Last House on Dead End Street, originally released as The Fun House, is a 1977 American exploitation horror film written, produced, and directed by Roger Watkins, under the pseudonym Victor Janos. The plot follows a disgruntled ex-convict (also played by Watkins) who takes revenge on society by kidnapping four acquaintances and filming their murders in an abandoned building.
Watkins, a student at the State University of New York at Oneonta, devised the concept for the film after reading the Charles Manson biography The Family (1971) by Ed Sanders. Commissioning a cast from the university's theater department, Watkins shot the film inside an unused building on the university campus in the winter of 1972, on a budget of around $3,000.
Watkins's original cut of the film, entitled The Cuckoo Clocks of Hell (now lost), ran approximately three hours in length. A truncated version of the film was released theatrically in 1977 under the title The Fun House. In 1979, Cinematic Releasing Corporation acquired distribution rights to the film and re-released it under the title Last House on Dead End Street, capitalizing on the popularity of Wes Craven's The Last House on the Left.
The film was met with a mixed critical reception, with reviewers criticizing its production quality and highlighting its grim tone and atmosphere. In the decades following its release, Last House on Dead End Street was subject to various rumors about who had created and starred in it, as the entire cast and crew were credited using pseudonyms. This resulted in speculation that the film might have depicted actual murders. In 2000, Watkins publicly came forward and confirmed himself as the director, writer, and lead actor. Two years later, the film was released for the first time on DVD, through participation from Watkins, and with the actual names of the actors revealed. The film has continued to be a point of discussion among film scholars, largely due to its metafilmic qualities, surrealist imagery, and themes surrounding the aestheticization of violence in cinema.
Plot Terry Hawkins has just been released from prison after spending a year incarcerated for drug charges. An amateur filmmaker, Terry claims to have previously made stag films that he was unable to sell. Convinced that modern audiences crave more extreme content, Terry decides to make a real snuff film. After choosing a large abandoned college as the setting of his film, Terry secures financing from an unsuspecting film company run by an openly gay film executive named Steve Randall. Terry rounds up a group of disparate women and men— some of them amateur filmmakers— who are willing to help make his film. Among them are filmmaker Bill Drexel; untrained actresses Kathy and her friend Patricia; and Ken, one of Terry's longtime acquaintances and a former pornographic actor.
For their first scene, Patricia and Kathy, wearing translucent plastic masks, lure a blind transient to the building. The women fondle him before Terry, donning a Greek tragedy-like mask, strangles the man to death while Bill films the murder. Meanwhile, pornographic director Jim Palmer, a peer of Steve's, waits anxiously for a party he is attending to end; his wife Nancy, done up in blackface, is whipped repeatedly in front of party guests as part of a sex game. Jim complains to Steve that people's tastes are becoming "hard to satisfy." The next day, Terry arrives at Jim and Nancy's home, and finds Nancy alone. He introduces himself as a mutual friend of Ken, with whom Nancy has previously appeared in adult films. Terry quickly seduces Nancy before showing her the footage of the blind man's murder in an attempt to convince her to ask Jim if he will invest in the picture. She is shocked by how realistic the footage looks; Terry confesses that it is in fact real, and rapes her.
The following morning, Terry calls Steve and asks him to stop by the building to visit the film set; he also inquires about a young actress named Suzie Knowles for a part in his movie. Steve arrives later that night, and is confronted by Terry and his crew inside the building, all of them wearing masks. Steve is knocked unconscious, and awakens to find himself tied up alongside Nancy and Suzie. Terry and his crew brand Suzie across her chest with a hot iron before Terry slashes her throat. Later, Terry goes to meet Jim at his office and kidnaps him. Back at the building, Terry and his crew beat Jim to death while Bill again films the crime. They then take an unconscious Nancy and tie her to a large dining table. She awakens to Bill filming her, while Terry uses a hacksaw to dismember her legs before they eviscerate her with gardening shears. During the mutilation, they periodically revive her consciousness with the aid of smelling salts before she bleeds to death.
Terry and his crew confront Steve with the corpse of the blind transient they killed earlier, and welcome him "back to the edge." Steve flees through the building, and is confronted in the basement by Terry, who tackles him to the ground. Bill emerges from a dark corridor with his camera while Kathy and Patricia taunt Steve. Patricia removes her mask and takes off her blouse, exposing her breasts. She unbuttons her pants, revealing a dismembered goat hoof she has held between her legs. As the group taunt Steve, Terry forces him to fellate the goat hoof. Steve escapes, but is cornered in an empty room, where a row of spotlights suddenly light up. Terry and his crew, armed with a power drill, approach Steve, plunging the drill bit through his eye socket, killing him. One by one, they slowly back away from Steve's body and disappear into the darkness.
As the scene fades out, a voiceover states that Terry, Bill, Ken, Patricia, and Kathy were apprehended and are in a state penitentiary.
