Was this supposed to be a comedy?

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Yeah! It WAS a comedy..don't you get it? It was a happy funny comedy about rape and murder. didn't you feel good after watching it? seriously, if you have to ask a question like that; maybe you should stick to watching mainstream, commercial crap like the remake. Because the remakes of these classic films take you by your little hand and explain everything to you, and tell you what to feel every second: now we are playing bad scary music; so you know to be scared. Oh happy music; be happy now! As a matter of fact, why don't you just give up on film altogether?

"IMdB; where 14 year olds can act like jaded 40 year old critics...'

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i read the answers i tend to agree with you
i m born in 1978 so the movie is made before my time too
i guess the viewers of the first theatrical release of the film must be in their 60s now and we re talking about a low budget thriller not bergman
so the age argument against you was pretty offensive and stupid
the film is overhyped because it was directed by wes craven
its more like watching a subgenre who took form with halloween and friday the 13 in the making
but on the other hand you re too hard on it
its cheap even by 70s standards its several decades old its the work of a very young director and unknown actors so yes its pace is slow the dialogues and plot a little naive and it feels more like a time capsule than a shocker today
it was funny in certain scenes but not always because of the bad acting in it
there were scenes intentionally funny in order to provide comic relief
we are accustomed to more violent films nowadays and directors avoid to camp it out too much so this also feels outdated
towards the end where the movie has its climax and the shocker image of the mild middle-aged father holding a chainsaw, the movie shows some soul and offers social critique to the viewer partially simplistic partially true and ahead of its time(violence provokes more violence, the hippies generation is doomed, a lost and violent one mainly due to the drugs fad, the hate among social classes cant be erased by utopian 60s slogans, activism and because of the plain fact that we can no longer return to a natural state of being without becoming beasts, the police is ineffective, the world is a dark place, evil is within us all under the pretense of civilization on the surface, violence is bound to get worse in the near future-which it did, the family declines,our civilization declines etc etc -theres some good food for thought there)
so its not all bad but its not the masterpiece some claim to be either
there are many cult gems which are not condidered masterpieces by anyone because the director and the actors were lost in hollywood limbo afterwards
ps i like 70s porn music there are some lost treasures there as well :p Its obvious the choice of gentle folk music as a soundtrack is used on purpose as a contrast to the violence and the gore and in a way it underlines it sometimes in a funny while others in a dramatic way(the shooting of the couples daughter)today no director would make such a choice of soundtrack so you get the time capsule feeling again-but hey some folks like nostalgia, its a matter of taste
overall, i d give it 5/10 as a movie but 10/10 as the ''birth'' of a subgenre
how many films have we watched with college kids and insane murderers with chainsaws and other instruments of torture fighting and crippling each other? its still a BIG part of horror films and movies industry in general which would probably not have existed if not for this humble low-budget film

I saw this movie in 1972, when it came out. I was about 18. Even then, I saw it was grimy and poorly acted, with bad music, but--those are the reasons I found it so disturbing. It seemed, in it's amateurishness, to almost be real. There were a spate of this kind of movie at the time, and it was also the era of snuff-film gossip.

I recall sitting in the theater thinking I shouldn't be sitting there, that it was wrong and I was somehow promoting rape and torture just having paid $ to see it. But I also thought, several times--"these actors are so bad, could this be real?!"

I guess I came to this board because "I Spit On Your Grave" on one of the cable stations the other night. I watched it with some amusement but also a sense that this genre was NOT helpful to women, as was opined by some at the time. Nothing empowering, or funny.

But it brought me back to remembering leaving the theater after "Last House..." and feeling truly ill.