are immaterial. She has no future.

Nor do her parents.

Like the boy in the tent fire remembered in story by Samantha, Em’s fate is a reminder that tomorrow is not promised to us. We make grand plans -- career, family, retirement, vacations, even -- yet there is no guarantee beyond this moment; beyond the present.

The forces of destruction in the movie, the two hunters, are indeed terrifying too. They are sociopaths and therefore lack empathy. 

They see people for how they can use them (Em, for sex, whether she wants to participate or not), and do not have the same boundaries as civilized people do. They give no consideration for Em or the infant.  Being young and innocent isn’t a free pass to survive. These ignorant, unwashed brutes don’t value any lives, or any hopes and dreams, save their own. They don’t register anyone else as human. 

They are completely and utterly conscience-less.

And yes, at the risk of stoking controversy, I believe that this plot-line is a deliberate commentary on modern hunters and hunting.  I know hunting is a way of life for many. I realize that there is a whole hunting culture, especially in the South (where I live). I don't mean to disrespect anybody or their lifestyle, or tradition by exploring this facet of the film.

I would say that Killing Ground trenchantly comments on the pervasiveness of a pastime that involves killing another living being, when such killing is no longer, strictly-speaking, necessary. We live in a culture of abundance and plenty, so hunting isn't often a matter of necessity anymore; of having to kill to feed the family.  Hunting is now known as a "sport."  It is done for pleasure. 

And yet there is nothing sporting about the guns used in this pastime, in 2017. It's not like it's an equal match between the instincts of an animal, and an AR-15.

But once you put a bullet in a living breathing animal, like a deer, is it easier to put a bullet into a living, breathing person; a woman, or a child?  That's an underpinning in this film. The hunters see people as prey; they derive pleasure from raping and killing them.

The  real question to consider here: does the modern act of hunting teaches us, on a basic level, to de-value the lives of other beings?

Because, make no mistake: the animals that modern hunters kill with their high-tech guns are capable of feeling pain. They bleed and suffer just like human beings do. If we can play God and end an animal's life, why is it different to end a human's life? These are the uncomfortable questions that Killing Ground, inevitably, raises.

The men in this film are so accustomed to killing that they have no compunctions about murder when it comes to women and even children.  A camp site isn't a vacation area, it's the titular killing ground, one that the men return to...for satisfaction -- for pleasure -- and for sport.  There's good hunting there, after all.

If modern, well-equipped hunters kill does or bucks without remorse -- as sport -- is it such a stretch for people like the villains in this film to beat a baby in the head?  Hunters justify killing deer by talking about over-population, and matters like that. The hunters here are ex-cons who don't want to go back to jail. They have an easy justification, as well. They can't leave behind evidence.

And again, this is why I love horror films. They dare to raise matters and ask questions about things we tacitly accept, every day. They challenge us to rethink our ideals. They challenge us to examine and then re-examine our values.

Killing Ground features a high degree of tact, which is a necessity for material this grim, and neither the death of the baby, nor the rape of Em are actually seen.  Of course, one can argue that by not showing them, Power has made his film all the more effective. We know what occurs, and are left to imagine (and visualize) the worst.  It's upsetting.

This is important, because the stakes are so high for Samantha and Ian. The film makes the hunters seem all the more powerful, and death feel all the more inevitable, by telling two stories (in separate time periods) on the same hunting grounds. We know what the hunters are capable of, based on the suffering and deaths of the first family, and therefore know, as the film winds towards its conclusion, that the young couple can expect no sympathy, no quarter.

When faced with a situation like that, a person might collapse and surrender, as Ian does, thinking of no one and nothing but himself and his own survival. Or  one might react like Samantha, who fights like Hell for herself, for Ian, and for the baby. Even when she is in extreme jeopardy, and facing her own mortality, Samantha manages to worry for the baby, and for her boyfriend. It turns out, she realizes, Ian doesn’t share those feelings. He runs off to the police, instead of helping her, or the baby. 

Instead of fighting, in the moment, he flees to civilization to let others fight for him.

One might argue this course of action. One might say, unemotionally, that Ian did the right thing: letting the authorities handle the hunters. That act accords with law. But emotionally, his act is one of pure, shameful cowardice. He leaves his girlfriend to be raped by one of the hunters, knowing full well that she might be killed before he can return.  When he sees her alive, the shame is written all over Ian's face.  And Samantha, without saying anything, knows exactly the kind of man she is in love with.

The cruelest moment in the film, however, involves the death of hope. The baby, who -- as children always do in films of this type -- personifies the future. He has been battered and beaten, and dropped in the woods. But the body disappears for a time, and Samantha hopes against hope that Ian, a doctor, has rescued the baby, and saved his life.  During the film's climax, however, he tells her he left the baby’s body in the woods too. 

The baby’s ultimate disappearance, therefore, has no plausible explanation unless one remembers the exposition early in the film about how the area is occupied by wild pigs, who apparently eat anything and everything left behind by campers. We can put two and two together, and realize that the boars got the baby.  

In this case, we can only hope the child died before the hungry animals took him.

Again and again, people ask me: how can I watch and like a movie like this? One with extreme violence, and death? Featuring rape and the death of innocence.

My answer is that films like Killing Ground don’t sugar coat human existence. They don’t wrap it up in bullshit, like happy endings. The cavalry doesn’t ride over the hill, just in time, to save someone who is good, or young, or innocent, at least not frequently.  These films make us question our choices, our morality, and our traditions. And they don't try to be Oscar-bait in the process.

Films like Killing Ground remind us of how much of our lives is but an abstract construct; a delusion that we erect and rigorously maintain.

We believe in civilization, but once outside of populated areas, civilization is just an idea. 

And not everybody carries the same moral code, when freed from the boundaries of civilization. Secondly, as noted above, Nature -- or God -- is under no obligation obey our self-proclaimed rules for behavior. 

