This continues to be the only Ingmar Bergman movie I have seen… I have a slew of them in my Netflix queue, but this one got prioritized mainly because it was the basis for Wes Craven's 1972 classic, “Last House on the Left.”

Bergman's film, in turn, claims a 13th century ballad as its source, and it scans like a ballad itself or a medieval pageant. Everything is very ponderous and slow-moving, but as inexorable as a forest fire. The Middle Ages characters look like walking statues or paintings, but the human cost of every action is shown in relentless close-up. It's not just pretty pictures Bergman's making here (although of course the sharp blacks and whites are very beautiful). This is raw stuff.

The premise was adapted pretty faithfully for “Last House”: Killers take shelter, unwittingly, in the home of their victim's parents; when the parents find out, they roll up their sleeves and get vengeful. The victim here is Karin (Birgitta Pettersson), the pampered daughter of a farm family. She's beautiful and charming and has always been able to get what she wants out of doting parents Tore (Max von Sydow) and Mareta (Birgitta Valberg). Family tragedy is hinted at; Mareta sighs “She's the only child I have left”; but it's never fleshed out.

Also in the family is a foster daughter, Ingeri (Gunnel Lindblom): hugely pregnant and up at dawn doing chores while the virginal Karin sleeps in. Ingeri constantly hears how lucky she is that they haven't thrown her out in her disgraceful condition, and she watches resentfully as Karin is petted and fussed over. Dark-haired where Karin is blonde, praying for aid to Odin in a pious Christian household, she's Karin's opposite and nemesis.

It's Ingeri's wrath that sets the movie in motion: in the very first scene, she leans over a kindling fire and blows, igniting it into flame. Packing Karin's lunch for her fateful ride through the woods, she hollows out a piece of bread and hides a live toad inside. You don't know if it's just plain nastiness or some kind of spell. But then she encounters a creepy pagan bridge-keeper – a fellow worshiper? Odin himself? Something worse? — who claims to recognize her and hisses “I'll help you.” Suddenly realizing she might have actually unleashed something, Ingeri races in terror after Karin, catching up only in time to witness Karin's rape and murder.

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