"Last House on the Left" is a tough, bitter little sleeper of a movie that's about four times as good as you'd expect. There is a moment of such sheer and unexpected terror that it beats anything in the heart-in-the-mouth line since Alan Arkin jumped out of the darkness at Audrey Hepburn in "Wait Until Dark."I don't want to give the impression, however, that this is simply a good horror movie. It's horrifying, all right, but in ways that have nothing to do with the supernatural. It's the story of two suburban girls who go into the city for a rock concert, are kidnapped by a gang of sadistic escaped convicts and their sluttish girlfriend, and are raped and murdered. Then, in a coincidence even the killers find extreme, the gang ends up spending the night at the home of one of the girls' parents.The parents accidentally find out the identities of the killers, because of a stolen locket and some blood-stained clothing in their baggage. Enraged,
In England circa 1380, a troupe of traveling actors makes its way across the medieval landscape, where to go 20 miles from home was to enter a world of strangers. In London at about the same time, Geoffrey Chaucer was writing about another group on the road pilgrims on their way to Canterbury. His Knight, learning from the journey, declared: "This world is but a thoroughfare full of woe,
And we be pilgrims, passing to and fro.
Death is an end to every worldly sore." The actors arrive at much the same conclusion in "The Reckoning," when they arrive at a village where a murder trial is under way. A mute woman (Elvira Minguez) has been charged with the death of a local boy and been sentenced to death as a witch. The actors by their nature are more worldly and sophisticated than the village folk, and after questioning the woman through sign language, they begin to doubt her guilt. It is at first no affair of theirs, however, and they unload their props and costumes
25 Great Movies Inspired By Folk Tales
By Meagan Drillinger, Stacker News
On 8/3/21 at 8:00 PM EDT
The folk tale tradition from fairy tales to ghost stories has origins stretching back to the start of human speech. The art of oral storytelling predates the written word, and has been used for time immemorial for recording information, teaching morality, and untangling some of life s greatest mysteries.
Stacker surveyed film history and compiled a list of movies across decades, countries, and genres that drew their inspiration from the folk tale tradition, with accompanying IMDb and Metacritic data. The 25 films chosen are organized alphabetically. To qualify, the film had to be inspired by a folk or fairy tale (or tales) and have at least 2,500 votes. Some that made the list are direct reimaginings of classic tales, such as
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