The Last House on Dead End Street (1977)

Excellent but underrated film

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

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

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

In 1972, Roger Watkins filmed this macabre picture about a disgruntled ex-con named Terry Hawkins who decides to kidnap four people and, with the help of his "crew" of movie makers, film their murders inside an abandoned building-turned makeshift studio. Originally running at almost three hours long, the film was re-titled numerous times and the original cut became a lost film, leaving us with the 78 minute "Last House on Dead End Street" as we know it today.Quite frankly, this is maybe the most nihilistic film I have ever seen. It parallels works like Wes Craven's "Last House on the Left" in both title and grisliness, but it's about ten shades darker because, unlike in that movie, there is no subtle humor here to provide even the slightest relief; there is no safety in this film. Like many have said, the entire film plays out like a bad dream, and even worse than that, it's a bad dream that looks like a Manson family home movie. The narrative is basic, almost skeletal, but that's not really the point of the film— what we have here ultimately is a stylish exercise in unease and demoralization. The film was made, literally, on less than a thousand dollars (Watkins admitted he used a great deal of the film's budget to buy drugs), and amazingly is not brought down by its budgetary shortcomings.The photography in the film is apt and sometimes borders on surreal, with the camera following Hawkins and his group of hippie auxiliaries; armed with hand-held cameras, they don sinister translucent doll faces and oversized Zardoz masks as they gallivant through the abandoned building, torturing and killing their abductees. The self-reflexive murder scenes are indisputably the hallmark of the picture, and they are grotesque; drills, amateur surgeries, and branding sticks— need I say more? It is horrendous and shockingly realistic even today, so it's no wonder that it was rumored to be real thirty years ago.If the trippy visuals and macabre murder sequences aren't enough to perturb, the nightmarish sound design is. According to the director, the soundtrack and sound design was comprised of stock music and soundbites which were purchased for less than a hundred bucks from a New York sound company. Had I not been made aware of this, I would have never had a clue, because the sonic makeup of the film is actually quite sophisticated. Granted, the dubbing is not great (yes, the film was dubbed), but the haunting choral score and orchestral musical accompaniment add a whole other layer to the film. The expansive, ethereal ambiance that is evoked from the score is in sharp contrast with the claustrophobic world of grit, grime, and grisliness on screen, and the film packs even more of a wallop because of it; the eerie score is punctuated by borderline-Socratic voice overs from Hawkins as he audaciously affirms his convictions.Given the resources used to make this film, it truly is an incredible achievement. In spite of the dirt around the edges, it is well-made and almost spiritually disturbing, but above all else, it is an unusually insightful film that has more substance than one would expect or demand from an exploitation flick. "The Last House on Dead End Street" is perhaps the most unnerving and haunting film I have ever seen, bar none. It is a living, breathing nightmare; a meditation on death and power, and an exposition of depravity. 10/10.

"Last House On Dead End Street" was allegedly made by an entire cast and crew of heroin addicts, and that definitely helped to make this movie as sleazy and unpleasant as possible. It also helps that none of these people were even identified until 2002. All the credits are actually pseudonyms, mostly the kind of pseudonyms people with dysfunctional brains would logically come up with. Produced by Norman F. Kaiser, directed by Victor Janos, those are the kind of names you come up with when you're 17 and you're trying to buy liquor. It gives this movie plenty of mystique, but it's more than just mystique it has to offer. It's genuinely fairly well-made, stylish and shocking, and it deals with its shortcomings well. All the audio is dubbed in, but while occasionally it looks and sounds like crap it's generally handled pretty well (masking the characters for the ending scenes was a good fetch). The cheap gore effects also look pretty real if you have no idea how effects work, to this day some (badly informed) people still claim this is an actual snuff film. It isn't quite realistic enough to make that mistake, but this is a very grim underground flick. Not the recipe for an all-too-pleasant evening, but it's definitely something you...need to watch? Have to watch? I don't know, but it's a strangely fascinating ride into the darkest pits of filmmaking.

Personally I don't like exploitation and snuff films. I feel that they are grim and upset the viewer and impair his ability to discriminate between humane and animalistic. 'The Last House on Dead End Street' was released 5 years after Wes Craven's depraved exploitation classic 'The Last House on the Left', but this one surpassed the record of depravity that Craven had set 5 years before. I don't like praising this movie for it made me upset and empty for many months, but I need to be true while reviewing it. As I watched this flick, I kept repeating 'This is just a movie'. I confess I didn't do this when I watched Craven's 'The Last House on the Left', which bore the aforementioned tag line. Although an amateurish effort by all means and produced out of a budget sufficient only to buy a few sacks of potatoes, this film will rule your senses forever and will haunt you in your dreams. The film doesn't pick up instantly and waits until the viewer has grown suspicious about the actions of the misanthropes and begins thinking 'What are they up to?'. Their questions are answered when the protagonist begins showing his true color which is as black as death itself!The film begins with Terry Hawkins (Roger Watkins, who closely resembles Quentin Tarantino), who has just finished his jail sentence for drug charges and is now looking for a new livelihood. He meets two cheese directors and now wants to try his hands with film making. Terry claims that he had earlier made few porn films but was unable to sell them. Terry and the directors want to try their hands with the new sensation of horror, Snuff films. They soon begin luring victims to a derelict and abandoned palatial building, where they are hacked, cut, drilled, decapitated, tortured, sawed and finally killed on screen. Their methods are so elaborate that they would definitely cause the viewers to puke on their nastiness. This goes on with several victims, until the viewers come to know that police had received a tip about their vicious and depraved deeds and they raided the place and arrested all the culprits and perpetrators.This might look like a documentary of a failed man, but you must see it yourself if you have the nerves to watch and forget this stuff. I say again, you may watch it, but it will live with you forever. The murders and slaughterhouse scene may induce nightmares and arouse abhorrence. Yes, the protagonist wants that you should hate him. This is a hate worthy film, but I can't give it 'zero' on the basis of my own dislike. May be it was hard for me to throw this film out of my mind, but its penetrative and lingering nature is certainly something that keeps this one infinite miles ahead of the modern stinkers like Fred Vogel's 'August Underground Mordum' and Nick Palumbo's 'Murder Set Pieces'. This film actually lets you dive deep into the mind of a depraved killer and answers some of the questions like 'How are they different from us? and 'What is his motive?''. Roger Watkins is the guy who hides behind the name Victor Janos and many other pseudo names that show on the performer/production credits. It's said that Roger Watkins had a planned budget of $3000 to make this film, but he spent more than $2,200 on amphetamines alone during the shooting and what remained was used to make the film. Unbelievable? Believe it!

This is what I call a guilty pleasure movie it's not something to be proud to like even if you are a fan. Terry Hawkins who just got out of jail goes to a collage to make student films Terry and his crew work on Extreme movies with no limit. The first half of the movie is the film crew working on and viewing shocking short films filled with sex and violence one movie is of a slaughter house cows getting hung up and cut another one is two girls making out and a dog walks by the scene. There's an S&m movie with a woman in black-face gets whipped a young child is carrying the whip for the man to whip her. One of the members of Terrys group wants to make new versions of stag films it's 50 Min's in that the movie becomes a horror and Terry really goes over the edge. The sounds and voice's echo like there in sound room the lighting is so dark the if someone is in a dark room you can hardly see them it's also on of the seediest grungiest movies i have every seen but it has some good in it and it's just what it wants to be. This movie had some controversy when it came out people thought it might cause some people to commit crimes maybe it would if they were unstable to begin with.