Released from prison where he was sent for drugs offences, misfit Terry Hawkins wants revenge. His medium is film.
Gathering a Manson-type family of acolytes – the psychopathic Ken, who spent six months in an asylum after bing caught sodomising a calf at the slaughterhouse where he was working; the naïve, pliable Bill; and two avaricious prostitutes, Terry sets to work.
The gang film the murder of a blind man, and use this footage to convince some pornographers, hungry for something new and different to supply their jaded customers, to back his real project. They are invited to the set, then revealed to be stars-cum-victims of the film-within-the-film. An orgy of violence ensues, complete with branding, amputation without anaesthetic, the gouging of a nipple with pliers, the application of a power drill to an eyeball and – somehow trumping all of these in its sheer sickness – a man being forced to fellate a deer's hoof.
It almost goes without saying, then, that Last House on Dead End Street is a film that is not for all tastes.
For many years it was a “mystery within an enigma” of a film, origins, cast and crew unknown. Banned in the UK as a video nasty and scarcely available in the USA – Psychotronic author Michael Weldon asked his readers if they “[had] every heard anyone even admit that they saw it” – some gullible and hopeful types even believed it to be a bona fide snuff movie.
In 2001 the truth came out via an internet message board discussion. The film was the work of one Roger Watkins, who also played the part of Terry. Made on a minuscule budget, with much of the money allegedly being spent on amphetamines by the director, the original cut of the film, going under the name The Cuckoo Clocks of Hell , had been released in 1973 and ran around three hours. It then resurfaced five years later on the drive-in and grindhouse circuit in an unofficial edited form under the new titles The Fun House and Last House on Dead End Street , the latter an obvious attempt to cash in on the notoriety of Wes Craven and Sean S Cunningham's shocker.
While some of the aura that surrounded the film has disippated in the light of these relevations, Last House on Dead End Street remains an intense, perverse and profoundly disturbing film, on a par with the likes of Salo and Cannibal Holocaust .
It is quite simply a film that is so out there it is as if it has come from another planet, one where the Dziga Vertov Group and Manson family decided to collaborate on a film.
Accordingly, everything that would otherwise work against the film – extremely raw visuals; amateurish performances; stock sound effects and scoring; ad-libbed, stream of consciousness dialogue and post-synchronised sound – only adds to the viewer's disorientation and the sense that we really are journeying into a psychopath mind.
Likewise, when Hawkins/Watkins repeatedly screams “I'm directing this fucking movie!” one cannot readily tell if he is still acting a role or has crossed the line between real and reel life. There is that sense of danger in the air, that anything could happen.
UK distributor Tartan's Region 2 release of Last House on Dead End Street represents a straight PAL format port of the 2002 NTSC release by US company Barrel Entertainment, the film having recently been passed uncut by the BBFC in what one assumes is an example of their post-James Ferman/ Texas Chain Saw Massacre philosophy – like Tobe Hooper's film, there's really nothing that you can put your finger on as contravening some law, but rather an all pervasive sense of disquiet.
While the image is grainy, scratchy and alternates between being too dark and too light and the audio flat and hollow, it has been sourced from one – maybe even the only – 35mm print of the film in existence under Watkins' supervision and, as such, probably represents the best that we can ever hope for. Besides, it's the kind of film where worse is really better.
While Tartan's review discs did not contain the fully set of extras, assuming their actual release again ports everything from the Barrel one should make for an impressive overall package – the Watkins commentary track there, moderated by Chas Balun, is one of the most entertaining out there – that may even veer close to too much in the form of a music video for a track inspired by the film – although its director, Jim van Bebber, is a filmmaker very much in the Watkins mould, having made his own independent film about the Manson family – and 70 minutes of Watkins's phone calls around Last House's production and (mis)distribution.
As it is, the second DVD contains outtakes (18 minutes) and four of Watkins' early short films, Masque of the Red Death (19 minutes), Requiem (18 minutes), Ron Rico (19 minutes) and Black Snow (3 minutes). While the outtakes play silently, the shorts are accompanied by commentaries from Watkins, explaining some of the choices of imagery and music (which proved impossible to license, explaining the absence of the original audio option here) and the general memories and feelings they evoke.
Although there is nothing here for the extreme cinema fan who already has the Barrel release, Tartan's disc makes an attractive proposition for the R2 viewer unable or unwilling to shell out the premium for a hard-to-find import disc.
(External) Tartan Video homepage
Copyright © K H Brown 2002-2005
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