notonlyamovie | "Light-hearted and entertaining" – DVD/Blu-ray reviewers and that commentary track

It's been more than twenty years now since the David Hess, Marc Sheffler and Fred Lincoln commentary track for The Last House on the Left was first released on DVD. You know, the one which includes Sheffler telling a particularly harsh version of the cliff threat story and Hess gleefully recounting how he threatened to rape Sandra. That same commentary track exists intact on the Arrow Blu-ray you can still buy off the shelf in HMV.

You might think, therefore, that those physical media reviewers who actually go through the extras – which is by no means all of them, granted – would be sure to have something to say about these anecdotes. A few sentences in passing, at least. Any words at all, really.

You would be wrong.

Here is a representative sample of ten reviews whose writers do more than simply list the track as one of the included extras.

DVD Talk, 2009: This reviewer calls it "quite a compelling track" with "plenty of funny and interesting anecdotes and insights". The piece adds that "these grizzled veterans may not be the classiest guys walking--shortly after the rape sequence, Sheffler notes (somewhat tangentially) that the film 'got me laid a lot.'"

Blu-ray.com, 2011: Comparing it to the Craven/Cunningham track, the reviewer states simply that the actors' one is "a looser, more candid roundtable".

Rock! Shock! Pop! Forums, 2018: Another restrained comment here, simply that it's "an interesting commentary that really does give a pretty decent look at the picture's production from the point of the three core villains".

Horror Cult Films, 2018: In this review we're informed that the track is "very lively, in fact quite raucous and even foul mouthed". This is followed by "Unfortunately Hess [sic] becomes rather dislikable when he thinks it’s funny that he held Grantham [sic] over a cliff and threatened to let her go unless she played a scene properly", which doesn't give enormous confidence that the reviewer was listening particularly hard. They end with "Overall great fun though."

HK and Cult Film News, 2009: This is a review from 2009, with comments from 2012, reposted in 2025. It's significant, though, for saying this:

The only thing I find hard to watch--the rape scene--comes not from what's happening in the story but from what went on during the filming of it. As David Hess relates during the commentary, he had the already nervous Sandra Cassel so distraught and fearful of him that much of her humiliation and distress during the scene are real. Marc Sheffler also tells of actually grabbing her and threatening to push her over a precipice if she didn't stop fouling up take after take of their main scene together. For me, these two accounts are the creepiest thing about the movie.

This reviewer still shies away from laying out exactly what they mean with the Hess point, but at least they reference it at all. Bizarrely, though, this very same review later informs us that "[f]ans of the film will no doubt enjoy the yakky, argumentative, and funny commentary track featuring Hess, Lincoln, and Sheffler."

High-Def Digest, 2011 – The actors' commentary is apparently an "amusing conversation" where "the men clearly enjoy each other's company" and "overall, the comments and discussion are light-hearted and entertaining".

Kendall Lacey's Webworld, 2018 – Here we read the commentary "is a joy", and the "guys get on great and their track is fantastic."

The Mercenary Journal, 2022 – This one isn't a conventional disc review, more an essay about commentary tracks in general. Still, we get the Last House actors' track listed first in the author's list of favourites: "They joke, poke fun at each other and banter as they debate the merits of the film. At times you get the impression their personalities in real life weren’t all that different from the characters they played in that film. It’s lots of fun."

DVDCompare, 2011 – This reviewer states that compared with the Craven/Cunningham effort, the Hess/Sheffler/Lincoln affair "is the party track, with each of the guys telling story after story, often in an attempt to one-up each other." And "Even if you've heard Hess tell the same stories a hundred times, they never get old."

Given what Hess actually says on the track, I seriously dispute that final point. More importantly, I can think of at least one person they got old for after the very first experience. Because she was there, on that Connecticut set, being subjected to David Hess's behaviour in person.

In the final analysis, I've found ten reviewers, spanning a period of years, who've written enough about the Hess/Sheffler/Lincoln commentary track that they've presumably actually listened to it – meaning listened, not just skipped through the first ten minutes. And here's the scorecard:

Actually engaging with the two most unpleasant anecdotes: 1
Mentioning one of them, albeit with significant errors: 1
Ignoring both the stories completely: 8

This is not the greatest final tally in the universe, is it, horror media reviewers? Even the two reviews that do make it out of the "ignore the cliff and rape threats altogether" category have problems: HK and Cult Film News adds a supplementary sentence that reads like it came from a completely different reviewer, while Horror Cult Films makes a ridiculously basic error with actors' names.

The HK reviewer comes the closest to naming what matters, and it's notable that the review originated in 2009 – a time when Hess was still being invited to guest at conventions. Even that piece, though, while it describes Sheffler's cliff threat openly, still reduces the severe abuse Hess wallows in inflicting on Sandra to her being "distraught and fearful" resulting in "humiliation and distress". True, but incomplete.

In terms of saying out loud, in clear language, that the commentary track contains David Hess recounting in explicit terms a threat of sexual violence made against Sandra Peabody on the set of Last House on the Left, the number of the ten reviewers who make it that far is... zero.