Last House on Dead End Street
The original three-hour-long version of the film, titled "The Cuckoo Clocks of Hell", was screened in 1973, and purportedly caused theater riots in New York City and Chicago. It was claimed that the theater in Chicago was burned down. The following year, the film had a brief release under the title "The Fun House". In 1977, it was released yet again, through Cinematic Releasing Corporation, under its most widely known title, "Last House on Dead End Street", a play on the title of the Wes Craven film "The Last House on the Left" (1972). Both of these later releases of the film were significantly shorter, running 78 minutes, as opposed to the original 175 minutes.
The Last House on the Left (1972 film)
Cunningham served as producer and Craven served as writer and director on the project. Written by Craven in 1971, the original script was intended to be a graphic "hardcore" film, with all actors and crew being committed to filming it as such. However, after shooting began, the decision was made to edit the script into a much softer film. This script, written under the title "Night of Vengeance", has never been released; only a brief glimpse is visible in the featurette "Celluloid Crime of the Century" (a 2003 documentary on the making of the film). The crux of the plot is based on the Swedish ballad "Töres döttrar i Wänge," which itself was the basis of Ingmar Bergman's "The Virgin Spring" (1960), of which Craven was an admirer. Craven envisioned a film in which the violence would be shown in detail onscreen; he felt that many popular films of the era, such as Westerns, glamorized violence and the "vigilante hero," and gave the public a misleading representation of death in the wake of Vietnam War.