The first shot of Killing Ground is of an empty camp site on the beach; an insertion of man’s world upon nature. We set up our camps, our rules, and our philosophies in nature, but as I said, Nature itself is under no obligation to follow our edicts. We can establish a foothold in Nature, but we can't beat it.

This strange dichotomy is seen in Ian’s character too.  By nature, he cares about himself.  He's selfish. We see this in his extreme cowardice. But in civilization, he has selected a vocation in the medical field in which he is supposed to care about others. That ideal, however, is an inch deep.

Which value wins out, when push comes to shove?  

Civilization -- Hippocratic oaths and the like -- are but lovely constructs that we cling to so that we can, in some way, delude ourselves about the finite nature of human life.

So Killing Ground is indeed a harrowing film, but it tells us something important about our existence. It raises questions about the rules we think define us, and our civilization.

Out in the woods, in nature, there is hunter and prey, and that's it.

The Return of Savage Friday!

By popular demand (!) Savage Fridays is returning. Starting next Friday, I’ll be reviewing, once again, the films of the savage cinema here on the blog.

However, before I started, I wanted to re-post my description of the Savage Cinema (originally posted in 2012):

“As the 1960s turned into the 1970s, the “New Freedom” arrived in full, and cutting-edge filmmakers began to vet stories -- horror stories, I maintain – about basic human nature. 

In tales of the Savage Cinema, resources are scarce, compromise is impossible, and two “sides” go to war.  The Haves and the Have Nots (The Hills Have Eyes [1977]), the lawful and the unlawful (The Last House on the Left [1972]), the male and female (I Spit on Your Grave [1978]), the liberated and traditional (Straw Dogs[1971]), even city folk and country folk (Deliverance [1972]) find that there’s no room for debate…only bloodshed and hatred.

In each one of these films, for the most part, there’s an Every Man (or Every Woman) who is drawn or pulled into combat, and must consequently re-evaluate his or her sense of morality to contend with the sudden, often inexplicable outbreak of violence. That Every Person rises to an unexpected challenge, but also – in some way – succumbs to the basest human instinct: to kill.

In the crucible of (unwanted) combat, the Every Person thoroughly tests him or herself.  Does he or she have what it takes to survive? Does this character descend, finally, into bloody violence? And what is the personal, mental, and physical toll of shedding civilization and established norms of morality, even for an instant? Can you come back from that?  Do you want to come back from that?

Such questions intrigue and fascinate me, perhaps because I have always lived a sheltered and safe life. I’m a largely risk-averse person in terms of my choices and life-style. I live in a world where there is ample police protection, no military draft, and remarkably little crime. But I admire the Savage Cinema films I’ve mentioned above because they force audiences to ponder, quite frankly: what would I do? 

Even better, these films echo their content to an extreme and remarkably pure degree. If Savage Cinema film narratives involve shedding the shackles and protections of civilization and the norms of morality, their cinematic, visual approach involves a stylistic corollary: shredding established film decorum and conventions, and going over the edge into transgressive and taboo-breaking territory.

This territory is not for polite company, to be certain.

It’s a place of frequent female and male rape (Deliverance, Straw Dogs, I Spit on Your Grave, Last House), imperiled family members (The Hills Have Eyes, Last House), and brutal violence. Often that on-screen violence is of an intensely personal and even animalistic nature: A woman bites off a man’s penis in Craven’s Last House.  Similarly, in Straw Dogs, we see a man’s foot blown off (by a stray shot-gun blast) in extreme close-up. 

So yes, these movies are explicit and disturbing, but also courageous in the sense that they follow through on their promise and premise.  Where some people and critics have stated that such films are gratuitously violent, I argue the opposite point. These films are about violence, and the consequences of violence on families, and civilization as a whole. 

The violence highlighted in films of the Savage Cinema is of a type that makes you wonder about our human nature. It isn’t depicted as heroic, but rather, in some instances, as necessary and human, but still awful.  Retribution or revenge -- a hallmark of these pictures -- may satisfy blood lust for a moment, but then what do you do -- for a lifetime -- knowing that you are the same thing, at heart, as the “monster” you slayed?

This is the morally-fascinating territory of the Savage Cinema, and the reason why it boasts artistic worth and social value.”

So, check in next Friday for my first new savage cinema review. I've decided to go "international," to start-out.

The film I’ll be looking at furst is Eden Lake (2008). It’s a British entry in the savage cinema canon, and if possible, please give it a watch before the week is out, so you can comment on it as well.

(The second film I’m reviewing in the series is the new Australian movie, Killing Ground [2017], so you may want to put that in your queue, as well.  Up third: Martyrs.)

Ask JKM a Question: Savage Cinema Fridays?

A reader named Gene writes:

"Savage Fridays was my most anticipated entry on your blog several years back. Is there any chance of you possibly bringing this back in the short-term? "

Gene, your question takes me back!

I believe it was 2012 -- already five years ago!! -- when I devoted Fridays to the Savage Cinema.  

As readers may remember, the savage horror films (not necessarily supernatural...just violent) are among my favorites. These films symbolize a recognition, it seems to me, of life's essential absurdity, randomness, and chaotic nature. I love their brutal qualities, and their equally blunt social commentary.

Some of the films I reviewed in the series include Straw Dogs (1971), Deliverance (1972), Last House on the Left (1972), I Spit on Your Grave (1978), and Irreversible (2002), as I recall.

There are still many savage cinema entries I haven't reviewed on the blog, including my all-time favorite: Martyrs (2008).  Another of this type that I enjoy, and need to review is Wolf Creek (2005).

As far as getting back to those films and reviving the blog series, I would love to have the opportunity!

In fact, I want to extend my thanks to everyone who has stuck with me and the blog this summer, as my posts have been less frequent.  

