Last House on a Dead End Street (1973 - DVD) 

Directed by Roger Watkins
Starring Roger Watkins, Ken Fisher, Bill Schlageter
(Barrel) www.barrel-entertainment.com

An exhaustive look, from every possible angle, at this seminal, proto-splatter video nasty. "Last House on a Dead End Street" gained it's deserved reputation as an unflinching vision of hell from the edges of obscure 70's underground horror thanks to hillbilly gore hound Chas Balun's "Films That Bite" essay in the infamous "Splatterpunk" anthology. Prior to that influential book, it was known mostly to obsessive tape traders, passing around nth generation bootleg dubs of a butchered, fly-by-night video release. It's garish final reel, rife with amateur surgery and pornographic humiliation, became a sort of litmus test for young splatter fans to prove just how jaded their tastes in the ol' ultraviolence had become. Since then, it's been scrutinized by saner, more critically minded heads, and has entered a renaissance of thoughtful filmic analysis. Historians of horror cinema have rightly found that "Last House" proved to be the pioneering lynchpin in the wave of realistic gore-gasms that came after, the yardstick by which films ranging from Romero's zombie trilogy and Cronenberg's Videodrome to the hyper-reality of the Japanese pseudo-snuff "Guinea Pig" series were measured, in terms of realism and intensity. 

But of course, this was all based on blurry videos that were obviously chopped-up and re-dubbed by unscrupulous distributors, so no one really knew what the mysterious director, Roger Watkins, had actually intended "Last House" to be. Was it evisceration as art, a meditation on a 'Nam era America's desensitized attitude towards violence, and it's unhealthy addiction to sensationalism? Or was it merely the short and dirty work of a quick-buck hack, looking to make a cheap, easy score by shuffling together a series of outrageous shock scenes, going farther than anyone else was willing to at the time? 

Well, the truth of the whole affair lies somewhere in the middle.

Thanks to the obsessive, intensive work of Barrel and Headpress editor David Kerekes, this dvd gathers together not only the most pristine, complete cut of "Last House" currently available, but it contains every available document of the film's production, most of which comes directly from the archives and words of the elusive director himself, who only recently discovered, via internet message boards, that interest in his film still remains high. 

As for the film itself, this nearly complete print, struck from an original 35mm master, both blesses and curses the film's reputation as a staggering achievement in full-throttle shock cinema. On the one hand, this beautiful looking edition allows you to finally see the film as it was shot, with all the details and nuance lost from the bootleg copies most have seen. On the other hand, this takes away the film's forbidden aura, the idea that you are seeing something you probably shouldn't be. In any case, the story is a deceptively simple one. Terry Hawkins (Watkins) is a sleazebag, opportunistic filmmaker who decides that standard stag-loop porn is yesterday's news. "People are tired of sex", he tells one of his partners in grime, "they want something else." What they want, he decides, is death, and he schemes his way into making an outrageous sex and murder epic. His shady backers are suitably impressed and disturbed, and want to find out how he's achieved such gritty, shocking realism. The psychotic young filmmaker is more than happy to bring them to his favorite shooting location, the "Last House" of the film's title, to show them just far he's willing to go for the sake of a realistic death scene...

"Last House", in all actuality, was a $700 knock-off created by a shameless speed freak capitalizing on the public's insatiable lust for a good gross-out. On that level, it failed miserably, barely getting released at all, and even then, only years later, and in a severely truncated form. But somehow, the film transcended it's original intentions, and watching it now, free of video distortion and black market infamy for the first time, I'm still struck by what an extreme vision it was. This is the work of drug-induced madness, and it's climactic money shots, a Manson-inspired ritualistic mutilation and the infamous force deerhoof blowjob scene, are as visually repugnant and shocking as ever. There's also plenty of hot, naked hippy chicks sprinkled throughout, although your taste for tits might be somewhat diminished if you're still queasy from all the snuff film scenes. Overall, "Last House" still takes a cast-iron stomach to watch, and you probably need to be at least a little evil to actually enjoy it. A flawed gem? Either that, or just the world's most infamous student film. Impossible to ignore, either way.

What really makes this dvd so impressive is all the extras on hand. There is running commentary from Watkins and over-reaching "horror expert" Balun on an optional audio track. There are taped phone interviews conducted with Roger, detailing the production of the film. There are obviously rare prints of his pre-Last House short films, shot while he was still in college, which reveal his early attempts at taboo-breaking confrontational cinema. The film's theatrical trailer is included, as well as the opening and closing credits from it's ill-fated release as "The Fun House". There is an inexplicable appearance by Watkins and his film teacher (and last House actor) Paul Jensen on a 1975 episode of the Joe Franklin show. There is raw footage of an aborted video documentary of Watkins from 1988. There's even a splatter filled homage by gore metal band Necrophagia directed by Last House disciple Jim Van Bebber. In short, everything you could possible want to know about this film and it's director are included here. Maybe even more than you'd want to know. As you might imagine from the movie he's made, Watkins, while fascinating, is not exactly the nicest, most stand-up film director you'll run across, and this package reveals him to be just as ragged and uncompromising as the film itself. 

An obvious labor of love that serves as the last word on Last House on a Dead End Street, Barrel's definitive edition is not to be missed. - Sleazegrinder