Roger Watkins was born in Binghamton, New York and graduated from Oneonta State College in with a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature. He served as an apprentice for Freddie Francis, Otto Preminger and Nicholas Ray. He wrote Mystique for Roberta Findlay and as Richard Mahler, he made Her Name Was Lisa, Midnight Heat, Corruption and American Babylon, movies that were porn but had no interest in getting anyone turned on.

He’s probably best known for his 1973 movie The Last House On Dead End Street, which is also knwon as At the Hour of Our Death , The Fun House and The Cuckoo Clocks of Hell. It’s charitably one of the most mentally deranged movies I’ve seen and I say that with respect. For years, because the movie was made with no real names, rumors were spread that it was a snuff film. In truth, it’s a $3,000 down and dirty movie that really had an $800 budget because Watkins spent most of the money on drugs.

It took until 1989 when Chas Balun revealed that Watkins made the movie. In 2000, Watkins posted on the internet that it was really him and the film was released. The full 175-minute version seems lost forever, even if the story of a Chicago riot and fire destroying the print seems as true as the story that there’s a real murder in the film.

On the 2002 DVD release of the movie, Black Snow and several other Watkins short films appeared. I love that he did commentary over this, calling it “a piece of shit” and that it proved just how easy it was to make avant-garde bullshit. Then again, after he told Nicholas Ray that, the director told him, “Maybe it’s easy for you, Roger.”

It’s basically people walking through the snow and showing their darkness, which must have some kind of message behind it. Except Watkins laughs through the whole thing, which is so strange to me, as I assumed that he was as dark as he is in The Last House On Dead End Street and not someone having fun rewatching a college project.

In 2015, Vinegar Syndrome claimed that they were making a perfect version of The Last House but that seems like it’s never going to happen. The uncut version of the movie is hidden on their release of Corruption, so there’s that.

You can watch this on YouTube.