I am teaching two classes all summer (Intro to Film and Public Speaking), and when not teaching, I have been with my son, who is off from school for the summer. He is ten, and we have been gaming, playing with Legos, and having other adventures together. Most of his friends are away at camps or on vacation for the summer, so we spend a lot of (wonderful) time together.

So it has been more and more difficult to find time to blog. It has been a real challenge. I still haven't gotten to my review of War for the Planet of the Apes!  

However, I am anticipating and planning a re-birth of and re-commitment to blogging once I am back at school full time, and Joel is also back at school full time. That's mid-to-late August.  So if you can hang around till then, I can plan to revive Savage Fridays, and start with Martyrs and Wolf Creek.

Thank you for asking the question!

Don't forget to ask me your questions at Muirbusiness@yahoo.com

Ask JKM a Question: More Savage Cinema Titles?

A reader, Marcus, writes:

I'm a big fan of yours and especially love your write ups on savage cinema. 

You introduced me to Southern Comfort, for which I can't thank you enough. 

Besides the ones you've written about (Southern Comfort, Deliverance, I Spit On Your Grave, Last House On The Left, Straw Dogs, The Hills Have Eyes and more recently Green Room) I can't think of any other examples of movies from this genre. 

Is the genre really that limited, or are there many gems that I haven't seen out there waiting to be discovered?

Marcus, that is a great question. 

Indeed...I love the savage cinema.  

Films of this type are "my" kind of horror films because they grapple with existential angst. If confronted with violence, you must meet it with violence, right?  Whether to save your loved ones, or save yourself.  

But if you are a moral person, against violence in principle, what does your bloody response do to your identity? 

There are ethics involved, so deeply, in the savage cinema.

This is how I wrote about the format/formula back in 2012, when I was regularly featuring Savage Fridays here on the blog:

"The Savage Cinema, as I like to call it, grew out of a film movement that began, arguably with Bonnie and Clyde (1967).  You’ll recall, perhaps, that Arthur Penn movie’s frankness about sex (conveyed in ubiquitous phallic imagery…), as well as the film’s unbelievably bloody and downbeat ending. 

As the 1960s turned into the 1970s, the “New Freedom” arrived in full, and cutting-edge filmmakers began to vet stories -- horror stories, I maintain – about basic human nature. 

In tales of the Savage Cinema, resources are scarce, compromise is impossible, and two “sides” go to war.  The Haves and the Have Nots (The Hills Have Eyes [1977]), the lawful and the unlawful (The Last House on the Left [1972]), the male and female (I Spit on Your Grave [1978]), the liberated and traditional (Straw Dogs [1971]), even city folk and country folk (Deliverance [1972]) find that there’s no room for debate…only bloodshed and hatred.

And in each one of these films, for the most part, there’s an Every Man (or Every Woman) who is drawn or pulled into combat, and must consequently re-evaluate his or her sense of morality to contend with the sudden, often inexplicable outbreak of violence.  

That Every Person rises to an unexpected challenge, but also – in some way – succumbs to the basest human instinct: to kill.

In the crucible of (unwanted) combat, the Every Person thoroughly tests him or herself.  Does he or she have what it takes to survive?  Does this character descend, finally, into bloody violence?  And what is the personal, mental, and physical toll of shedding civilization and established norms of morality, even for an instant?   Can you come back from that?  Do you want to come back from that?"

So your question is: are there other examples of this cut-throat, extremely violent sub-genre?

The answer is affirmative.  One of the greatest modern savage cinema films is The Strangers (2008), which depicts what appears to be a completely random murder spree, and finds two young protagonists fighting for their lives, when what they want to be doing is "navel gazing" at their romantic relationship. 

Oddly enough, films of the New French Extremity are also very strong, in terms of the themes and concepts of the Savage Cinema.  These films seem to have picked right up where the 70s films left off.  

Martyrs (2008), for example, is not only of the greatest horror films ever made, but one that suggests, in some way, that by enduring violence and pain, human beings can experience a form of transcendence. 

I appreciate this notion because a key tenet of the savage cinema is existentialism.  It's the idea that there is no purpose to the suffering and violence we endure.  Martyrs finds a way to suggest that, perhaps, there is meaning behind it.

Irreversible (2002) is another one of the greats. My review is here.  Suffice it to say, this Gasper Noe film is the 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) of the Savage Cinema.  If you like this kind of film, and feel prepared for what you are going to witness, I highly recommend it. But really make certain that you are ready, and that you understand what you are getting in for.  This is a very disturbing "rape and revenge" film.

In terms of older, classic films, I recommend Ms. 45 (1981), and Death Game (1977), and -- perhaps, if you're in the right frame of mind --- Cannibal Holocaust (1980).  All these films deal uneasily with violence (sexual and otherwise), and concepts of what it means to be truly "civilized."

Of course, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1973) fits into this category too, but I presume you've seen it.  Motel Hell (1980), in some way, seems a satire of the whole savage cinema milieu, and I wholeheartedly recommend it on those terms.

Although the remake or Straw Dogs (2011) missed the mark, I felt that the remakes of Last House on the Left (2009), and The Hills Have Eyes (2006) were both well-worth watching.  On TV, The X-Files (1993 - 2002) gave us the "banned from network television" episode "Home," and Torchwood (2006-2011) offered the unforgettable "Countrycide."

So start with those "savage" titles and see where you can go from there.

Don't forget to ask me your questions at Muirbusiness@yahoo.com

Savage Friday: Southern Comfort (1981)

“Instead of raising the tragic possibility that a subculture might disappear, Southern Comfort explores our anxiety that the dominant culture itself may be divided and destroyed.  [It] seems to suggest that destruction is the price of the desire to use -- rather than understand – another culture.”

-          Jeffrey H. Mahan, The Christian Century, December 16, 1981, page 1322.

“Southern Comfort” is not only a liqueur (a New Orleans original, so-to-speak…), but a turn of phrase that links a storied American region with ideas like relaxation, hospitality, and succor. 

