Alexandra Heller-Nicholas

Last Trope on the Left: Rape, Film and the Melodramatic Imagination

Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
La Trobe University

Filmic rape is shrouded by a distinct moral fuzziness as it attempts to cross the divide between the represented and the real. Last House on the Left (Wes Craven, 1972) and Night Train Murders (Aldo Lado, 1974) are horror remakes of Ingmar Bergman's art classic, The Virgin Spring (Sweden, 1960). Pivotal moral messages are hidden within these texts – what Brooks refers to as the ‘moral occult’ – in order to satisfy the construction of the melodramatic framework. A comparative analysis of the ‘moral occult’ active within these three films suggests that despite the shift of genre, audience, eras of production and core thematic concerns, these texts are haunted by their own capacity for the representation of the rape act. The moralities that manifest across these three films are as complex as the representational apparatus itself: although three variations on the same basic plot, each locates its moral occult in dramatically varying locations. This pertains directly to the manner in which each text engages with the realities of sexual violence as an active, everyday phenomenon.