Almost TOO sick and TOO depraved for words, this mean-spirited and hideously edited US exploit-flick! It might be called pure cult cinema with an enormous shock-value, still this questionable reputation can't hide the fact that "Last House on Dead End Street" is a nearly unendurable film and that you'll need at least three very long showers to wash away the dirty feeling after seeing it. All you ever read about this film is true. It's definitely a true statement that the on screen gore is ultimately gross and that the tone of the film is disturbingly nihilistic & offensive. Now, I don't have a problem with that (on the contrary, I even pro-actively search for this type of films), but I do think there should at least be a point to the violence or some sort of moral that needs to be made clear to the audience. "Last House on Dead End Street" has neither. It's just 80 harsh minutes of insane violence and nasty images of horrible looking set pieces. The plot is as simple as it is irrelevant, and handles about a misanthropist ex-con who mobilizes his former friends to help him make porn movies and earn some extra money. When he discovers that people are only interested in extreme shocks and snuff nowadays, the whole gang goes berserk and complete their film with the rich clients as real-life victims. The first half of the film is surprisingly dull and just plain awful, with some really amateurish attempts to provide the characters (that you couldn't feel less connected to) with a background and really ugly camera-work. The second half is full of gory sickness but still as awful as the first; perhaps even more so. During one of the most notorious sequences in horror-history, both a woman's legs are brutally sawn off while she's kept conscious with medication. The reason for that is that she can witness later how her stomach is cut open with a huge pair of pliers and how the intestines get removed and proudly shown to her. Sick enough for ya? "Last House on Dead End Street" could have been a truly nightmarish experience if everything (apart from the human guts) didn't look so damn fake! Especially the acting, but also the clumsy camera-work and lighting are so amateurish that it's nearly impossible to let this film affect you. Admirers (and, believe me, there are a lot of them) use the cheapness as an argument to claim that it only increases the genuine exploitation feel to it, but I strongly disagree. I've seen enough exploitation movies that are stylish and convincing DESPITE the limitations in budget. I wouldn't advise anyone to see this film (apart from some personal enemies, perhaps) but if your curiosity becomes too hard to resist, you can always purchase the brand new double-disc special edition on DVD. But do yourself a favor and wait at least three hours after you had dinner.
Review of The Last House on Dead End Street
