One of the best films i have seen

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

DEATH GAME is a low rent exploitation flick from the 1970s, fairly strong in places but certainly nowhere near as depraved as something like FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE. Eli Roth must be a fan, given that he remade this film with Keanu Reeves under the title KNOCK KNOCK. The story is a three-hander about an average middle-aged guy who is visited by a couple of teenage girls one night. They frolic in the bathtub, but the visit sours the following day when they tie him up and proceed to abuse him for the rest of the film.This attempts to be a psychological thriller but I found it grating in the extreme. After the set up, literally half of the running time is merely made up of screaming, shouting, and general craziness. Mrs Clint Eastwood, Sondra Locke, is scarily convincing at times, although not as much as in SUDDEN IMPACT, and Colleen Camp isn't too bad either. But the script is pedestrian and the dated, low budget look of the film works against it, so that you'll be twiddling your thumbs long before the amusing twist ending.

IMDb contributer johnmorghen does a scholarly job of breaking down the cinematic nuts-n-jolts of "Death Game" (a.k.a. "Mr. Manning's Weekend"), so I'll just share my memories of watching it.Like my IMDb sister rachelcronin, I saw this for the first time late one night on L.A.'s early '80s SelecTV subscription system. The set-up definitely grabbed my pubescent attention: Man minding own business in his San Francisco home...slightly lonely and sincerely blue because The Wife and kid are unable to return home in time to celebrate his 40th birthday. Clearly cultured and successful, Man makes due during a dark and stormy night with a roaring fire and a high-end Marantz stereo to reacquaint himself with an old familiar jazz chanteuse (Maxine Weldon then who would be Sade today). Suddenly, there's a bustling at the door which Man opens to find two shivering young girls begging for reprieve from the rain. With decency at heart, Man takes pity and allows the soaked-through strangers into his plush abode. One thing leads to another and Man makes the mistake of giving in to a temptation even someone happily married might be hard-pressed to resist: a menage a trois with all the amenities of home (hot tub, mellow groove on the box, top-shelf cognac, favorite neighborhood pizza and the PERFECT excuse of The Wife being away on YOUR "special day" - the nerve). Like all that is overly idyllic in nature, this scenario proves too good to be true. For his fleeting hour of fantasy bliss, Man is subjected to 48 more hours of tandem temper tantrum torture at the whims of some psycho nookie from Hell - wicked "women-chiles" who begin to reveal their true colors at the breakfast table the morning after.When I was 15, this was WAY lurid and riveting. Years later, viewing a VHS rental, I found the second half to drag. "Death Game" could have been much better if the girls weren't just demented for crazy's sake and had a specific "she-woman man haters" motivation for what they wind up doing to poor "George" (Seymour Cassel with an uncredited actor dubbing his voice, giving the movie that "imported" schlock foreign feel). The Man just helped himself to some birthday ass, for chrissake! For thrillers like this, I like things twisted and gratuitous, but director Peter Traynor only hints at undertones of incestuousness as a possibility for what made these chicks 'set it off' on a dude old enough to be their "Good Old Dad" (thus the vaudevillian ditty that recurs ad nauseum). One wonders whether writers Anthony Overman and Michael Ronald Ross couldn't decide whether to play this out as a comedy or a suspense thriller, were intentionally shooting for some strange hybrid of both, or just coke'd out of their minds when they hatched this plot fresh out of some sordid fever dream. I must confess that all was forgiven when that out-of-left-field ending smacked me upside the head, though. Let's just say every dog has his day and these bitches received their comeuppance in spades. While much has been written here about how annoying the "Good Old Dad" song is (which it really is but, I believe, to the director's desired effect), I found the other moody jazz piece "We're Home," arranged by Jimmie Haskell, to be quite exceptional. The line "The sky tells us..." haunted me long after the film had finished. To this day, I imagine pulling that treasured Maxine Weldon 78 down from a shelf, blowing the dust off, gingerly setting the needle down and having it comfort me in the throes of some dark and stormy night...a night I'd gaze longingly into the fireplace, nursing a Makers Mark until - suddenly - there's a knock at my door, which I open to find a '70s-era Pam Grier (in the ringleader Sondra Locke role) and Vonetta McGee (in the doe-eyed Colleen Camp role) - inexplicably in halters, hot pants and flip-flops - shivering and in need of shelter from the storm.Men...

What to do when you're a happily married man but your beloved wife is out of town on the night of your fortieth birthday, yet two sexy young girls show up at your doorstep, literally throw themselves at you and invite you for a threesome in your own sauna? You kick them right back out on the street, of course! That'll teach them to interfere with a perfectly happy family! Well, that is what you should do in order to prevent guaranteed catastrophes to happen the next morning, but admittedly very few male individuals are likely to respond like this. Neither does the handsome George Manning in "Death Game", so he's stuck up with two obtrusive chicks in his house. Their behavior gets more psychotic with each hour that passes, until they even set up a fake trial against poor tied up George. "Death Game" is not a very good movie, but that's merely because there was too little money available for the execution and because Peter S. Traynor has no clue how to direct a suspense movie. The basic premise is quite unusual for a 70's exploitation movie (usually slavering hillbillies terrorize poor young girls instead of vice versa) and the whole concept is actually very much ahead of its time! Especially nowadays, the horror genre brings forward a lot of movies revolving on brutal home-invasions. People are subjected to fear and torture in their own houses and it's a very popular and money-making concept at the moment, like for example in "Funny Games" and "The Strangers", but this crazed little movie already did something similar in the 70's! The 40 first minutes of "Death Game" provide silly entertainment (Sondra Loncke at the breakfast table) and irresistible trashy goodness (that soundtrack!!), but unfortunately the second half of the film is incomprehensibly boring and unexciting. It shouldn't be, since the girls get more deranged and all, but it suddenly feels as if the writers' inspiration had vanished and only padding remained. There are still two fantastic highlights to experience near the end, though! One involves a pussycat (did you know glass windows aren't cat-proof?) and the other is a stupendously laugh-out-loud hysterical ending. Even a threesome wouldn't have such a fantastic climax! Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to search for that awesomely catchy "Good Old Daddy" theme song on YouTube!

I've been trying to track down this film just by googling bad phrases about "teenagers seduce and kill man in his house" and such. I think I first saw parts of this film when I was about 10 years old when it was running on cable. It made quite an impression! It's the kind of film that kids know they shouldn't be watching, and switch the channel when their parents come in. When I saw who the cast was, I couldn't believe that some of these good actors were in such a horrible movie. Then again, if you like to see men who cheat on their wives get murdered, then this is an interesting film. Also, if I recall, there's some pretty interesting pseudo-lesbian moments. Probably the dumbest ending of all time, but still...memorable.