One of my favorite film anecdotes concerns a prominent local movie critic at a press screening last year of FUNNY GAMES. When the film broke about two-thirds the way through the movie, and the lights came up during the projectionist’s mad scramble to get it back up on the screen, this critic said, loudly enough for all to hear, “I’ve got to get a better job.”

Putting aside the fact that he and just about every film critic in the country may not have their jobs to kick around much longer anyway, this story illustrates the kind of contempt critics can sometimes have for the movies they review. In this particular case, the critic was disgusted with a movie that, plot-wise, did little more than depict the torture and terror of a family by a couple of clean-cut but nasty hooligans. In his D- minus review, he called FUNNY GAMES cruelly manipulative and hateful. I, of course, loved the film, placing it among the Top Ten of the year.

Seeing THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT this week reminded me of this particular critic’s revulsion at FUNNY GAMES. Why? Because I felt a bit that way about LAST HOUSE! If I were prone to use moralistic terms in my reviews, the word that would be uppermost in my mind would be “vile.” But since I am not so prone, I’ll just say the film is a rather rude and crude example of what’s been recently dubbed “torture porn.” [SPOILER ALERT] In the movie, two 17-year-old girls are kidnapped, beaten, raped, stabbed and shot by a makeshift gang of sadistic criminals. When the gang unwittingly stumbles into the home of one of the girl’s parents, the tables are then turned. The father and mother, in a fit of righteous rage, exact the most horrendous revenge, which includes chewing up one guy’s arm up to the elbow in a garbage disposal and cooking a newly paralyzed guy’s head in a microwave.

So the question is, how can I be so dismissive of someone taking umbrage at FUNNY GAMES when I’m teetering on the brink of doing the same thing over THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT. After all, the plots are similar enough to draw comparisons. (Curiously, and irrelevantly, both films are also remakes by the directors of the original versions!)

(By the way, there are a lot of interesting critical issues that can be raised here but for lack of time and space will have to be held at bay. For instance, I readily accept the notion that violence for the sake of violence is not a bad thing cinematically. Rob Zombie films like THE DEVIL’S REJECTS and and HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES deserve some credit, I suppose, for their all-out commitment to B movie violence. And I firmly believe that there can be a valid aesthetics of violence, even if sadistic. But that will have to be for another time.)

Besides just being a better put together movie (better cast, script, direction, cinematography), FUNNY GAMES is a completely self-conscious work of art. Any number of times, the principal terrorizer, played by Michael Pitt, looks directly at the camera, and addresses us, the film audience. Even as the film is “cruelly manipulating” our emotions, it is reminding us of that manipulation and of our willingness to be so manipulated. And if that isn’t enough, after one crucial development in the movie, the film actually backs itself up and replays the scene with a changed outcome. Given all this, there is no way we as an audience can say we were unknowingly sucked into the “reality” of the movie. And yet, there is no way we can’t be either. In the end, FUNNY GAMES is as much about our consumption of terror and violence as it is about the actual depiction of such.

THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, on the other hand, is what it is. Simple and direct exploitation. It’s vulgar, violent, and prurient. You may admire the straight-forward honesty of its motivation, I suppose, and accuse FUNNY GAMES of trying to have its exploitation cake and eating it too. But for my money, I’d rather have a two-pronged approach than a no-pronged approach. My advice? When you come to THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, take a right.