Not Only a Movie

Welcome to the notonlyamovie community. This doesn't quite operate like a usual Dreamwidth community, in that only I will be making posts. Commenting is available, but all comments will be initially screened. Any comments which do not respect the rules will be deleted unpublished.

Sandra Peabody (b. 1948) is best known as the actress who played the role of the doomed teenage girl Mari in the original 1972 version of Wes Craven's horror film The Last House on the Left. She has, however, had a varied career in the arts beyond that. 

As well as other acting roles on stage and screen, Sandra has been a writer, TV producer, talent agent and acting coach. She has won multiple awards for her work, including an Emmy and a CableAce Award. As a Carnegie Mellon student, she studied for two years with renowned acting teacher Sanford Meisner, later going on to teach his technique professionally.

Her role as Mari remains her most famous contribution, however. As in many similar cases, there is a lot of scattered and often garbled evidence online about her treatment during production. I have encountered errors in names, dates, scene descriptions and more. Not Only a Movie aims to bring together this evidence and to treat it seriously.

It is only fair to warn readers that you may find some of this material disturbing and even distressing.

A note on names

Sandra Peabody was credited for Last House on the Left under the name Sandra Cassell, and Sandra Cassel is also encountered. This being so, I have generally referred to her as simply "Sandra" in the blog. This approach is not intended to make any claim to unearned familiarity, merely to improve clarity.

A note on ethics

Sandra Peabody has not, to my knowledge, spoken publicly about this movie since collaborating with David A. Szulkin for the book Wes Craven's Last House on the Left: The Making of a Horror Classic, whose second edition was published in 2000. That forced me to ask myself whether I should be writing this blog at all. If this were a world where the film had faded into obscurity and was almost never referred to, the argument for leaving well alone would be a strong one.

That is not the world we actually live in. The Last House on the Left is widely regarded as a landmark of its type, and as highly influential on its genre. It is often written about, but usually in terms of its on-screen content. Where off-camera events are concerned, as I noted above, they are often described inaccurately. Even when this is not so, they are frequently treated as trivia, lore or "war stories", rather than being considered seriously.

The real-world choice for me was not, therefore, either writing this blog or leaving the subject quiet and unobtrusive. It was either writing this blog or leaving the field to those scattered and frequently inaccurate pieces I mentioned. My feeling was that, given those options, creating Not Only a Movie was what I should do. 

Respect for Sandra Peabody's boundaries, dignity, humanity and safety is a non-negotiable condition of using this blog. Any comments which breach these will be deleted on sight.

Logan Ennion, November 2025.