Death Game (1977) on Netflix
On his fortieth birthday, with his wife away, George Manning takes in two rain-soaked young women whose car has broken down. Jackson and Donna have no intention of leaving.
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- Netflix2.9/5
- IMDb5.8/102,370 votes
- Rotten TomatoesNot available
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Plot summary
George Manning is a Bay Area businessman whose wife, Karen, is away tending a family emergency on the evening of his fortieth birthday. A thunderstorm brings two young women, Jackson and Donna, to his door; they say their car broke down en route to a party. He lets them in to get dry and telephone for a ride. After they bathe in his sauna, they seduce him. The next morning they are still there, cooking breakfast, and they will not leave. They rummage through the house, put on Karen's clothes and damage the property. When George threatens to call the police, Jackson says they are underage and that he could face statutory rape charges.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Death Game (1977)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The script's main inspiration was an incident co-writer Michael Ronald Ross experienced in 1969, when he brought a hitchhiking hippie to the Laurel Canyon home he was subleasing from Harry Nilsson; she outstayed her welcome, left candle wax everywhere and burned every spoon in the house to cook drugs.
- Clint Eastwood was set to direct with Jack Lemmon playing George and Sondra Locke playing Jackson; Locke, who was over 30 but passed herself off as younger, was drawn to the project after her agent told her about a role for a "bad girl" she had seldom played. The 1944-born actress was almost twice the character's age.
- Al Lettieri was originally set to play George Manning but demanded a few thousand dollars for living expenses from director Peter S. Traynor and then left the production; Traynor let the matter go since Lettieri was allegedly connected to the mafia, and Seymour Cassel took the role.
- Editor-cinematographer David Worth claimed the scene where Donna and Jackson sexually excite each other with food was not shot that way: director Peter S. Traynor wanted an erotic scene between the women, and Worth went to unused, now-lost footage of comedian Marty Allen playing a delivery man.
- During the last days of filming, Sondra Locke got a black eye off set while fighting off a burglar in her garage, and the injury had to be hidden by giving her character a large amount of makeup in the film's later scenes.
- Death Game was put on hold along with several other projects while the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigated director Peter S. Traynor's financing methods; after a consent decree, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer gave him $100,000 to finish the film and helped secure Levitt-Pickman as its distributor.
- Writers Anthony d'Oberoff (credited as Anthony Overman) and Michael Ronald Ross claim they did not know the film had been made until a writers guild dispute over whether they or Jo Heims wrote it; Ross later came upon the video version retitled The Seducers while writing VHS liner notes in the early 80s.
- On the tight, low-budget shoot, cinematographer-editor David Worth shot close-ups by sitting down in a nearby chair instead of setting up a tripod each time, and had to underexpose Sondra Locke's scenes because of her crow's feet and fair complexion.
