Death game
Peter S. Traynor
- 1977
- USA
- Thriller
- 1h31mn
- Original version with French subtitles
- Color
Brand new master
Alone on the evening of his birthday, a business man gives shelter to two lost young women. They will sequestrate and torture him.
Comparing the remake (Knock, Knock, by Eli Roth) and the original, means acknowledging the disappearance in 40 years of sulfurous subversion in favor of the efficiency of a stylistic exercise that mistreats its hero more than its viewer. Distressing, deliberately ambiguous, Death Game takes on the home invasion genre to better reverse its codes, ending in an unlimited destructive madness on the edge of fantasy, with the help of David Worth’s infernal photography. Like all exploitation films, it doesn't avoid complacency, notably in the erotic scenes, but is overtaken by a grimacing hysteria reminiscent of a juvenile Baby Jane, that Sondra Locke’s and Colleen Camp’s performances amplify unto insanity, opposite a devastated Seymour Cassel. For the story, Sissy Spacek and Bill Paxton were costume assistants on the set!
Credits
- With : Sondra Locke, Colleen Camp, Seymour Cassel, Beth Brickell, Michael Kalmansohn
- Screenplay : Anthony Overman, Michael Ronald Ross
- Photography : David Worth
- Editing : David Worth
- Music by : Jimmie Haskell
- Production : John L. Moorehead, Larry Spiegel, Peter S. Traynor
