notonlyamovie | "A blank look on her face" – Sandra's disturbing gaze in Mari's rape scene

Note: A cropped image of the still discussed in this piece appears at the very end of the post. Please decide after reading whether you wish to view it.

Not so long ago, I wrote a post about Last House on the Left Blu-ray reviewers largely ignoring David Hess's commentary track admissions of abuse against Sandra Peabody. While I was researching for that, I went through a number of other reviews that didn't mention the commentary track, and those did not appear in that discussion.

One of those was by The Big Movie House in 2018. The reviewer, Jimmy P, did watch some of the extras, briefly touching on Celluloid Crime of the Century – "some great stories here (some creepy ones too)". However, his review of the film itself struck me more. It's a very negative one – he gives the film only one star – although he recognises its historical significance.

One interesting point he makes is one that many horror fans shrink away from, perhaps reluctant to accept that the Wes Craven of 1971 was not the Wes Craven™ most people remember from the Scream days a quarter of a century later:

"[Last House] is pure exploitation and revels in it."

What struck me even more, however, was something almost no reviewer ever mentions. Jimmy touches on the tragedy of Mari and Phyllis being "punished" for trying to score some pot, then says this:

"Sandra Peabody, who plays Mari, has a scene where she is raped by Krug. She has a blank look on her face which is her separating herself from what is happening to her body. This is one of the saddest performances in the film."

The close-up of Krug lying over Mari during the rape scene is frequently seen in Last House on the Left media, and because it's not explicit in the usual sense of the term versions of it were used even on advertising posters. Indeed, there's a thumbnail-sized picture of it on the back of my Arrow Blu-ray. That in itself might be considered ethically questionable.

Regardless of that, in the large majority of cases where the image appears, Mari (and therefore Sandra) is shown with her eyes closed. What Jimmy P has noticed – and it is hard to overstate how rare it is for anyone to mention this publicly – is the extremely disturbing impression when her eyes are open.

Normally, in a Hollywood rape scene, the victim-actress will be emoting heavily. She is likely to be struggling, crying, screaming, and so on. Sandra, however, just lies there and endures as Hess presses his face against hers and drools on her cheek. In the previous shot, showing her middle body from the side, Mari is weakly attempting to move her arms, though Krug grabs them to pin her down. Here, not even that.

Occasionally she screws up her eyes or bares her teeth, but even these movements seem far out of the norm for this kind of scene. They are in fact more reminiscent of dissociation, a common symptom of the brain being overwhelmed by an immediate and inescapable threat. In basic summary, as Jimmy P notes, it is the mind protecting itself by partially "checking out" from the body.

Hess himself mentions in the "Scoring Last House" featurette that Sandra "really gave in" and had a "look of fatality in her face". He frames this as a sexual opportunity, which is morally repugnant. He is, even so, the only member of the Last House cast to have gone this far in describing Sandra's expression at that moment.

It's extremely important to stress at this point that I am not a clinical professional, and that I am not making a diagnosis. Nor do I have the right to say what Sandra was experiencing in that moment; that is hers alone. But we do know from Marc Sheffler that Sandra was terrified by Hess during the rape scene, and Hess himself reported threatening her to the extent "she didn't know whether [he] was screwin' her or not".

Today, acting a character playing an emotionally very distressing role is understood as requiring professional support. Actor Care Specialist Alan Powell puts it this way:

"We need to support their wellbeing by checking in with them, being sensitive to the potential re-traumatizing and/or mental health risks their roles may expose them to. We should never assume that they will be okay when portraying a role with a trauma-based narrative." ¹

This kind of sensitivity was effectively unknown in the early 1970s, and all the more so when it came to exploitation film sets. It seems extremely unlikely that acting dissociation would have been safe for any actor under such conditions, all the more so a young and vulnerable one like Sandra Peabody.

As stated, we cannot fairly diagnose Sandra's feelings from a still. What we can say without appropriating her right to define her own lived experience is that the appearance of her face during the periods when her eyes are open – still, staring, almost expressionless – is so far outside the norms of what one would expect of a movie rape victim that merely watching her in those moments is deeply disturbing.

This part of the film, perhaps above any other single scene in Last House, underscores the very considerable courage and resilience Sandra Peabody showed to complete her role.

¹ Powell, Alan. "How to Support an Actor’s Well Being in Emotionally Distressing Roles", stage32.com, 2021.

The still in question follows the horizontal rule. Please scroll up if you do not wish to see it. Click on the small image to enlarge it if you wish to study it in more detail.