The Last House in the Woods

Saved from a rape attempt, a woman and her boyfriend take up shelter in their rescuer's house, unaware of the deadly secret they hide within that is soon unleashed upon them with a ferocious vengeance.

This was one of the more impressive and enjoyable Italian slashers in the scene. One of the better elements in here is the general sense of unease and discomfort found within here as it details several different tactics quite successfully. While hinted at somewhat with the early scenes after the rescue, the film begins to really get into the discomfort when it brings their deformed child into this. Looking suitably distressed and gruesome, there's enough off about his behavior and appearance to lead to quite a distinctive feature here, and even more to that point is the discovery scene where they find him hiding in the bedroom after one of the many escape attempts. That fact that there's some rather decent ones in here is another rather enjoyable feature, providing this one with some enjoyable action that keeps it flowing along nicely. Starting with the main escape attempt, where the group is able to get out onto the dirt road which is pretty dark and chilling here, and a secondary attempt here through the woods leads to some pretty chilling stalking scenes in the bushes. This one also manages to set-up some rather intriguing action in here as not only are those thrilling yet there's a lot of other fun times featured elsewhere with these alongside such scenes as the opening car-crash on the highway, the assault in the motor home off in the woods and the final retribution against the gang-members which takes up the entire final half in the house which is over-the-top gory, brutal and just a lot of fun featuring the chainsaw action, cannibal attacks and tons of suspense here with the encounters in the child's bedroom and down in the basement. That all of the action scenes result in tons of gory, bloody and rather inventive kills tops off the film's positives here, as these are enough to hold off the relatively few flaws. The main one here is the rip-off nature of the film during the dinner sequence, which is cribbed so heavily that it never manages to stand on its own because so much of it is shot-for-shot that prevents it from being enjoyable. Beyond that, there's minor problems that don't really amount to much such as the shaking camera preventing a lot of the action in the woods from being clear or the brawl in the garage looking incredibly lame with the weak choreography really taking the sting out of it. Otherwise, this one proved to be a lot of fun and really enjoyable.

Rated R: Extreme Graphic Violence, Graphic Language, Nudity, a rape scene and children-in-jeopardy.

This Italian micro-budget horror production isn't that good, but nonetheless it's not too bad for a first shot at a feature length production, as writer / director Gabriele Albanesi has created three horror shorts before it. With a title like that you'll know where it's target audience lies, and for most part it delivers on it if you just go in expecting something rather amateurishly crazy and explosively bloody in what is an all to familiar get-up. You can see its style is raw, lurid and recalls shades of 70s / 80s drive-in grindhouse exploitation. It's a total throwback. Even with this element, still it's hard to find it disturbing. It's far from it actually, as it's over-the-top hysterics (especially involving three moronic douche bags) and macabre confusion can see it fall on being darkly humorous.

A young couple, Aurora and Rino are trying to come to terms to where their relationship is at or what was, but they're interrupted by three loutish thugs that bash Rino and attempt to rape Aurora. However an older married couple driving pass saves them from that disastrous fate and takes them back to their place to recover. But unknowingly to them this couple has a secret which might put Aurora and Rino in a great deal of unexplainable trouble.

The narrative is thoughtlessly thin and dank, but cluttered with so many disjointed plot structures (some that feel like a second thought as if made on the spot) which go onto to lead to an inevitable (and perplexing) explanation to all of this demented carnage. I'm at a lost?! You can easily spot the influences from other horror films though. 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' shoots to mind. The unsubtle script was mostly horrendous.

After a plodding beginning-- setting up Aurora and Rino's rocky relationship and their early encounters with the brain-dead thugs. The whole mystery surrounding the hospitable couple and their son is what holds you, until it throws you into the ugly, explicit violence and bewildering situation. Nothing suspenseful about it, but it's flipped out with it gushing with plenty of red stuff and gore skews into camp territory, but that final closing is shockingly weak and rushed. What was going against it is that there was no one to really cheer on (yep Aurora and Rino were less than desirable characters) as they weren't painted oh so greatly.