Cast
Analysis Some film scholars have noted Last House on Dead End Streets unique preoccupation with and self-reflexivity regarding the aestheticization of violence. In Holy Terror: Understanding Religion and Violence in Popular Culture (2010), film scholars Gerry Carlin and Mark Jones point out the film's similarities to the Manson family murders, and note its religious undertones, which are amplified by the film's choral soundtrack: "Though principally a metafilmic commentary on cinematic perversity, the [lead character]'s gnomic pronouncements, and the excessively ritualized evisceral 'sacrifices' allude to a debased if fundamentally unrepresentable religiosity." Horror film critic and scholar Chas Balun echoes a similar sentiment, writing in 1989 that, "Last House on Dead End Street proves especially unsettling in the manner in which it blurs the lines between recording, inciting and participating in an act of violence. Other films... have similarly broached the subject, but none have been so alarmingly forthright and worrisome."
Film scholars Bill Landis and Michelle Clifford described the film as sticking to "a consistent, purposeful style that builds to the foulest mood imaginable, creating its own world of hate. In that unintentional exploitation way, it reproduces the Panic Theater extremes of surrealism, where evisceration is the metaphor for the sex act," likening it to the "bastard cousin of Otto Muehl." Landis and Clifford also note the self-reflexive framing of the film, deeming it "a film within a film motivated by a hate of pornography and the swingers who create it." Because of Terry's focus on murdering individuals connected to the pornographic film industry, Landis and Clifford herald the film as "the ultimate sexual revenge movie... What goes around comes around in the underground porno world, and Terry Hawkins makes this code his law, filming his targets as they take their last undignified breaths."
Production Concept and filming
Last House on Dead End Street was conceived by Roger Watkins, a student at the State University of New York at Oneonta (SUNY Oneonta), in 1972. Watkins was inspired to write the screenplay after reading the Charles Manson biography The Family (1971) by Ed Sanders, which focused on the Manson family murders in Southern California. The project was initially conceived as a straightforward biopic about the Manson family, but morphed into a feature about a disgruntled ex-convict who decides to make snuff films with a group of degenerates. Additional influence on the film's tone came from Watkins' disillusionment with the world at the time. Though Watkins was studying English literature, he became interested in filmmaking, and befriended several students in the university's film department. Through events sponsored by the film department, Watkins was able to meet directors Otto Preminger and Nicholas Ray, both of whom he idolized. Preminger took a liking to Watkins, and gifted him a Bolex camera, which Watkins used to film the simulated snuff footage featured in Last House on Dead End Street.
In casting the film, Watkins chose to star as Terry, the ringleader of the snuff filmmakers, and commissioned a cast exclusively consisting of current or former students of the theater department at SUNY Oneonta.Watkins, Roger. Audio commentary, Last House on Dead End Street DVD. 2002. Barrel Entertainment. The film was shot in December 1972 in an abandoned building on the university campus known as Old Main. The building, derelict at the time, was demolished in 1977. In spite of the film's content, the atmosphere on set was noticeably "relaxed", according to Watkins, with the only major conflict arising during the 'operation scene' with Nancy Vrooman extremely anxious while filming the scene. Watkins would later reveal that, at the time of the making the film, he was an amphetamine addict, and that only $800 of the $3,000 budget was actually spent on making the film; the remaining $2,200 was used to purchase drugs.Insert for Last House on Dead End Street DVD. 2002. Barrel Entertainment. The film's working title was And at the Hour of our Death.
Musical score Due to budget constraints, the majority of the film's score and audio effects were sourced from composer and ethnomusicologist David Fanshawe, via KPM Musichouse audio library. In additional to Moog synthesizer pieces, the musical score incorporates Gregorian chants among other ambient noises. The film's original musical score was released for the first time on vinyl February 12, 2016 by the independent labels Vombis and Light in the Attic.Track listing'''
Release The original 175-minute version of the film was titled The Cuckoo Clocks of Hell, inspired by a quote in the Kurt Vonnegut novel Mother Night (1962). This three-hour version of the film has been lost, with the original negatives either destroyed or missing. In April 1973, Watkins announced plans for the film to be screened at the Cannes and Berlin film festivals, but these screenings evidently did not take place. The film's release was delayed after one of the actresses sued Watkins, worried that a nude scene in the film would impede her chances of finding success as a Broadway actress.
In the spring of 1977, the film was released in a truncated cut as The Fun House, screening at drive-in theaters in Philadelphia beginning May 4, 1977, and throughout Connecticut beginning May 6, 1977, as well as in Shreveport, Louisiana, and Millville, New Jersey. It subsequently screened at a drive-in in Ithaca, New York beginning June 3, 1977, paired as a double feature with Mark of the Devil. It screened at drive-ins and theaters in Oakland, California in June 1977, and in Fresno, California beginning on September 30, 1977, with School of Fear and Meatcleaver Massacre as supporting films.