Walter Hill’s 1981 film Southern Comfort plays ironically on the meaning of the term, and forges the director’s second effort -- after The Warriors (1979) -- that involves outnumbered soldiers trapped in harsh enemy territory and forced to fight every step of the way home.

But Southern Comfort is rather steadfastly not the urban fantasy of The Warriors. 

Instead, it’s a blistering social critique as well as a violent action film.  By setting his film in the year 1973 and featuring as his protagonists soldiers from the Louisiana National Guard, Hill crafts a film that, according to Michael Sragow in Rolling Stone, is a “parody of the military sensibility,” “a metaphor for the Vietnam War” and a “study of gracelessness under fire.”

The other films I’ve featured here on Savage Friday have dealt with crime (Bonnie & Clyde [1967]) as pro-social response to a rigged system, and the morality of violence following personal aggression of the most brutal, personal sort (Irreversible [2002], The Last House on the Left [1972], I Spit on Your Grave [1978]).  

Additionally, some of the films have dealt overtly with the concept of what happens to a civilized man when he must, by needs, eschew the boundaries of civilized behavior and act violently (Deliverance [1972], Straw Dogs [1971]).

But Southern Comfort is the first film from the bunch that gazes at violence on a wider, almost institutionalized basis.  Specifically, it looks at the idea of a nation knowingly unloosing aggression and violence on a mass scale, often times by soldiers who are not educated about the nature of the enemy, are insensitive to cultural differences, and who – finally – crack under pressure. 

Can war ever be a moral “right?”  And if so, does it matter who, specifically, a nation sends to war, and how those men wage that war?

These are not easy questions to answer.  And these were not small issues in the days of Vietnam, a war that severely tested American beliefs about its own national might and moral rectitude.  Southern Comfort suggests a home-grown Vietnam culture-clash right here, inside our regional borders, and a so-called “primitive” culture dwelling side-by-side with the more “advanced,” dominant one.    

By making this sustained cinematic battle an intra-American one, so-to-speak -- American National Guard vs. American Cajuns -- Walter Hill allows viewers to see concepts not always readily apparent in the case of foreign wars, where patriotism can overwhelm reason and balance.  In America we cherish and protect our right and responsibility to defend our homes and even our right just to be left alone, the very concepts that the Cajuns wage bloody guerilla war over in the film.  But when we’re the aggressors intruding in the territory of others, our values seem to change.  This film holds up a mirror to that paradox. It is an unromantic, un-idealized view of war and soldiers.  

Notice that I didn’t say negative view.  The approach here is even-handed, revealing how soldiers can be smart and heroic, as well as misguided and out-of-control.  The trenchant idea seems to be that of the Pandora’s Box.  If you release men with guns into an untamed environment, where danger is everywhere, each will respond in his own way.  Some will find and adhere to a strong moral compass.  Others will degenerate into sadistic violence.

Furthermore, Southern Comfort suggests, as the quote from Jeffrey Mahan above observes, that a dominant culture out to “use” a weaker culture is actually the one in danger of being “divided and destroyed.”  That destruction comes about from a moral failure, the failure to contextualize “the enemy” as human, and understand the enemy on human terms.  Specifically, if we use our might just to take resources from others, or to argue for the assertion of our ideology in someone else’s land, we are in violation of our own cherished beliefs and values.  We say “don’t tread on me,” but if someone else has what we want, we tread on them with the greatest military machine in history.

This cerebral argument doesn’t make Walter Hill’s film any less tense or violent, but rather adds a layer of commentary to the savagery.  As critic Diane Hust wrote in “Heavy Symbolism Ravels Film’s Good Yarn” (The Daily Oklahoman, November 12, 1981): “These ‘civilized’ but allegedly trained soldiers fall apart in a blue-green otherworld, and even the likable heroes...have brutal and vulnerable sides that emerge during the ordeal.” 

The idea here is that all soldiers are not created equal, and until the crucible of combat occurs, it’s almost impossible to determine who will thrive, and who will succumb to cowardice, or animalistic brutality.  The film walks a delicate balance, but not everyone agrees it succeeds.  Vincent Canby at The New York Times noted that Walter Hill is “the best stager of action in practice,” but found the film to be “more an exercise in masochism than suspense.”  Yes, in some way, the same argument could be made of every entry in the Savage Cinema genre.

Time Magazine noted (derisively) that in Southern Comfort “everything is a metaphor for something else,” but that’s okay with me too.  When vetting extreme violence, I prefer that movies boast and reflect an intellectual point-of-view about that violence.  In other words, the violence becomes palatable and meaningful because we sense it is being applied to convey a point of intellectual merit.

In this case, Southern Comfort reminds us that once war is uncorked, and men are encouraged to rely on instinctive, violent impulses, all bets are off concerning outcomes. It also reminds us how people with guns can, in a moment of impulse spark a conflagration that can’t be controlled.

“Comes a time when you have to abandon principles and do what's right.”

In 1973, the Louisiana National Guard’s “Bravo Team” practices maneuvers in the bayou, tromping through nearly forty kilometers of treacherous and dangerous natural terrain.

Soon, the squad becomes lost and realizes it must procure transportation to traverse a river.  Accordingly, Sgt. Pool (Peter Coyote) orders the men to appropriate three Cajun canoes.  Worse, one of the soldiers, Stuckey (Lewis Smith) playfully opens fire on the Cajun owners. 

They don’t realize his weapon is loaded with blanks, and respond with sustained lethal force.  In the first attack, Sgt. Pool is shot down, and the Cajuns begin hunting down “Bravo Team.”

Inexperienced and scared, the reservists make a bad situation worse when they seek shelter at the home of a French-speaking trapper (Brion James), and blow up his house using dynamite.

As the reservists die in the swamp, one by one, the level-headed Spencer (Keith Carradine) and a transfer from Texas, Hardin (Powers Boothe) try to hold their own and maintain some sense of order and control.

