Television and Cinema Verities # 15

"I did not want to entertain with violence, with rape or shooting or terror.  And I did not want to show killing as a heroic action, even on the part of the parents at the end.  The last shot shows them covered with blood, looking off in utter shock and not knowing what to make of their lives...I'm very ambivalent about violence, or at least, I have a pretty complex view of it."

- Director Wes Craven discusses Last House on the Left (1972) with film scholar Maitland McDonagh in her book Filmmaking on the Fringe: The Good, The Bad, and the Deviant Directors. A Citadel Press Book, 1995, page 282.