Another time to ask 'am I wrong?'

I've always said I'm not a nice person, and once while commenting on the movie Last House on the Left I said what happened to Phylis and Marie was horrible, BUT, it could all have been avoided if they had just gone straight to the concert, where odds are they could've scored marijuana anyway. Instead they seek out a weird guy on the street before the concert and agree to go back with him to his hotel room alone, and the rest is history.

Now, I get that this was the 70s and everybody wasn't so paranoid about this stuff back then and more trusting. But I think people tend when they grow up in a different generation to look at the movie from their own time's point of view. And today we are sooooo big on don't do this, don't do that, be safe, etc. But the problem is everybody else doesn't seem to get this...instead they say it all could've been avoided if Krug and the gang just hadn't raped and murdered the girls. That the responsibility falls on the killers NOT to kill. And yeah that may be true and it would certainly be nice if killers DID work like that, but they don't, which is why WE take so many precautions when going out or getting in with other people we're not familiar with.

Now today especially you would say hell no don't go back to some weirdo's hotel room...but it's odd because it's also today that these people are saying the victims aren't to blame for walking into trouble, it's ALWAYS the killer's fault if they kill someone. That may be true, but there's also a thing called putting yourself in harm's way. Think about it, if someone REALLY believed this philosophy, then would they teach their kids to go off with strangers, play in buildings where registered sex offenders live, give out all their personal information online, etc., because after all it's not on their kids to keep themselves from getting kidnapped or murdered, that is ALL on the kidnappers to leave the kids alone.

Having common sense doesn't mean someone is not nice.

Ah but see I come off as 'blaming the victims' by saying if they'd been a little smarter and passed up the weirdo on the street corner, it all could've been avoided.

If they had not gone to that weirdo's apartment, there would be no "last house on the left" movie then.

I know exactly what you're saying, Supernova. It has become "politically incorrect" (damn, how I hate that term!) to pass any accountability to victims in certain scenarios.

Criminal actions don't excuse the perpetrator one bit. But we all have a responsibility to ourselves to have brains and common sense. If we put ourselves in harm's way then we have to take some of the responsibility. Whenever I hear or read of a situation where a victim has done something moronic like the girls in that movie you mention, my sympathy level is on a much lower scale.

Today's attitudes are simply denial to avoid accountability, and that has been a growing problem for some time.

And see, that's why I'm not the nice person because knowing they got into that mess because of their own naive actions, it makes it a LOT harder to feel sorry for them.

But yeah it makes a lot of sense. Think about it, why do we put our money away in our wallet when we go to the store? Why not have it out for everybody to see it? Because somebody'd hit you with a brick and run off with it, that's why, it's not as simple as you might just lose it. Why is it advised NOT to cross through bad neighborhoods? Because they are BAD neighborhoods for a reason! Meaning something bad happens and is going to happen. Why do we avoid putting our home information in a chat room or Facebook? Because we don't want people online who we don't know tracking down where we live. It's all to avoid something terrible and preventable from happening.

The question was 'are you wrong' for pointing out lack of common sense precautions (or weak plot points that make many stories progress) and the answer is 'No.'

We all take risks and precautions as we think appropriate. Some think better than others, hence we have a "Darwin Awards" for those who off themselves before spreading their defective genes into the human pool.

Sometimes bad things are unavoidable - just the luck of the draw - but many times ppl make decisions that put them at risk. That is just the way it is.

"It's only a movie."
-Alfred Hitchcock