"Death Game" follows San Francisco businessman George Manning, who, while home alone one stormy night, is met by two young women, Agatha and Donna, who arrive at his doorstep seeking shelter after their car has allegedly broken down. What follows is a ménage à trois that descends into a hellish madness.
This gritty psychological thriller from Peter S. Traynor is a warped and bizarre early home invasion film recalls certain elements of Wes Craven's "The Last House on the Left", and in some ways predates something like 2008's "The Strangers", in which a young couple are invaded by three masked assailants for no apparent reason. Here, the invaders are the demure Sondra Locke and a babyfaced Colleen Camp, both seductive women who use their sexual energy to charm and entrap their prey, played by Seymour Cassel.
The hijinx that unfurl throughout "Death Game" are as oblique and strange as the reason for the women's sadistic intentions, but the effect remains blunt and occasionally disturbing. To be frank, there is not much that "happens" in the film. Locke and Camp terrorize Cassel's character over the course of approximately 24 hours, and the film is filled with bizarre sequences of the eccentric (and disturbed) women traipsing around his home in ghoulish makeup, pouring milk on their restrained host, and trashing his home for kicks.
There is a madcap nature about the whole affair that is strangely transfixing, and without any real rhyme or reason, which is perhaps the point-the film is concerned with sexual politics to some extent, but more so with violence and sadism for its own sake. The film is slickly shot and wildly colorful, with an oppressive atmosphere that is overwhelmed by a gaudy stock-music-esque score. Cassel gives a solid performance as the terrorized male lead, but the film really belongs to Locke and Camp, who both give deranged performances with different tenors.
With its strong grindhouse sensibility, it's no surprise the film attracted admirers such as Eli Roth, who remade it in 2015 as "Knock, Knock". The film's shocking and cynical conclusion is a fitting punctuation to the piece, as it ends as quickly and arbirtrarily as it all began. Where gritty '70s thrillers are concerned, "Death Game" is a formidable curio that is worth seeking out. 8/10.
This gritty psychological thriller from Peter S. Traynor is a warped and bizarre early home invasion film recalls certain elements of Wes Craven's "The Last House on the Left", and in some ways predates something like 2008's "The Strangers", in which a young couple are invaded by three masked assailants for no apparent reason. Here, the invaders are the demure Sondra Locke and a babyfaced Colleen Camp, both seductive women who use their sexual energy to charm and entrap their prey, played by Seymour Cassel.
The hijinx that unfurl throughout "Death Game" are as oblique and strange as the reason for the women's sadistic intentions, but the effect remains blunt and occasionally disturbing. To be frank, there is not much that "happens" in the film. Locke and Camp terrorize Cassel's character over the course of approximately 24 hours, and the film is filled with bizarre sequences of the eccentric (and disturbed) women traipsing around his home in ghoulish makeup, pouring milk on their restrained host, and trashing his home for kicks.
There is a madcap nature about the whole affair that is strangely transfixing, and without any real rhyme or reason, which is perhaps the point-the film is concerned with sexual politics to some extent, but more so with violence and sadism for its own sake. The film is slickly shot and wildly colorful, with an oppressive atmosphere that is overwhelmed by a gaudy stock-music-esque score. Cassel gives a solid performance as the terrorized male lead, but the film really belongs to Locke and Camp, who both give deranged performances with different tenors.
With its strong grindhouse sensibility, it's no surprise the film attracted admirers such as Eli Roth, who remade it in 2015 as "Knock, Knock". The film's shocking and cynical conclusion is a fitting punctuation to the piece, as it ends as quickly and arbirtrarily as it all began. Where gritty '70s thrillers are concerned, "Death Game" is a formidable curio that is worth seeking out. 8/10.