Yours portly has, admittedly, pretty trashy tastes in movies.  Thanks to a subscription to Shudder, I’ve watched some pretty gnarly horror and suspense films over the last couple of years, not to mention plenty of sleazy exploitation flicks.

Even yours portly has his limits, and recently endured one insufferable exploitation flick from 1977, Death Game.

Here’s the thing:  the very elements that make Death Game insufferable are what make it so chilling and disturbing.  The flick is the story of a George Manning, a happily married husband and father.  He’s wealthy and successful, and finds himself with a quiet weekend at home while his wife and children are away tending to a family emergency.

Like any man trying to enjoy a rare bit of alone time, a knock at the door disturbs him.  Two women, drenched from a torrential downpour, ask to use his phone to get a ride to a nearby party.  George makes the critical mistake of letting these two babes into his home, where they quickly dry themselves off and giggle coquettishly with each other in bathrobes while their clothes dry.

The audience can see what’s going to happen from a mile away.  George, for his part, is polite but aloof, just doing his unexpected good deed for the evening.  But when he finds these two blonde beauties in his hot tub, he gets more than he bargained for—and then some.

George, to his credit, actively resists the women’s highly unusual and aggressive advances, but succumbs.  Thinking it’s just a one-time fling with two bathing beauties, George passes out, only to awake the next morning to find the girls making him breakfast.

It quickly becomes apparent that the two were never going to a party, and that they don’t intend on leaving anytime soon.  They proceed to trash George’s house and play loud music over his stereo while wearing his wife’s clothes.  George threatens to call the police, but the girls tell him they are underage, and that he’ll face prison time for statutory r*pe.

The rest of the film is the nightmare of George’s moment of weakness unfolding.  It’s an insufferable film because, for anyone who values their possessions, it’s hard watching these floozies wreck his house—and even murder a delivery boy.  The two women, Jackson and Donna, are clearly insane.  Jackson is the leader of the two, and is extremely aggressive and violent.  Donna has developed some twisted feelings for George, which George attempts to manipulate to free himself from the women’s grasps, but which Jackson anticipates.

The noise in the film is also hard to endure.  The women are constantly screaming and laughing, often while listening to two or three different stereo systems at a time (presumably the stereo and a record player).  They cause utter bedlam in George’s life.

There are several lessons here, of course.  Something that exploitation does well is that it points out the extreme costs associated with sin, even apparently one-off sins.  As my Aunt Marilyn used to say, “sin will cost you more than you want to pay, and it will take you farther than you want to go.”  If only George had been in her Sunday School class!

So, what lessons do we take away from Death Game?  Here are a few I’ve identified:

• No good deed goes unpunished.
• Don’t let strangers into your home.
• If two unbelievably attractive women you barely know are making aggressive sexual advances on you, run!
• If someone shows up at your house in the middle of a massive rainstorm, keep them on the porch while you call the police, or make the phone call for them from inside your home with the doors firmly locked (and your piece on you).
• A three-way with two babes in your hot tub can only end in heartbreak and regret.
• Don’t pull other people (the delivery boy) into your chaos; you’re just going to ruin (or end!) an innocent life.

There’s probably more.  There’s an argument that Death Game is some kind of female empowerment film—Jackson details how her father abused her sexually when she was young, so her actions are both determined and justified—she can’t help it that she’s a murderous whore, and she’s just meting out social justice against the patriarchy.  That probably is how a radical feminist would read this film, but it’s a shockingly stupid and evil conclusion.  The actions of one man, no matter how reprehensible, do not therefore mean another, innocent man should be punished.

All in all, I did not like Death Game, although I did appreciate the warning against sin embedded in the film.  I doubt that is what the filmmakers were going for—they were making an exploitation home invasion film—but it is clearly the message of the flick.

Be a good boy.  Don’t be George.