I saw this film under the very promising title of The Last House on Massacre Street, which automatically brought to mind gritty grindhouse classics like Last House On The Left, The Last House on Dead End Street, and The Last House on The Beach, and the more recent The Last House in the Woods. Unfortunately, the movie proved to be far from the gruelling shocker I had hoped it would be: instead, I got a film that is 90% psychological and 10% supernatural, but only 50% entertaining, the action suffering from some serious pacing issues, a lack of scares, a dearth of blood and guts, and a twist ending that, while fun, seems more suited to an episode of Tales From The Crypt than a full length movie.
The film opens with a young couple, David and Barbara (Arthur Roberts and Robin Strasser), paying a visit to the house that Barbara built, the building to become their home once they are married. But their future together doesn't go quite as planned when, on their wedding day, Barbara catches her new husband getting it on with his ex-girlfriend Ellen (Iva Jean Saraceni); wigging out, Babs wounds David with some scissors and then drives off in a rage. In the following weeks, David shacks up with Ellen, but the pair are menaced by mysterious phone calls and sinister events.
Director Jean-Marie Pélissié conjures up some reasonable atmosphere, making particularly good use of Barbara's sprawling unfinished house in the film's finalé, but other scenes seriously drag, especially the wedding reception, which goes on and on (coming second only to The Deer Hunter as The Most Boring Wedding Party Scene in the History of Cinema). Some gnarly violence would definitely have helped to shake things up a bit, but all we get is a decapitated chicken and a lame axe attack, making it the least exploitative 'Last House' movie of them all.