Mari Collingwood

Mari Collingwood is a fictional character in The Last House on the Left series of films. Created by the writer and director Wes Craven, she is portrayed by Sandra Peabody in the 1972 original film and by Sara Paxton in 2009 remake of the same name. Making her debut appearance in The Last House on the Left (1972), Mari serves as the heroine; predating the characters of Nancy Thompson and Sidney Prescott who served as the protagonists of Craven's landmark series A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984-1987) and Scream (1996-2011), respectively. The 2009 incarnation of the character has been observed by some scholars to follow the "final girl" archetype, contrasting with her original depiction. Outside of film, Mari has appeared in merchandise based on the original film.

Mari Collingwood
The Last House on the Left character
Sandra Peabody portraying Mari
First appearance	The Last House on the Left (1972)
Created by	Wes Craven
Portrayed by	Original: (1972) Sandra Peabody Remake: (2009) Sara Paxton
In-universe information
Full name	Mari Collingwood
Occupation	Original: (1972) High school student Remake: (2009) High school student Competitive swimmer
Family	Original: (1972) Dr. John Collingwood (father) Estelle Collingwood (mother) Remake: (2009) Dr. John Collingwood (father) Emma Collingwood (mother) Ben Collingwood (brother; deceased)

Appearances

In film

Original

Mari is planning on going to a concert to see the controversial band Bloodlust with her more world weary best friend Phyllis Stone for her 17th birthday despite her parent's initial reluctance to allow her to go. Mari's mother expresses her disapproval of her friendship with Phyllis and her father questions why she's interested in a band mostly known for notoriety. Phyllis arrives and before Mari leaves, her parents give her a peace sign necklace for her birthday gift. While in the city, they are lured into an apartment to buy marijuana. Inside the apartment, they are held captive by a group of escaped convicts by the names of Krug, Fred, Sadie, and Junior. Mari and Phyllis are abducted and taken into the middle of the woods. Mari realizes in horror that she is by the road near her house but is unable to escape there for help. While in the woods, the girls are humiliated and assaulted. Phyllis runs away in an attempt to distract the killers so that Mari can escape. However, Mari is being watched by Junior and she attempts to gain his trust by renaming him "Willow" and by giving him her peace sign necklace. This works and the two attempt to evade Krug, Sadie, and Fred. Phyllis is killed and after being assaulted, a hopeless Mari wanders into a nearby pond knowing that she is going to be murdered. She is shot multiple times by Krug and is left for dead. She is found dead by her parents. Mari subsequently appears in Junior's nightmares.[1]

Remake

Mari is a competitive swimmer who goes on vacation with her parents John and Emma to their lake house. Mari takes the family car and drives into town to hang out with her friend Paige. While Paige is finishing her shift as a cashier, they meet a teenager named Justin, who invites them both back to his motel room to smoke marijuana. While there, Justin's family members return: Krug, Justin's father; Francis, Justin's uncle; and Sadie, Krug's girlfriend. Due to the widespread media coverage of Krug's recent escape from police custody, the criminals decide to kidnap them and steal Mari's car to leave town. Mari convinces Krug to take a road that is in the direction of her parents' lake house; in an attempt to escape, Mari burns Sadie's face with a cigarette lighter and attempts to jump out of the vehicle, but is unable to when the car crashes. After being raped by Krug, Mari manages to escape the criminals and make it to the lake so she can swim to safety. However, Krug shoots her in the back and she is left for dead, but she is later revealed to have survived. Mari manages to reach her parent's porch and with them seeks revenge; Mari, John, Emma, and Justin then take a boat to the hospital.[1]

In merchandise

Pallbearer Press released LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT SHIRT, a Horror T-shirt with Mari being the main part of the design.[2]

