Death Game (1977)

Thanks for the memories!

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

DEATH GAME is a low rent exploitation flick from the 1970s, fairly strong in places but certainly nowhere near as depraved as something like FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE. Eli Roth must be a fan, given that he remade this film with Keanu Reeves under the title KNOCK KNOCK. The story is a three-hander about an average middle-aged guy who is visited by a couple of teenage girls one night. They frolic in the bathtub, but the visit sours the following day when they tie him up and proceed to abuse him for the rest of the film.This attempts to be a psychological thriller but I found it grating in the extreme. After the set up, literally half of the running time is merely made up of screaming, shouting, and general craziness. Mrs Clint Eastwood, Sondra Locke, is scarily convincing at times, although not as much as in SUDDEN IMPACT, and Colleen Camp isn't too bad either. But the script is pedestrian and the dated, low budget look of the film works against it, so that you'll be twiddling your thumbs long before the amusing twist ending.

I really must thank Eli Roth: Knock Knock, his diabolically bad remake of '70s thriller Death Game, has given me an appreciation of the original that I might otherwise not have had. Compared to the utterly abysmal performances in Roth's film, the acting in Death Game is actually pretty good, while the original shows just how lame Knock Knock is in terms of shock value, delivering at least two scenes that easily outdo the self-proclaimed modern master of horror.Directed by Peter S. Traynor, Death Game stars Seymour Cassel as loving husband and father George Manning, whose wife leaves for a few days after their son is struck down with appendicitis at his grandparents. While enjoying a rainy evening in his own company, two young girls call at George's home, claiming to be lost; being a kind Samaritan, he invites the girls, Donna (sexy Colleen Camp) and Jackson (not-so-sexy Sondra Locke), in out of the rain, and allows them to stay while a friend comes to pick them up. They repay his kindness by seducing him, luring him into a threesome in his jacuzzi, after which they carry out a campaign of terror, torturing and humiliating their host.While no means perfect—the second act is drawn out for far too long and the repetition of its theme song is guaranteed to irritate—this trashy slice of exploitation still unfolds in a far more satisfying manner than Knock Knock, with the girls even going so far as to kill, something they never did in Roth's movie. The pair also prove their psycho credentials with a little animal cruelty, launching the family cat through a closed window. The purely psychological torture in Roth's film (as suffered by a totally unconvincing Keanu Reeves) is pathetic by comparison.My advice: if you've already suffered through Knock Knock, give this one a try. Like me, you'll probably find yourself enjoying it more as a result.5.5/10, rounded up to 6 for IMDb.

There is a lot of talk of torture these days. That's all this movie is. It's about a good person who makes a bad decision. Because of his kindness, he becomes vulnerable to two psychotic women. From then on its a just-for-kicks assault on him. I don't know at what point you do something about it. There is a wife and child out there somewhere; he has great feelings of guilt and fear. But there should have been some times when he could have acted. The movie seems to be somebody's joke. I suppose in the wake of the Manson murders, we had a bit of a fixation on the likes of these two. Nevertheless, why would someone make a film like this? What appeals does it have except for sadism. The conclusion is totally unsatisfying, but that could have been remedied with an obvious plot twist. Oh, well. Another hour and a half of my life.

This film should be put in a special category, "Movies that make you feel like you're on something." In this category would be Yellow Submarine, Eraserhead (or any Lynch film), Ken Russell's and Nic Roeg's and Jodorowsky's whole catalog, etc. It is a bad movie, no doubt about it, and incomprehensible how it got made, or why, but that just makes it more fascinating. Thrill to the sight of Eastwood's then-girlfriend giving a truly unhinged performance and wonder if she's really acting or not! Listen to Colleen camp alternately scream and laugh hysterically as she beats up a tied-up guy in a bed and ponder how she ever got another acting gig again! Thrill to the sound of one of the weirdest choices of theme song ever recorded! Stare in awe at what appears to have been a cinemascope movie squeezed onto your t.v., and contemplate how much more dizzying it would've looked on the big screen! Feel this movie melting in your brains, not in your hands, as it gets ever more insane, leading up to a climax so stupefyingly cheap and abrupt it could only be attached to this movie!Saw this as a kid on cable, watched it because it was rated R and promised nudity and sex. Got a *little* more than I bargained for, but wasn't displeased or even shocked (Fellini's Satyricon was on right before it--Lord, how I stayed out of a mental hospital is a miracle). If you like weird movies that simulate being on drugs this film is for you, at least if you have a taste for old, poorly done exploitation stuff.