Gabriele Albanesi's direction stays conventional with some neatly realized images and fast moving zooms, but it's considerably well shot. Even when it decides the shake the camera about a couple of times. The electronic score stays low-key with a sensitively harrowing vibe, striking back to those old features. The pacing moves quick enough and the limited resources are handled effectively (like the make-up and splatter effects).The performances are very indifferent and quite poor (thanks again to those three ridiculous thugs). Daniela Virgilio and Daniele Grassetti didn't make much of an imprint as Aurora and Rino. Gennaro Diana and Santa De Santis's stiltedly icy portrayals bordered on farcical as the mysterious couple. David Pietroni was just laudably hammy as the main front man of the trio.

Unusually ragged, but slightly amusing and outrageous Italian horror.

I have no intention in engaging in the game of comparing this movie to those previously made. There is really nothing original in horror, so naturally, any film will have glimpses of others. I am just glad I didn't have to watch a dubbed version.

Rino (Daniele Grassetti) and Aurora (Daniela Virgilio) were jumped on the side of the road and she was just about to get raped when Antonio (Gennaro Diana) came buy to stop the action, I mean to save the day.

They soon find that there are worse things than rape. Rino ends up tied up in the boy's (Fabiano Malantrucco) room, and she is running for her life through the woods.

Soon she is back in the house, and we see why this film was also called Italian Chainsaw.

There is lots of blood and gore, and some really icky stuff.

Aurora (Daniela Virgilio) and her boyfriend Rino (Daniele Grassetti) are having a bad day-for one thing, a trio of thugs decide they want some fun, and after they are saved, it turns out that their savior's family has some really ugly secrets.

An Italian tribute to 70's and 80's Grindhouse fair, "Last House In The Woods" could best be described as "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" meets "The Last House on the Left" with a dash of "Mother's Day" thrown in. The film obviously has plenty of love for old school Exploitation flicks, and also boasts an effective score and top notch gore FX by Sergio Stivaletti ("Cemetary Man.")

Yet, it never really reaches it's full potential. Sure, you aren't exactly looking for an original type of horror movie, but it doesn't help when you realize that you could be watching other, better Horror Exploitation movies from the 70's and 80's instead of this. Here, not only have you seen it before, but you've seen it done considerably better. It also doesn't help that the acting is largely poor, with the exception of Gennaro Diana as Antonio and Santa De Santis as Clara. Sure, you can throw in all the Chainsaw action, gore, and cannibalism in the world, but it doesn't make up for it.

To be fair, director Gabriele Albanesi definitely shows some potential, and could possibly pull of a good horror movie. Sadly, this isn't it, but damn it, he at least puts effort into it, which counts for something. Plus, it's nice to see a gory Italian horror flick that's recent-too bad it ends up, as James Brown once said, "Talking Loud and Saying Nothing."

I've been on quite a gore kick of late with some zingers like Day of the Dead (1985), High Tension, Land of the Dead, and May. I'd put this one in amongst them in terms of gore alone. Some "Unrated" movies I'll get done with and ask myself why they were branded with such a rating. Some of the above, including Last House, left no doubt as to why they deserved to be beyond Restricted (R).

The story, acting, soundtrack, and ambiance initially was enough to make me want to stop the film and get to bed early. It is very poor quality in all of the above. That must have been the point as a direct homage to some of the 70's and 80's films of the same nature. They were bad, but yet had an undeniable power to them with their disturbing scenarios, gratuitous gore including many gross-out scenes, and overall non-PC actions.

The crazies in this one initially played it straight, and seemed like a loving family as do many in such films at first. I wish they had kept this demeanor and tried to be somewhat sympathetic instead of turning into completely sadistic psychopaths - it would have made the crazy setup more disturbing than the generic looney pastiche that I'm so accustomed to.

So if you're looking for a thought provoking and well acted film with a great storyline, then go elsewhere. If you have a bit of a horror vice for being disturbed and grossed out without any of the aforementioned in tow, then pour yourself a tall one and get ready for a stomach churning experience...