Development

Returning to New York after a cross-country road trip, Peabody was originally asked by the film makers to audition for the role of Phyllis after responding to casting notice in the trade publication Backstage. After meeting the producer Sean S. Cunningham she was cast as Mari.[3] Craven stated, "I liked Sandra Peabody a lot; I thought she was very pretty, and very plucky... because she was a very young actress, she wasn't nearly as confident and easy going as Lucy was, and she had become involved in something very, very rough. And she hung in there. When the character was raped, she was treated very roughly, and I know Sandra said to me afterwards, 'My God... I had the feeling they really hated me.'"[4] Jacob Knight interpreted that Wes Craven created Mari with the intention of her being a metaphor of peace and innocence during an era of apprehension, "He wants us to see her as a sexual object, the peace sign necklace her parents gift to her before she heads into the city no match for the angry, depraved, aggressors who tear her and Phyllis’ clothes off. In this way, Craven has molded Mari to be something of an avatar for how he views the “Love Generation”; inexperienced balls of flesh who think their hippie posturing will save them from society's wolves."[5]

Sara Paxton attending the premiere of The Last House on the Left (2009)

Various cast and crew of the original film have stated that Sandra Peabody was genuinely unnerved during the entire making of the film and at one point walked off set.[6][7] In an interview for David A. Szulkin's non-fiction book Wes Craven's Last House on the Left, Peabody confirmed the discomfort that she felt throughout the making of the film and the difficulty of working with Method actor David Hess, who threatened to assault her to get a genuine reaction from her.[8]

Sara Paxton revealed that she only auditioned for the film as an acting exercise and was not expecting to obtain the role.[9] In an interview, Paxton stated, "In the audition, Dennis was like, 'So how’s your swimming ability?' And I was like, 'I played a mermaid. I’m an amazing swimmer. You have no idea. I’m great.' And they were like, 'Oh wow, she’s a great… Hey, she’s a good swimmer.' Then I actually got on set and I just remember submerging under water and hearing, 'Cut! Oh my God, she is drowning! She is drowning right now. Somebody get her some floaties, something!' I guess I wasn’t that good. I was more talk."[10]

Despite the intense subject matter, Paxton described her experience on set as a positive one and when asked about what it was like to work with the producers Wes Craven and Jonathan Craven, she stated:

"He was more like the Wizard of Oz – the man behind the curtains. He was really involved in everything, but he was manning the controls backing in the states since we filmed the movie in Africa. His son, Jonathan Craven, was an executive producer on the movie and he was amazing to work with. It was a great set to be on. They really cared about us, especially me because I was the youngest out of the group."[11]

Dennis Iliadis, the director of the 2009 film, wanted to add more characterization and depth to the character of Mari and revealed that the writers decided to make her a competitive swimmer which attributes to her character development and survival later on in the film. In an interview, Iliadis stated:

"Well, the idea was to find something where she channels all her energy. That was a big character trait, because her brother is dead. It's like she's carrying him on her back; she needs to perform for two people now. She has to compensate for him. So all her energy's in the water. The only area where she feels slightly free is when she's in the water, swimming like crazy, so it's interesting having that as a character trait, and then having that as a key element for her trying to escape."

Reception

Film critic John Kenneth Muir described Mari as a "well-developed character."[12] Editor Stefano Lo Verme compared Peabody's performance as Mari to the performances of Marilyn Burns as Sally Hardesty in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) and Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode in Halloween (1978).[13] Similarly, in an article published for The Washington Post, film critic Ann Hornaday noted the similarities between Collingwood and both Strode and Hardesty, writing that all three characters "personified the qualities and character beats of the quintessential final girl at her most admirable and frustrating: She was virginal, whereas her contemporaries were hormonal and sex-crazed (impulses for which they would be duly tortured and punished). She was levelheaded when all around her were giving way to hysteria. She was fiercely protective of those in her care rather than merely out for self-preservation. Most important, she outlived the villain, or at least didn’t allow herself to die at his hand."[14]

In Rape-Revenge Films: A Critical Study,[15] Alexandra Heller-Nicholas notes that that 2009 version of the character, unlike the original incarnation, exhibits traits of the "final girl" trope, stating:

"The most obvious shift towards a more generic horror structure, however, manifests in the "final girl" elements of Mari's character that are absent in the original. In 2009, Mari is not interested in drugs and argues it (although she finally succumbs). She fights back consistently throughout her attack; she deliberately lures Krug to her parents house as a way of possibly getting help; and Krug himself even observes at one point that she is a "cool customer." The film celebrates Mari's determination to survive, and the fact that this Mari lives and the 1972 one does not inadvertently acts as condemnation of the earlier version. The 2009 Mari was a fast swimmer and could get away (she was still shot, but only in the shoulder). But the 1972 Mari was physically unable to escape, and thus her "punishment" was death. Sara Paxton's Mari in the recent The Last House on the Left is not killed, and this presents the possibility that she herself was able to enact her own revenge, a dramatic act that would have significantly moved the film from being a rape revenge film where her parents act for her, to one where the raped woman seeks vengeance on her own behalf."

