Somewhere around 1982, I asked a friend/co-worker (several years older) "What was the scariest movie you've ever seen?" His reply was (sic) "House on a Dead-End Road". Since the advent of the internet, search engines, and even Google, I have tried unsuccessfully to find a movie by that title. I stumbled across this one purely by accident, and with the release date being that close to my inquiring of my friend, I thought perhaps I had found his "scariest movie ever". While I will probably have no way of ever knowing if this was the exact movie - or if there was a different movie by that name that I just can't find - I did manage to sit through this one and found it pretty bad even by 70's movie standards. I suppose back in the day (before gore had really made an indentation on the big screen) this could have been considered a shocker...perhaps "the scariest movie ever", by some. By today's standards, however, this thing reeked like a month-old corpse. Hard to follow, hard to watch due to the extremely bad lighting, and with no subtitles, it's difficult to understand what's being said in many scenes. You get the gist of the film, however, (hint: read the synopsis first or you'll have no clue) and I suppose for those who just really want to feed their minds with low-budget rotgut gore, this would merit sitting through. Mercifully, it's only 77 minutes long, but you can skip the first 1/2 of that because it makes absolutely no sense and does absolutely nothing to enhance the story; it really doesn't even give a backstory to the rest of the movie (the gory stuff). There's absolutely no sense in sitting through this putrefaction, unless - like me - you've just heard about it and have wanted to see it. I suppose the artsy-fartsy types will find some sort of meaning in this movie, but overall, it made no sense, and did a poor enough job of that. Skip this one.
Review by ShubesBlockedParent2022-01-02T21:02:54Z
Somewhere around 1982, I asked a friend/co-worker (several years older) "What was the scariest movie you've ever seen?" His reply was (sic) "House on a Dead-End Road". Since the advent of the internet, search engines, and even Google, I have tried unsuccessfully to find a movie by that title. I stumbled across this one purely by accident, and with the release date being that close to my inquiring of my friend, I thought perhaps I had found his "scariest movie ever". While I will probably have no way of ever knowing if this was the exact movie - or if there was a different movie by that name that I just can't find - I did manage to sit through this one and found it pretty bad even by 70's movie standards. I suppose back in the day (before gore had really made an indentation on the big screen) this could have been considered a shocker...perhaps "the scariest movie ever", by some. By today's standards, however, this thing reeked like a month-old corpse. Hard to follow, hard to watch due to the extremely bad lighting, and with no subtitles, it's difficult to understand what's being said in many scenes. You get the gist of the film, however, (hint: read the synopsis first or you'll have no clue) and I suppose for those who just really want to feed their minds with low-budget rotgut gore, this would merit sitting through. Mercifully, it's only 77 minutes long, but you can skip the first 1/2 of that because it makes absolutely no sense and does absolutely nothing to enhance the story; it really doesn't even give a backstory to the rest of the movie (the gory stuff). There's absolutely no sense in sitting through this putrefaction, unless - like me - you've just heard about it and have wanted to see it. I suppose the artsy-fartsy types will find some sort of meaning in this movie, but overall, it made no sense, and did a poor enough job of that. Skip this one.