They eventually escape the treacherous bayou, but end up in a remote Cajun village in the middle of nowhere…

“Well, you know how it is, down here in Louisiana, we don't carry guns, we carry ropes, RC colas and moon pies, we're not too smart, but we have a real good time.” 

Set in “the great primordial swamp,” Hill’s hard-driving polemic, Southern Comfort shreds typical bromides about “supporting the troops” and gazes instead, in rather even-handed (if googcombat, ill-prepared emotionally, intellectually and even physically in some cases.

Powers Boothe portrays Hardin, one of Southern Comfort’s main protagonists.  He’s a chemical engineer who recently transferred from Texas, and he immediately understands the brand of man he’s now training with.  He calls them “the same dumb rednecks” he’s been around his “whole life.” 

In short order, this descriptor proves tragically accurate. His fellow “soldiers” steal private property (canoes), and open fire – as a dumb joke! -- upon unaware American citizens, the local Cajuns. 

The same “dumb rednecks,” meanwhile, deride the Cajuns as “dumb asses” or primitives.  It’s true that director Hill has on occasion rejected the Vietnam metaphor encoded in his film, but it’s apparent that these soldiers view the Cajuns precisely as some Americans viewed “Charlie:” inferiors who couldn’t possibly pose a threat to modern, technologically-superior Americans.

Again, cementing this Vietnam allegory, the Cajuns in the film boast a strategic advantage because they are familiar with the harsh landscape of their “homeland.” 

Also, they resort to guerilla tactics, deploying deadly booby traps and other hazards against the lost soldiers.  Like the Viet Cong, then, the Cajuns have been underestimated, and prove more resourceful and cunning than the forces of the more technologically-advanced culture. 

This is very much the same dynamic we see in another film Walter Hill produced, 1986’s Aliens.  There, the titular xenomorphs with their underground (sub-level) tunnels (hive) were grossly under-estimated by soldiers packing high-tech weaponry.  They were derided as “animals,” but they executed brilliant battle strategy.  The idea in both instances is the arrogance of military might, and the misapplication of military power.

Much of Southern Comfort finds the Guardsmen lost, confused, and running in circles as the Cajun hunters pick them off one at a time. Making the plight of the Guardsmen even more dangerous and harrowing, they lose their leader early on, in the equivalent of a decapitation strike.  

Also, and again repeating aspects of the Vietnam War dynamic, the Guardsmen are absolutely unable to distinguish allies from enemies, “good” Cajuns from “bad” ones.  They think (literally) that all the enemies look alike and capture and torture one Cajun man they are convinced must be the one that shot the sergeant.   In short, in “alien” territory, the members of Bravo Team are completely cluelessness about the nature of things. Yet this doesn’t stop them from acting aggressively, impulsively and violently.

Roger Ebert writes persuasively about this metaphor, though notes the fact that it is plain early on: “From the moment we discover that the guardsmen are firing blanks in their rifles, we somehow know that the movie’s going to be about their impotence in a land where they do not belong.  And as the weekend soldiers are relentlessly hunted down…we think of the useless of American technology against the Viet Cong.”

Tremendous tension is generated throughout Southern Comfort not merely by the presence of the almost invisible, omnipresent enemy, but in the exploitation of another brilliantly-expressed (and, yes… politically incorrect) fear.  This is, simply, the fear that your comrade-in-arms is a redneck idiot who could do something stupid at any time. 

For the most part, and excepting one or two important characters, the members of Bravo Team prove that they are not trustworthy, capable or smart.  It’s a two-front war: battling the enemy, and battling “self.”  This again seems like a metaphor for The Vietnam War, where incidents including the My-Lai Massacre raised questions and concerns about the military’s behavior.

The ineptitude of the Guardsmen is also apparent in the team’s misuse of their resources. They continually waste their limited bullets, so that in the end they can’t even rely on their superior equipment.  Ironically the group is termed Bravo Team according to protocol right up until the very end, yet this group has never been a team, and one senses that this is why things go badly.  There is no camaraderie, no respect, and no trust.  These men are thrown together and have little in common.  Unlike the Cajuns, who work in silent tandem and strike without warning, the Guardsmen blunder and failm except for a few – namely Hardin and Spencer -- who evidence common sense at least.

Southern Comfort shares core thematic elements with John Boorman’s Deliverance (1972), though, as I’ve noted above, in a far more militaristic setting. Both films are set in treacherous, difficult landscapes.  Both films involve a diverse group of men who, individually, see things very differently.  And both films pit the “visitors” (or invaders) against another culture with superior knowledge of the landscape.

Southern Comfort adds to the Deliverance equation the dangerous and unpredictable factor of guns, and indeed, lots of them.   This addition changes the central dynamic a bit.  In Deliverance, the “invaders” on the river never actually did anything violent to the inbred mountain folk that attacked them.  Sure, they were insulting “city folks” who thought they knew better.  They didn’t belong on that river, and were rude to everyone they met.  But they didn’t strike back and wage war until their lives were on the line.  Their posture, in terms of violence, was largely self-defense.

In Southern Comfort, by contrast, Bravo Team steals property and opens fire on the Cajuns.  The Cajuns don’t have the luxury of “knowing” the attack occurred with blanks.  All they know is that they are suddenly under siege, on their own land.  The posture is different.  In this case, the Cajuns believe war is being waged against them.  And foolishly, Bravo Team has started that war.

The last thirty minutes of Southern Comfort are hair-raising and terrifying, as Hardin and Spencer survive the deadly traps and gun battles only to reach a Cajun village.  Hill provides a trenchant image of the soldiers’ plight here. They sit on the back of a Cajun transport, the truck carrying them to ostensible freedom. But placed nearby, in a key visualization, are two pigs trapped in cages.  The Guardsmen don’t realize it yet, but they are in as much imminent danger as the trapped animals. 

