We're only in the third month of the year, and already we've seen high-profile remakes of three different horror movies: My Bloody Valentine, Friday the 13^th and, most recently, The Last House on the Left. What's surprising about these movies isn't the fact that they're all remakes. Nothing is sacred in Hollywood, not even The Host and Oldboy - easily two of the best films of the decade, both slated to be streamlined and repackaged thanks to Tinseltown's recycling plant. No, what's surprising is that exploitation movies have entered the mainstream at all.

Take Last House on the Left: Wes Craven's original 1972 film isn't exactly a walk in the park. It depicts the brutal rape and murder of two teenage girls. Lots of horror movies show awful things, but they're usually quick stingers - a decapitation here, a disembowelment there, and then it's onto the next sequence. Death isn't like than in Last House on the Left. The murders in this movie are stretched, laid out in narrative form, the same way a love story would be in a romantic comedy. They're the central part of the film.

So what's a movie like that doing playing in a multiplex near you?

There are two schools of thought when it comes to exploitation movies. The first is that, when done "right", these films can say something of value and reach the level of art. Craven was inspired by Vietnam War footage he had seen and wanted to recreate those feelings in Last House on the Left. The film was supposed to be about how America had gone insane. Another film with similar aspirations: Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which has also spawned remakes and sequels to remakes.

The second school of thought is that exploitation movies have nothing of value to say, that they're complete trash. Kevin Willmott, one of my professors at KU who's since gone on to direct the films C.S.A. and The Only Good Indian, was unapologetic in this viewpoint. He thought exploitation movies were basically shameful and dehumanizing to our culture.

I don't have strong feelings either way. Every exploitation movie I've ever seen, from Cannibal Holocaust to Gaspar Noé’s horrifying Irreversible, I've approached not as a fan but as a student or a journalist. I see it as the critical equivalent of cleaning the gutters; it's a dirty job but someone's gotta do it. I've never had much fun cleaning the gutters, and I've never had much fun watching an exploitation movie, either.

But Hollywood seems to think these movies are nothing but fun. I wonder what the pitch meetings are like. "What's in the script? An hour of rape? Sold! Here's $25 million!" I simply don't get it. When rape and murder are just another form of Saturday night entertainment, something in the culture has gone seriously awry. Wes Craven needs to make an exploitation movie about the insanity of mainstream exploitation movies.