"The depiction of Mari after Krug and his gang leave her (assuming she is dead) is a clear genre-marker, as she climbs out of the dark water at night to stumble home Creature from the Black Lagoon-style. This depiction of her as a vacant monster continues throughout the rest of the film. Mari is not so much a rape survivor as she is the walking dead, whose only function is to provide her parents (specifically her father) with a motivation for violent an spectacular vengeance. Even in the scenes where John performs emergency surgery on their living room coffee table, Mari's face is mostly turned from the camera. It is less about her reaction and trauma than it is the impact her traumatized body has on her father."

In an interview with The Terror Trap, David Hess (who portrayed Krug Stillo in 1972 film) discussed the relationship that he had with Sandra Peabody on set and the audience's emotional connection to Mari, stating:

"...there’s a visceral attraction to Sandra’s Mari in the film. Krug does that. And then the other thing is that he really feels kind of filthy, kind of dirty when he attacks this innocent. But he can’t help himself. He’s gone too far at that point. And that’s the way we inter-related, even when we weren’t shooting. Sandra was an innocent and I held my character."[16]

See also

• Nancy Thompson
• Sidney Prescott
• Sally Hardesty
• Laurie Strode

References

1. Ebert, Roger (January 1, 1972). "LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT". Chicago Sun-Times. Chicago, Illinois: Sun-Times Media Group. Retrieved December 14, 2017 – via rogerebert.com.
2. "LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT SHIRT". Pallbearer Press. Retrieved December 14, 2017.
3. Szulkin 2000, p. 41. sfn error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFSzulkin2000 (help)
4. Szulkin 2000, p. 79. sfn error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFSzulkin2000 (help)
5. Knight, Jacob (September 9, 2015). "Everybody's Into Weirdness: LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (1972)". Birth.Movies.Death. Retrieved January 4, 2018.
6. Snider, Eric D. (October 17, 2016). "14 Facts About The Last House on the Left". Mental Floss. London, England: Dennis Publishing. Retrieved December 14, 2017.
7. Burns, Williams (September 3, 2015). "Ten Things You Might Not Know About … Last House on the Left!". Horror News Network. Retrieved December 14, 2017.
8. Szulkin, David A. (2000). Wes Craven's Last House on the Left: The Making of a Cult Classic. FAB Press. ISBN 9781903254011.
9. Weintraub, Steve (March 9, 2009). "Sara Paxton Exclusive Video Interview THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT". Collider. Retrieved December 14, 2017.
10. Topel, Fred (March 16, 2009). "Sara Paxton on The Last House on the Left". CanMag. Retrieved December 14, 2017.
11. Martinez, Kiko (August 17, 2009). "Sara Paxton – The Last House on the Left". CineSnob. Retrieved December 14, 2017.
12. Kennth Muir, John (2004). Wes Craven: The Art of Horror. McFarland. p. 47. ISBN 9780786419234.
13. Verme, Stefano Lo. "SCREAMING ACTRESSES: FROM VERA FARMIGA TO JAMIE LEE CURTIS, THE GREAT SCREAM QUEEN BETWEEN CINEMA AND TV". June 25, 2016. Retrieved January 4, 2018.
14. Hornaday, Ann. "'Halloween': 40 years ago, Laurie Strode got inside my head. She's still there". The Washington Post. Retrieved 22 January 2019.
15. Heller-Nicholas, Alexandra (2011). Rape-Revenge Films: A Critical Study. McFarland. pp. 92–93. ISBN 9780786449613.
16. "Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know: An Interview with Actor/Director David Hess". The Terror Trap. February 2011. Retrieved December 14, 2017.

Works cited

• Szulkin, David A. (2000). Wes Craven's Last House on the Left: The Making of a Cult Classic. Surrey, England: FAB Press. ISBN 1-903254-01-9.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)