PHANTASMAG
QUEER HORROR HIDDEN GEM #1 
DEATH GAME (1977)
Words by Alex Secilmis
4 June 2024
Death Game isn’t going to be the first on lists of queer horror greats. In fact, I haven’t seen it described as queer horror at all (we’ll get to that later). Instead, Peter S. Traynor’s 1977 directorial debut - also known as The Seducers - is a cult sexploitation flick beloved for madly vivifying a patriarchal nightmare. Thanks to Movies Are Dead, The London Cinema Museum, and Grindhouse Releasing, Phantasmag got to enjoy this wild ride on 35mm at the Prince Charles Cinema.

It’s his 40th birthday and George Manning (Seymour Cassel) has it all. Job, house, kids, and wife (with whom he still “gets it on”). On this rainy, rainy night, the family’s away and a pair of young women (Sondra Locke and Colleen Camp) appear at the door. Out of the goodness of his heart, George offers them shelter. Not long after, the trio are offering each other a whole lot more (cue wah-wah guitar and ample splashing in the bathtub). But the next morning Donna and Jackson don’t want to leave. Now, all those nice things that George holds dear could be taken away from him. And the girls are having a blast doing it.

The standard reading of Death Game is that it’s an exploration of male anxieties after a male fantasy goes too far. However, the film holds an overlooked queer meaning with Donna and Jackson’s invasion of the heteronormative family home. It’s not just that they’re lovers, it’s that the pair are outrageously joyful in their attack on a patriarch and his home. They cackle as they gag George with his wife’s panties and deface the house with the entire contents of his refrigerator. Locke and Camp deliver sensationally dynamic performances that keep us guessing just how far will they take the torture?

Death Game is hilarious, provocative, and utterly unsettling all at once. It’s since been remade twice, as a 1980 Spanish language version and more recently with Eli Roth’s Knock Knock (2015), starring Keanu Reeves, Ana de Armas, and Lorenza Izzo. Give Death Game a watch—we’ll leave it to you whether the lesson is don’t cheat on your wife, don’t underestimate female rage, or don’t have a threesome with strangers in your bathtub.