The late Roger Watkins' "Last House on Dead End Street" aka/"Cuckoo Clocks of Hell",aka/"The Funhouse" is a film whose legend precedes it.I had a grainy eighth generation ghosty vhs bootleg of the grainy,badly overdubbed and underlit movie in question in the early eighties,which I was never able to upgrade for years.I found a Sun Video original vhs print in an obscure mom and pop store just before dvds appeared,and threw fifty,then a hundred dollars down on the counter for it,but the owner wouldn't budge,and the store went under a month later.Hardly anyone had seen it,but many had heard of it.All credits are pseudonyms,no one actually took credit for making the obscure movie until 2000.Now,in the glorious summer years of my life,I can attest to owning the definitive Barrel double dvd,the infamous one sheet adorns my living room wall,and best of all,I had the extreme pleasure of meeting the late director in the flesh years back(we shot the shit and he signed my dvd in between many beers).He was one cool motherfucker.This film exists as a testament to his mostly untapped genius.
Terry Hawkins(Roger Watkins) is gonna show 'em all.
Upon his release from prison after serving a year for possession and sale of dangerous drugs,Terry Hawkins(Roger Watkins),ex-con and former amateur pornographer,decides to get back into the movie business,only branching out this time around,into snuff movies.His perspective has been bleakened by having a year of life wasted in jail and wants to do something for which he will make money and be remembered forever.He enlists the help of a slaughterhouse worker who was previously jailed for sodomizing a cow(!),a young cameraman along for the ride,and two desperate and morally bankrupt women.Terry dons a Greek theatrical mask,while his female cohorts wear featureless plastic masks,and together they commence to kill a blind man while his male associates film the dastardly deed.Terry shows his latest film to Steve and Jim,two small time smut-peddlers searching for something different to show their audience,"rich perverts who sit around and watch pornographic films all day".In the next room,Steve's wife does herself up in blackface,strips down to a bikini,and is whipped by a hunchback in front of a party of delighted weirdos(!).
A party's just not a party until your blackfaced wife gets whipped by a hunchback.
Proving bigger scumbags than even Terry,Jim and Steve try to steal his film without paying for it,unwittingly destining themselves to be stars in front of the camera in Terry's NEXT film.He calls them up and tells them to meet him at 'that house',and to bring 'Suzy'(?)and he will deliver the men something worth their while.Here,Terry turns the tables on the hustlers,degrading(forcing Steve to fellate a deer hoof protruding out of the zipper of one of the girl's pants),torturing,and killing them all in front of his partner's camera while his female partners dance,giggle and chant Mansonesque mantras about Hawkins in the background.
"I'm directing this fucking MOO-VAY!"What a director,and what a moo-vay,indeed.
In the film's unsettling and gruesome climax,the amateur filmmakers/murderers strap the aforementioned Suzy to a table and perform home surgery on her,amputating her limbs without anaesthetic,reviving her with smelling salts,then eviscerating her on camera,and walking off.Only through primitive voice over narration does the audience learn the offenders are later apprehended and imprisoned for life.Terry Hawkins has carved his bloody footnote on the pages of history.
Unwillingly,Steve gives a satisfying on camera hoof-job.
According to Watkins,the film had a budget of roughly three thousand dollars(most of which was spent on drugs!).The anemic budget is offset by the passion that Watkins had in completing the film,which translates to the production itself,though he later lost track of it altogether.Somewhere in a New York state film vault sits the full three hour long "Cuckoo Clocks" cut,which must be amazing to behold,I imagine.The film's strength lies in the way it weaves the audience into its tapestry of atrocities;you are just as guilty as the characters committing the crimes on the screen,because you're watching them and thus,an accessory of sorts!Adding to the apect of realism,is the footnote that Watkins actually went on to direct various atmospheric hardcore porn films after completing this one,leading your humble narrator to wonder how much of Terry Hawkins was simply just a "character" Watkins had created,or if the line between cinema and reality had become blurred during this production for the visionary director.Either way,he was a true talent,and will be sorely missed.
Butterfingers!It's my turn to operate!
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