When the men reach the village and the increasingly fast, increasingly intense Cajun music becomes a near constant on the film’s soundtrack, the locals ominously ready two nooses in the center of town…either for Spencer and Hardin, or for the pigs.  This portion of the film, fostering ambivalence and paranoia, is almost unbearably suspenseful in my opinion.

Again, the soldiers (and the viewers too) have difficulty understanding this “foreign” enemy and discerning its motives.  In that “fog,” we begin to understand why people react fearfully and impulsively when in danger.  In essence, Hill makes us understand how terrifying it is to be in a place far from home, observing customs you can’t understand, and having to make “calls” that could result in your death.  This ability to place us in Hardin and Spencer’s shoes is one reason why the film doesn’t indict all soldiers.  It makes us “feel” their plight, and understand why mistakes happen.  Again, I count the film as pretty even-handed and judicious.  We see both really bad soldiers, and some really good ones.

Finally, the film ends in a frenetic, almost insane flurry of dancing, spinning and slow-motion, graphic violence as the Guardsmen are drawn into more battle, this time of a much bloodier, personal dimension.  The first time I watched this finale, I was literally up on my feet because it’s so damn intense, and because I felt so invested in the outcome.  Again, viewers wouldn’t feel that way if Hill were indicting all soldiers or making an anti-American film.

There’s no comfort at all in Southern Comfort, and that, finally, is the point.  The film effectively captures the “domino effect” that can occur once groups of armed men -- without leaders and without any real common sense, either -- start letting bullets fly.  Gunfire is a threshold that, once traversed, is difficult to come back from. “Survival is a mental outlook,” one character in the film insists.  Indeed, but survival is made exponentially more difficult when the guy in the fox hole next to you is a moron, or you don’t understand local customs, or you’re lost, or you’re out of bullets. 

This is the very crux of Savage Cinema ideas.  In the absence of safety and security, violence is, perhaps, inevitable. But in that situation I certainly hope there are level-headed guys like Spencer and Hardin around.  They fight to survive, but also never lose sight of the concept of civilization. 

Savage Trailer: Southern Comfort (1981)

Savage Friday: The Last House on the Left (1972)

Writer/director Wes Craven created the incendiary The Last House on The Left (1972) as a "Generation Gap" Era re-interpretation of the 1960 Ingmar Bergman film, Jungfrukallan (or The Virgin Spring), an Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Film.

Going back further, one can trace the Craven film’s violent tale to a twelfth-century Swedish ballad sometimes known as “Töre's daughter in Vänge."  There are some two-dozen variations of this particular ballad, but all versions are erected upon the bloody foundations of rape and revenge. The story also involves the destruction of innocence or purity, and the moral price of vengeance, if there is one.

The Bergman and Craven versions of "Töre's daughter in Vänge" both feature an affluent doctor, his innocent young daughter, and the violent, unwashed “herdsmen” who -- after raping and murdering the girl -- arrive at the doctor’s home to stay for the night. After learning of his daughter’s murder, the doctor exacts bloody and righteous vengeance against the murderers.

The celluloid versions of this long-lived story offer starkly different interpretations of the ballad, however. Bergman's take is overtly religious and redemptive, while Craven's "God is Dead," Manson-era film seeks morality in a universe totally absent the Divine.

Craven’s film, in fact, finds no comfort in any of the long-standing pillars of traditional American society.  Faith and family are useless in Last House on the Left, and even legal authority -- represented in the film by two dopey local police officers -- is impotent in the face of real crime.

I’ve reviewed The Last House on the Left several times before (in Wes Craven: The Art of Horror and in Horror Films of the 1970s), but screening the film again for Savage Friday, I was particularly struck by the class warfare aspects of this 1970s "Savage Cinema" tale. 

In The Last House on the Left, the Collingwoods look down their noses at Mari’s friend Phyllis because she’s from Manhattan. And, oppositely, the killers put on their best “suits” to break bread with the upper class doctor’s family.   The Craven film’s point seems to be not merely that violence ultimately solves nothing, but that class stratification also makes no difference in the human animal’s capacity for violence.   

In other words, the Collingwoods -- even boasting the considerable benefits of financial security and a good education -- are just as prone to descend to violence as are Krug and his gang of anti-social, criminal misfits.

For its dramatically anti-violence stance, as well as for its unflinching gaze at the superficial differences between the haves and the have-nots, The Last House on the Left is actually an incredibly moral film, notorious reputation to the contrary.  

Indeed, the film, though roughly made, boasts an authentically artistic approach. In short, Craven attempts to stoke first lust, and then blood lust in the audience.  But finally, he turns around and pulls the carpet out, revealing horrors that repulse audiences and make viewers face their own pre-conceptions about the efficacy and morality of revenge.  The director harnesses cross-cutting brilliantly to forge a comparison between the film's ostensible heroes, The Collingwoods, and its villains, the Stillo gang.  

Film scholar and Wes Craven historian Tony Williams captured perfectly the complex moral nature of The Last House on the Left when he wrote that the film: “begins by depicting opposites, gradually blurring barriers, until the audience’s emotional involvement with the violent action leads not to catharsis but self-disgust and self-awareness…Last House condemns any audience member who complies with excessive violent displays.” (Hearths of Darkness: The Family in the American Horror Film, Associated University Presses, 1996, page 30.)

Thus Last House on the Left is legitimately Roger Ebert’s “tough, bitter little sleeper of a movie” more than it is the “sick, sick, sick gore” film describes by the Medveds (The Golden Turkey Awards, A Perigee Book, 1980, page 215) and other critics who couldn’t see beyond the film’s (admittedly) ultra-violent surface.

Before The Last House on the Left:  Violence and Faith in The Virgin Spring

Bergman’s The Virgin Spring explicitly concerns faith. Indeed, the tragic events involving the Tore family from start to finish may be interpreted as a "test of faith" for Dr. Tore, played by Max Von Sydow.

