SanEat
A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."
Kirandeep Yoder
The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.
lost-in-limbo
When fantasy becomes a nightmare. "Death Game" is a raunchy, dangerous and bizarre cocktail of a late 70s stark psychological thriller with an edgy exploitative edge and some convincing performances by Sondra Locke, Colleen Camp and Seymour Cassel. George Manning is a happily married and successful man who encounters two supposedly lost girls one night at his doorstep. Inviting them in from the pouring rain he accommodates them, but obviously this leads to more with the voluptuous girls having something else on mind. However George learns this fling is costly, as they begin to terrorise him. For most part it's all about the manipulative girls tormenting their victim psychically and mentally (which at beginning tell us that it's based on a true story), no real surprises other than for an ending that simply comes out of nowhere. It feels like stage play, as most of the interplay is mainly played out in the household between the three characters as it goes down a twisted path. It's cruel, at times intense and really driven by the ballistic, unhinged performances of Camp and especially Locke's disturbed turn. Sure their acting gets a tad annoying, but that's part of their characters. Cassel is perfect in the role as the desirable object. Director Peter S. Traynor's intrusive handling shows by the camera placement and the abrupt styling of the editing, although there's definitely an uneasy underlining crafted with many under-lit set-pieces. The brooding music however had some odd choices, like the constant loop of hearing "Good old dad" played. Fitting, but over-kill. Rudimentary, but interesting curiosity. "The party is over."
missmonochrome
What little plot there is focuses on George Manning (Seymour Cassel), a family man left alone on his birthday, as his wife and children are out of town. A pair of hippies,Donna(Colleen Camp) and Jackson (Sondra Locke) get lost in a rainstorm, and knock on his door to dry off and use a phone. He makes the bad call of having a threesome with these two bits of dried out mutton dressed as lamb, they trash his house and hold him hostage with the threat of an accusation of statutory rape, destroying his previously happy home life.90 minutes of pointlessness ensues. Here's some lowlights: That godawful title song about good old dad, repeated at least 4 times over the course of the film. It's as if you hired sub par chipmunks impersonators to sing a particularly maudlin greeting card. The rest of the constant and overly loud music selection isn't much better.That threesome? It's mostly poorly lit close ups of doughy man ass and elbows. I think I may have seen half a nipple.Menacing? The talentless twosome think terrifying is throwing food, breaking stuff and cackling like a school Halloween play's witch at ear splitting volume. Ketchup (which we are granted a 2 minute close up of while the crappy cackles are turned up past 11 on the soundtrack) has never been an effective object of menace or atmosphere.The pseudo lesbianism? Barely explained, fully clothed.Deaths? A delivery boy meets a barely visible death in a fishbowl.As an avid lover of exploitation cinema, I can not figure out how this film contains so many of the right elements (nudity,lesbianism, hammy acting, dime store surrealism via an over reliance on green and yellow camera gels) to be a trash camp classic, but is so utterly dull.Instead, all we get is a bored victim, played by an actor who is obviously counting the money he got paid in his head while filming, and two dizzy birds meaning to come across as a low budget Manson family and succeeding only in acting like the most irritating child in your kindergarten class, all tossed food and screechy baby voices. Toss in some terrible music, enough stock location shots to fill the world's worst tourist brochure for San Francisco and you've almost got the picture of what an utter turd this is.Thankfully, after a night of non terror and a still alive George, the girls (and this film) are put out of their misery by an errant ASPCA truck.It isn't scary, it isn't funny and that ending makes NO sense, but at least "Death Game" is finally over.
Scott LeBrun
Interesting, intense, off the wall little obscurity plays as if it could have been written for the stage, involving three main characters and sticking to mostly one set. Seymour Cassel is George Manning, a man whose wife and children are away for his 40th birthday. He makes what will turn out to be a fateful decision: letting two strangers, attractive young women, into his home. They start out as friendly and seemingly normal, and before too long George and the gals - Jackson (Sondra Locke) and Donna (Colleen Camp) - are having a threesome. Soon after that the girls reveal their true colours, making themselves at home, refusing to leave, and playing all sorts of twisted games - psychological and sexual - with the hapless George. Reportedly Cassel, ordinarily a very reliable actor, was so unhappy making this that he declined participating in the post production process, so his dialogue is dubbed by another actor - all too obviously. Still, by the end of this thing, you can't help but *really* feel sorry for this guy. The story turns into an unrelenting streak of insanity, mean-spiritedness, and kinkiness that will undoubtedly turn some viewers off while intriguing others. When it's all over, it's hard to be sure what the point of it all is, but helping to keep it watchable are two very vivid performances by Locke and Camp, who make for a memorable pair of crazed antagonists, playing dress up, helping themselves to Georges' wifes' wardrobe (not to mention the food in the house), tying George up, dumping food on him, engaging in some carnal relations, etc. Director Peter Traynors' direction isn't the most skillful - overall, this is pretty crude - but "Death Game" still has an odd fascination about it that prevents it from being a waste of time; it doesn't hurt that Locke and Camp are so uninhibited and show off the goods regularly. (They claim at one point to be no more than 17 and 15 years old, but one senses that this is all just part of the game.) But people shouldn't worry that there's no consequences for the gals in the end; the last second resolution is so shocking, yet so silly, that it's likely to make a fair amount of people burst out laughing. Repeated use of one very goofy ditty titled "Dear Old Dad" (music by Jimmie Haskell) is likewise good for some chuckles. Trivia item: the production design is by Jack Fisk, and two of the set dressers are none other than Sissy Spacek (Fisks' wife) and Bill Paxton! Six out of 10.
TonyDood
This film should be put in a special category, "Movies that make you feel like you're on something." In this category would be Yellow Submarine, Eraserhead (or any Lynch film), Ken Russell's and Nic Roeg's and Jodorowsky's whole catalog, etc. It is a bad movie, no doubt about it, and incomprehensible how it got made, or why, but that just makes it more fascinating. Thrill to the sight of Eastwood's then-girlfriend giving a truly unhinged performance and wonder if she's really acting or not! Listen to Colleen camp alternately scream and laugh hysterically as she beats up a tied-up guy in a bed and ponder how she ever got another acting gig again! Thrill to the sound of one of the weirdest choices of theme song ever recorded! Stare in awe at what appears to have been a cinemascope movie squeezed onto your t.v., and contemplate how much more dizzying it would've looked on the big screen! Feel this movie melting in your brains, not in your hands, as it gets ever more insane, leading up to a climax so stupefyingly cheap and abrupt it could only be attached to this movie!Saw this as a kid on cable, watched it because it was rated R and promised nudity and sex. Got a *little* more than I bargained for, but wasn't displeased or even shocked (Fellini's Satyricon was on right before it--Lord, how I stayed out of a mental hospital is a miracle). If you like weird movies that simulate being on drugs this film is for you, at least if you have a taste for old, poorly done exploitation stuff.
