notonlyamovie | "Just wanted to make the day" – Marc Sheffler's 2020 cliff threat statement

Avatar and username obscured; everything else left as posted

We've already seen the versions of the cliff threat Marc Sheffler told in the 2000s, in the Celluloid Crime of the Century documentary and on the actors' DVD commentary track.¹ As I said at the time, those were not the only versions of this story Sheffler has told. Today we'll look at a more recent example. The basics, such as the fact that this happened after multiple takes of the scene where Mari is trying to get Junior to help her escape, remain the same in these, but the emphases differ.

This one is in a slightly awkward format. In the 2019 YouTube video DRUMDUMS EXPLORES THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (1972) – all caps – the uploader (Drumdums – not all caps) gives a fairly detailed 13-minute review of Last House. From 8 minutes 8 seconds for a little over a minute, he talks about what he thinks is "the most interesting" thing, stating that the actors "went method". He notes David Hess's "Can I?" story and also says that Sandra's "life was actually threatened" by Sheffler at the cliff.

On 7th February 2020,² a user commented on this video to say Marc Sheffler was their father, and began by saying:

To clear up the story of my dad threatening to push Sandra Peabody off the cliff here is a statement in his own words

The comment should be highlighted if you follow this link. I have no way to check their claim of a family relationship, but I have no particular reason to doubt it either. It's a fairly long comment, so I've embedded a screenshot of the whole thing at the top of this post so that you can check I'm not misrepresenting it. For clarity here, I'll treat the statement as coming directly from Sheffler rather than having been relayed.

Sheffler begins by saying that they were on:

a natural ledge, overlooking a creek, about 15 feet below us. (I could be wrong about the distance.)

That last note is reasonable. People can forget exact distances over almost half a century. Nobody forgets the difference between 15 feet and six feet, but 12 or 18 they might well. Sheffler then gives some technical details and says his over-the-shoulder close-ups were completed in "only a few takes". But, he says, it was a different story for Sandra:

Take after take after take, she wasn't there emotionally, meaning, she wasn’t acting like a girl in fear of her life.

As in the versions of this story we've met already, Sheffler notes that people on the set were getting restless and frustrated, and that he went to Wes Craven and told him he had an idea and that he'd signal for Craven to start shooting. Sheffler then says:

I returned to my position next to her and pushed and held her a little over the cliff. Immediately, she got scared. That's when I told her quietly that if she didn't get it right this time, I was going to push her over completely.

Sheffler follows up with:

It wasn't so high up that she'd get hurt seriously, but the fear on her face in that moment was real. I then gave Wes the signal, and boom, take shot, and it's the one in the film.

Sheffler's statement then ends with another reminder that he saw this as a product of impatience and frustration, and did not do it out of malice:

Nothing malicious. Just wanted to make the day and get out of there before the light faded. she was never in any real danger. Just the perception of it.

That, of course, is exactly the issue. As I pointed out when we met the first version of this incident, if someone thinks you're going to hurt them, then saying "It's okay, I didn't mean it" afterwards doesn't erase the ethical problem. And Sheffler himself tells us that "the fear on her face [...] was real." Sandra was sufficiently frightened to convince in the take as the required "girl in fear of her life".

As for the height, it seems that back in those woods in 1971 and even in 2020, Sheffler believed that a drop of 15 feet (~4.5 metres) was not "so high up that [Sandra]'d get hurt seriously" – but in that he was unfortunately mistaken. As this piece³ on the website of the [US] National Library of Medicine informs us:

the level 3 guideline of the German Society for Trauma Surgery (DGU) recommends trauma team activation for fall heights greater than 3 m[etres], which is in line with the guidelines of the American College of Surgeons

Of course Sheffler did not intend actually to push his co-star over the cliff. Nobody reasonable has ever suggested that. But when the man himself tells you that he saw "mak[ing] the day" and fading light as justification for inducing real fear in Sandra, and that the result of this is "the [take] in the film" people watch today, then it raises questions about this aspect of The Last House on the Left's production ethics.

¹ Commentary track featuring actors David Hess, Marc Sheffler and Fred Lincoln, available on multiple DVD and Blu-ray releases of The Last House on the Left.
² Thanks to Hadzy for getting me the exact date.
³ Nau C, Leiblein M, Verboket RD, Hörauf JA, Sturm R, Marzi I, Störmann P. Falls from Great Heights: Risk to Sustain Severe Thoracic and Pelvic Injuries Increases with Height of the Fall. J Clin Med. 2021 May 25;10(11):2307. doi: 10.3390/jcm10112307. PMID: 34070640; PMCID: PMC8199183.