Last House on Dead End Street
Last House on Dead End Street and I have history. I saw the title on a 100 Sickest Movies of all times list, years ago. It was said to be the most perverse and twisted piece of celluloid ever. Forbidden in like 47875 countries for a very disturbing deer leg rape scene. For years, I tried to get a good quality uncut, and finally found a tape. (Hello, kids, tape, that is this huge black thing you put in video recorders; these are the huge black boxes your parents replaced with a DVD player 10 years ago…)
Last House on Dead End Street has nothing of the raw charme of early Wes Craven splatter, in detail: It is not like Last House on the Left. It is more like some boring 70ies porn with some violence and pseudo s/m scenes for the first half. It is also hard to follow the plot. Friends of fanfiction may know what I mean with the rating “PWP” – Plot, what plot?
The story. There is Terry. He looks like a wannabe rock’n’roller and he has no job, or some strange movie-related job. Just like his buddy (whose name I already forgot, but who looks like the professor in several generic late 70ies cannibal movies, just without a pipe), who was big in porn production, but now works as a slaughter and still has contacts to very very famous directors. The very very famous director Terry and his buddy want for their snuff (?) movie is a Mr. Palmer, who is married to a whore called Nancy. He also has a partner, again a name I must have missed, so let’s call him Mr. Awful Sunglasses.
Terry and his film crew (Terry, cannibal movie lookalike, 2 random chicks, a camera man that was kinda forced into the team, but still likes it) now kidnap Mr. Palmer, Nancy and Mr. Awful Sunglasses and bring them to the “last house on dead end street”, which is no house but an abandoned industrial facility. Or something like that. That was the summary of around 1 hour of 70ies haircut visual torture for the viewer and a plot beyond all logic and sense.
The second half of the movie deals with the ending lives of the 3 kidnapped people. Mr. Palmer, whom I expected to be the main target for refusing to direct the movie, surprisingly dies first. And not even spectacular. The slaughter/former movie guy simply stabs him with a knife. Exciting, huh? Next is his wife, delivering the one scene that is not completely boring and kinda well done. Its a patient-is-consious-during-double-leg-amputation-with-a-saw scene. Ok, the scene plays completely in the dark and ends with Terry using a saw to open the belly and pull out something meant to be guts, but clearly coming from a Italian fastfood service. But it is much better than the biggest disappointment in my long exploitation history. *sniff*
You know, if someone tells me the movie has a rape with a deer leg, I imagine a female victim. But the only female just died after amputation. And there’s only Mr. Awful Sunglasses.
Mr. Awful Sunglasses is tied to a chair, and at least 3, maybe 4 of the bad guys are in the room. This does not make any sense, because the next scene shows Mr. Awful Sunglasses obviously trying to escape – however he got rid of the ties, chair and killers. They catch him outside the building though.
I will describe the deer leg rape in all detail: He licks a deer hoove. Oh my god, how disturbing. Right after that, Mr. Awful Sunglasses gets killed with a driller, which does not visually express. We just see Terry take the driller and walk over to the victim; then some moments of screams in the dark, and now the real unexpected part: The movie is over! And some voice tells me, while the credits are scrolling down, that all 5 killers were sentenced to jail!
Hello??? There are several ways to end a movie. The traditional way of rape’n’revenge; one victim escapes and kills the bad guys, then gets picked up by a police car. The boring way; the killers finish their work, then get surprised by the police and are sentenced either to jail or death. The hey-lets-make-a-sequel way; the killers escape and are on the run. The creepy way; the killers already eye a new victim. But all these ways are visual. You see what happens to them. And not some voice in the off to tell me! Oh yes, it leaves room for my imagination. But I couldn’t take the chance, I was too busy asking “WTF?!”