After killing his daughter's murderers, Tore wonders why God permits such atrocities in the world of man. “You see it and you allow it! The innocent child’s death and my revenge…you allowed it! I don’t understand you!” he laments near the film’s conclusion.

Tore searches for meaning in the death of his beloved child, Karin (Birgitta Pettersson); but also in his own blood-thirsty, violent actions. He is a faithful servant, so why was he punished in this cruel fashion? Why was his dignity -- his sense of civilization -- stripped from him? Was he right to act so barbarously?

Mareta (Birgitta Valberg), Tore’s wife, believes that the innocent child was taken from the family because the parents loved and adored the beautiful Karin more than they worshipped and honored Christ.  In other words, the parents were punished for not putting their love of God first. A shaken Dr. Tore swears to erect a church in the very spot in the forest that his daughter died; a kind of testament to the Mystery of Faith.

God rewards the tortured, doubting Tore. The Supreme Being miraculously creates a bubbling spring at the very idyllic location where Karin died; a sign that Tore’s continued faith is justified; and that his violent actions were justified too. Tore sees his faith restored by this miracle. A rapturous, high-angle shot reveals the creation of the virgin spring, and Tore’s awe at God’s wisdom and power.

An affirmation of religion (specifically Christianity), The Virgin Spring suggests that God forgives even the most atrocious acts of violence…but only if the perpetrator is faithful. Tore may never have all his answers (God moves in mysterious ways), but the doctor can satisfy himself that God exists...and that God has heard him; and that he remains the Lord's servant.

Brilliantly and artfully crafted, Bergman’s version of "Tore’s Daughter" also boasts a darker, more sinister interpretation, especially given the violence of our times. The film seems to suggest that after committing heinous violence, the self-righteous will be rewarded with a miracle, and more than that, even be granted certainty of the existence of the Divine...something most human beings are denied on this mortal coil.

Today, we see abortion doctors murdered for performing legal operations, terrorists bombing innocent civilians to support their faith, and nations launching into bloody war...all over personally-held beliefs or delusions that “God is on their side.” 

Religious belief thus can become the excuse for ideological and literal warfare. Here, in The Virgin Spring, we see the same thing on a smaller, more intimate scale: bloody vengeance is deemed moral, and forgiven...if the perpetrator is devout.  In my opinion, this makes the Bergman film far less morally sound than Craven's.  Craven's in the final analysis, finds no justification for violence, religious or otherwise.

The Road Leads To Nowhere And the Castle Stays the Same: The Last House on The Left (1972)

Wes Craven re-interpreted The Virgin Spring and "Tore’s Daughter in Vange" for The Last House on The Left, his widely-despised debut film.

The New York Times reviewer walked out of the film (with an hour still to go) and called it“sickening tripe,” (December 22, 1972). Even Danny Peary, author of the brilliant and indispensable Cult Movies decried the film as a “sick sexual fantasy” and “an incitement to violence.” (Delacorte Press, 1981, page 348).

In The Last House on The Left, young Mari Collingwood (Sandra Cassel) -- the equivalent of the Karin character -- is raped and killed by the sociopath Krug (David Hess). Her path intersected with Krug's while she was trying to score some weed on the way to a rock concert performance (by a popular group called "Bloodlust.")

In The Virgin Spring, Karin had been on her way to "lighting candles" for Christ, to honor his suffering, when attacked. The distinction, of course, is critical. Mari is a self-involved modern teen of the Peace Generation rather than a devout supplicant like Karin. Craven has thus stripped the religious veneer from the tale. But importantly, he has not stripped the moral underpinnings of the ballad. On the contrary, he has actually augmented them

Although Mari prays to (an absent) God before she is murdered -- in a harrowing scene staged in almost identical fashion to Karin’s rape and murder in The Virgin Spring -- there is no salvation for her or redemption for her fallen parents here.  God doesn't wash away the blood because someone is on "his" team.

Unlike the Tores in The Virgin Spring, Dr. Collingwood (Gaylord St James) and his wife in the 1972 Last House on the Left are not enlightened in the finale by the existence of God, or by a comforting awareness of Divine Method. Rather, they are left totally isolated in their shattered, middle-class living room, surrounded by the blood of villains. The camera does not majestically swoop heavenward to give the impression of God’s support, presence, or even existence.  

Instead, by freeze-framing on the shattered Collingwoods in the final (close-up) shot of The Last House on the Left, Craven reveals the absolute futility of bloodshed and retribution in a way that the spiritually uplifting finale of The Virgin Spring does not.

Very simply, the film ends on the face of two shattered people. They have been as violent and brutal as Krug and his fellow attackers (Sadie and Weasel)...and yet their daughter is still dead. They have achieved nothing...except the lowering of themselves to barbarism; to the level of the criminals who were so monstrous. They have survived; they have prevailed...but now they don't even know who -- or what -- they are, anymore.  Behind them, a tapestry announcing Mari's birthday has fallen, in tatters...like their very lives.

On the soundtrack, a song titled "Wait for the Rain" (composed and performed by the late David Hess) plays, and the title itself (also a lyric featured in the body of the composition) expresses the futility of all the violence depicted in the film. Despite the brutality, despite the revenge completed, "the castle stays the same," meaning that nothing changes.

Mari remains dead and God does not right that wrong simply because the Collingwoods have "won" or are faithful. The subtext of the film is simple: as bad as the low class Krug and his compatriots are...the affluent, middle-class Collingwoods are really no better.  The Road Leads to Nowhere.

One message here is not merely that violence resolves nothing, but that all people -- upper class, lower class or middle class -- are susceptible to it. As Last House commences, the Collingwoods are upset that the Mari is going out for the evening with the lower class Phyllis (Lucy Grantham), who describes her parents as being in the “iron and steel” business. “She irons…he steals.” 

