For a long time, Last House on Dead End Street was more or less an urban legend in the horror film world. It was almost impossible to find a copy, and the fact that everyone who worked on the film did so under a pseudonym meant that no-one could even contact the filmmakers or confirm they were even alive. Rumours circulated that it was an actual "snuff" film (it isn't) and it even got a completely blameless film put on the UK's video nasties list in its place (Tobe Hooper's The Funhouse ended up on the list as an alternative title of Last House on Dead End Street was The Fun House). Then in 2000 director Roger Watkins - known mainly for pornographic movies - came forward and "confessed" that he had been the director - and also the writer, producer, editor and star, and suddenly the film was available once more.
The plot, such as it is, concerns Terry Hawkins, who has just been released from prison after serving a year for drug dealing. Terry decides that he wants to get into film, but not just any films - he wants to make snuff films. So he recruits several friends of his to act as cast and crew, picks several people to be their victims, and proceeds to kidnap, torture and murder them while filming it all.
...Oh boy. Last House on Dead End Street was made on a budget of $3,000. Well, I say "made" - $800 actually went on the film directly; the other $2,200 went on drugs according to Roger Watkins himself. And it shows. It looks every bit like an experimental student art film - which, to be fair, it more or less was. In the 90s it might have been considered part of the Dogme 95 film movement. If it had been made today it might well have been considered mumblecore or mumblegore. But it was made in the 1970s, so "surrealist drug-fuelled exploitation art film" seems to fit it best.
The camera shakes and goes in and out of focus occasionally. There's little to no stage lighting in any of the scenes; everything is shot with the natural light, which sometimes leaves scenes overexposed and almost ethereal, with the people in the scene shrouded in shadow. Just about everyone has been dubbed, and dubbed badly, so that the words being spoken rarely match the movement of the lips supposedly speaking the words; also, most of the dialogue feels almost improvised, which makes it very naturalistic and rambling in parts.
As for the scenes... Well, in one scene a woman makes her face up in blackface, strips to her underwear, then kneels in her living room and is enthusiastically whipped by a hunchback for the entertainment of a small audience there. And this isn't even one of Terry and his friends' films. That scene alone should give you an idea of what kinds of extremes the film gets to. (Incidentally, as part of that scene we occasionally cut to the woman's husband, sitting in another room and stroking a silver-grey tabby as he listens to the whipping, and all that was going through my head was, "Don't hurt the cat." Thankfully, the cat is fine.) As a word of warning, however, there is a brief scene of (I believe) genuine slaughterhouse footage near the beginning of the film, so if you're sensitive to things like that then be warned.
But is it actually any good? Well, that's going to depend entirely on your definition of "good". From a purely cinematic point-of-view, it's amateurish as hell - but that only serves to enhance what it pretends to be; a snuff film made by a group of drug-addled and not altogether sane people. It's bleak and uncompromising, and in a lot of ways reminds me - ironically enough - of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre with its bluntness when it comes to showing death. The voiceover at the end, put there despite objections from Watkins himself, doesn't help soothe the audience's minds one bit, because deep down this is what most of them had probably always imagined a film like this to look like. In the end, it's certainly not going to be to everyone's tastes, but I think it is a film that those interested in the more surreal and even artistic side of the exploitation era should take a look at.
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