Don't Get Caught in The Last House on the Left

Every so often, the medium of film produces a villain who is so contemptible that it is actually a pleasure to watch as their lives are extinguished.

The Last House on the Left provides just such a villain.

A remake of a 1972 film by the same name, The Last House on the Left provides a nightmare scenario: having taken someone who grievously harmed a family member into your own home, and being trapped with them.

Moreover, they are psychopaths.

In the film, Dr John Collingwood (Tony Goldwyn) and his wife Emma (Monica Potter) have moved with their daughter Mari (Sara Paxton) to live in their lakehouse in the Pacific Northwest.

No sooner have they arrived than Mari starts asserting her independence. She wants to live in the guesthouse rather than in the main house with her parents, and she wants to take the car into town to visit a friend.

But while in town she encounters Justin Stillo (Spencer Treat Clark) whose gentle nature belies his extremely dangerous father, Krug (Garret Dillahunt), uncle Francis (Aaron Paul) and his girlfriend Sadie (Riki Lindhome).

A carefree afternoon spent smoking pot with Justin turns into a horrifying ordeal when Krug, Francis and Sadie return to the hotel room where Justin has been left alone.

Mari and her friend are taken hostage. Later, after an escape attempt, Mari's friend is cruelly murdered -- left to die of two knife wounds meant to cause a slow and painful death -- and Mari herself is raped and shot.

With their vehicle damaged during the escape attempt, Mari's assailants (with Justin in tow) wind up at the Collingwood home, where they receive shelter from an incoming storm.

The Collingwoods, worried over their daughter's absence, are about to be confronted by the horror of having their daughter's psychopathic assailants in their own home.

The lack of reason for Krug, Frances and Sadie to take Mari hostage, and the casualness with which they clearly plan to kill her mark them as clear psychopaths.

And while American law provides for the possibility of the death penalty -- the only means by which a psychopath can truly be dealt with in a humane manner -- Canadian law doesn't even recognize them.

Shortened significantly, the psychopathy checklist developed by Dr Bob Hare checks for the following behavioural and personality traits:

-Glib and superficial charm
-Grandiose (exaggeratedly high) estimation of self
-Need for stimulation
-Pathological lying
-Cunning and manipulativeness
-Lack of remorse or guilt
-Shallow affect (superficial emotional responsiveness)
-Callousness and lack of empathy
-Parasitic lifestyle
-Poor behavioral controls
-Sexual promiscuity
-Early behavior problems
-Lack of realistic long-term goals
-Impulsivity
-Irresponsibility
-Failure to accept responsibility for own actions
-Many short-term marital relationships
-Juvenile delinquency
-Revocation of conditional release
-Criminal versatility

Krug, Frances and Sadie can be determined to exhibit any of these behaviours as can be exhibied within a two-hour movie.

Yet in Canada, where Dr Hare's Psyophathy Check List (PCL-R) was commissioned by, and then upon receipt shelved by, Corrections Canada, individuals such as these three would never be identified as psychopaths by Corrections Canada and treated accordingly -- because of an ideological view of criminal justice that refuses to accept the possibility that an individual cannot be redeemed.

A psychopath, by their very nature, cannot be redeemed. Canada's justice system needs to recognize this fact, or risk being utterly impotent in the handling of individuals similar to the Stillos.

By the time it has concluded, The Last House on the Left has walked a fine line between tense suspense/thriller and brutal revenge film. As Frances comes in search of sexual gratification from Emma and Krug discovers that Mari is the Collingwood's daughter, and with no help available to them, John and Emma are forced to dispatch their now-unwelcome houseguests.

Krug, in particular, shows no remorse whatsoever for his actions, and even brags about them while embarking on protracted self-aggrandizing speeches on "being a man" -- that such an individual would think that raping and murdering helpless teenage girls makes him a man is certainly a testament to his parasitic lifestyle.

In the end, the only law left available to the Collingwoods is the law of the jungle.

Canadian law could not suffer the same to be commonplace in Canada -- and so must get realistic in the handling of psychopaths. Considering the parole of Karla Holmoka, and how close she came to receiving a pardon, it's clearly in dire need.

Thank God He's a Fictional Character

Ideology handcuffs psychology, criminal justice

What is almost certainly the most anticipated movie of the past three years opened in theatres world wide yesterday, and has left audiences absolutely stunned.

Audiences turned out in record numbers yesterday to see the superhero opus.

What has people talking most is the beyond spectacular performance turned in by Heath Ledger as the Clown Prince of Crime, the Joker. Ledger's take on the villain is unsettling on a deep psychological level, as he takes the character deeper than he's ever been taken before, on the silver screen or off.

Ledger's Joker is a cold, calculating, sadistic, self-styled anarchist determined to show all the "planners" of Gotham -- from District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) to the city's "silent protector" himself, Batman (Christian Bale) -- how futile their efforts really are.

Which is, in a sense, ironic. The film opens with a bank heist so meticulously planned that the Joker is ultimately able to blend in with rush hour traffic in a manner that renders him absolutely untracable (specific details withheld for obvious reasons).

The Joker that emerges is the most realistic version of the character offered: an individual carrying psychological trauma embedded so deeply in his personality that he is willing to do absolutely anything, and feels absolutely no remorse.

Human language has a word for such individuals: we call them psychopaths. It should then be interesting to note that our criminal justice system has no such word.

In 1980, University of British Columbia psychologist Bob Hare developed a diagnostic tool known as the Psychopathy Checklist. Five years later it would be revised into the PCL-R.

Upon being presented with the PCL-R, one of the first things Corrections Canada did was shelve it. It was deemed politically incorrect to suggest that any criminal should be considered beyond rehabilitation. It offended the sensibilities of the authorities of the day to suggest that an individual could be considered irredeemable, and it still does.

In other words, if an individual like Heath Ledger's Joker -- a psychopathic criminal with an extreme gift for planning and a predisposition toward terrorist tactics -- ever emerged in Canadian society, our law enforcement and correctional systems would be utterly handcuffed.

On this note, two caveats must be affixed: first off, the character portrayed by Ledger must be treated as hyperbolic beyond all credulity. Secondly, Hare notes that the vast majority of psychopaths are what he terms "subclinical" psychopaths -- an individual who leaves behind them a trail of abuse and personal destruction, but who acts almost entirely within the law -- even if only barely.

As such, the PCL-R would not only provide a useful tool for law enforcement and corrections, but also for family therapists and child protective services -- if only the political will existed to actually make use of it.

There is, of course, a dark flip side to the PCL-R. In many cases -- particularly in the United States -- the PCL-R has been combined with a myriad of political values in order to render an assessment of psychopathy where one would otherwise be unsuitable.

This is a reality that Hare has long realized, and has spurred him to spend his retirement years travelling to various conferences -- on topics ranging from psychology to law enforcement -- to clarif the purposes of the PCL-R. "I'm protecting it from erosion, from distortion. It could easily be compromised," Hare says.

Which is important to remember. Any diagnostic tool can be abused, and often will be. While that necessitates a certain level of vigilance in the use of it, however, it's insufficient reason to discard it altogether.

Ledger's Joker will prove to be as iconic a performance as Brandon Lee's in The Crow -- not least of which because of his untimely demise.

The performance will haunt filmgoers and challenge other actors for years to come.

Hopefully, the film will also challenge some of our law enforcement and correctional authorities to give the PCL-R a second thought as well.