Meanwhile, in NYC, Krug’s girlfriend, Sadie (Jeramie Rain) dreams of having a middle-class-sounding name such as “Agatha Greenwood.”  Greenwood, of course, sounds a lot like Collingwood.

The point is that we are witnessing a culture clash.  We expect, perhaps subconsciously, violence from one class, but not the other.

There's a fascinating moment late in Last House on The Left, when Krug, Sadie and Weasel all pause by the lake following the rape and murder of Mari.  For a brief instant, the criminals are silent. And they actually appear chastened. As if, for one fleeting instant...they have awareness of what they are; what they have done.  Notice that they don’t have such feelings of remorse or regret after the disgusting death of Phyllis; the death of another “have not.”  

No, their regret occurs not because they have committed brutal crimes, but because they have touched, in the words of the Collingwoods (while preparing Mari’s birthday party), “a princess.”   They have stepped out of their assigned class roles, and feel that the have destroyed something pure and perfect, something untouchable for people of their status. They buy into the myth of class differences as much as the Collingwoods do.

When they visit the Collingwoods’ house, the Stillos put on their Sunday finest.  But even wearing suits and ties and dinner dresses, the criminals can’t hide their coarse manners and lack of etiquette.  Accordingly, Fred “Weasel Podowski (Fred Lincoln), one of the thugs, later that night has a dream in which he is at the Collingwood’s mercy.  In the nightmare, they are operating on him in a surgical theatre, and he is in the inferior position: acted upon instead of doing the acting.  This is a representation of his feelings of having transgressed beyond the assigned borders of the haves and have-nots.

Then, at the end of the film, the Collingwoods kill with comparative abandon and with almost no debate or discussion. Mrs. Collingwood even savagely bites off Weasel's penis while performing fellatio upon him. The "respectable" Collingwoods thus seem to have no recognition of what they've done...not until that "freeze frame" captures them in the hell of their own making; in the aftermath of a bloodbath.

We must compare these two important moments.  Krug and the others, after murdering Mari, realize with remorse what they’ve done. They see that they are not truly civilized, and what makes them see that is the death of the “princess.”  After killing the have-not gang, the Collingwoods pause to realize, as well, their bloody acts.  They recognize (courtesy of the soundtrack) not only that they have solved nothing, but that they exist on the same brutish level as the thugs.  Blood lust and violence don’t know class distinctions.

In both these moments in Last House on the Left, violence is not sanctioned or championed, not even in the name of retribution. The opposite is true.  Wouldn’t you expect people who are “better” to also act “better?”

This is the face of innocence.

This is the face of remorse.

This is the face of incompetence.

This is the face of shame.  The road leads to nowhere.

Why is The Last House on the Left so reviled by so many critics, and so despised as a so-called video nasty? In part because it accomplishes the unthinkable and the totally unsavory: it treats violence as real...and horrible. Most films, even great horror films, treat violence in a "tolerable" way, meaning that we may be frightened by the scary images...but we're not, ultimately, undone or debauched by them. Movie decorum keeps "the horror of violence" at an acceptable distance from our psyches.

Not so Last House on the Left. 

After titillating the audience with early glimpses of the comely, seventeen-year old Mari in the shower, arousing lascivious interest, Craven turns the table on his audience and stages a brutal, affecting, prolonged, utterly monstrous rape. He lingers there. The actual physical rape is relatively short (compared to Irreversible [2002] anyway), but the ritual humiliation of Phyllis and Mari goes on and on.  The rape isn't just sexual penetration, but a power play that leverages fear, and so it can be said to go on for an uncomfortably long time.

This feeling that Craven forges -- of total anger and blood-lust against the criminals -- is augmented by the presence of the dumb-ass cops, who fail on every level imaginable to save the day.  Their car runs out of gas, they can’t hitch a ride on a chicken truck and they don’t arrive at the Collingwoods in time to help.  They are absolute fools, and by including these scenes with the dumb cops, Craven offers not comic relief,  but something else.  He adds fire to the flame, making our blood absolutely boil.  None of the terror here would have occurred if the cops were the slightest bit competent or professional.

Again, this is Craven's desired manipulation: he makes us thirst for the blood of Krug, Sadie and Weasel right along with Mari's parents, and he amps up that thirst by focusing on the time-wasting antics of the cops.  We identify with the Collingwoods, both with their loss and with their pain. We want the bad guys to suffer too.

But then, there we are, at the end of the film -- having wallowed in the violence with the Collingwoods -- and, surprise, surprise, we don't feel good about it.   Instead, we feel sick and nauseous.  In other words, we get exactly what we thought we wanted, only to discover it wasn’t what we wanted at all.

Instead we feel - like the Collingwood's in that traumatized, valedictory freeze frame -- deeply ashamed. The Collingwoods have stooped to Krug's level and gotten their revenge...and what's left?  What's next?

The road leads to nowhere.

Violence, while perhaps satisfying on first impulse, ultimately solves nothing and rescues no one.  Craven makes the audience realize this basic human truth by making us want to see more then, ultimately, wanting to see less.

Show me more.

Show me less.

I don't want to see this...

Or this..

No good came out of this.  Nothing was solved.  No one was saved.  The castle stays the same.

Forged during the time of the Vietnam War, Craven's Last House on the Left is perhaps the ultimate anti-violence, anti-war film. 

It doesn't romanticize, white-wash or candy coat violence, and furthermore, decries violence even when the situation is an archetypal Biblical "Eye-for-an-Eye" setting. It's ironic that Last House on the Left is constantly attacked as being an incitement to violence, when nothing could be further from the truth. It's just that -- as movie goers and perhaps even as critics -- we prefer our violence palatable...not authentically disturbing.

"Blood lust" isn't just the name of a rock group, after all. And it's not a feeling limited merely to black hat bad guys in movies, either. We can find it right here, dwelling in our very own neighborhoods.

Just make a turn by that picturesque lake, and park at the last house on the left.  You might even know the family that lives there…