Buffalo Grove author critiques 'Dead End,' Dann remembers real Brinks job robbers

Buffalo Grove writer talks 'Dead End Street'

Chicago's historic Music Box Theatre caters to all crowds.

If you don't believe that, consider its upcoming midnight showings of a nasty bit of outlaw cinema titled “Last House on Dead End Street.”

I saw this violent exploitation cheapie back in the late 1970s on one of the three screens at the legendary 53 Drive-In Theater near Palatine. I wasn't even sure what the movie was about, except that its title sounded like a rip-off of the late Wes Craven's 1972 exploitation classic, “Last House on the Left.”

Watching “Last House on Dead End Street” could hardly be described as a pleasant experience. Its raw brutality and Herschell Gordon Lewis-grade gore had me hiding my eyes. Frequently.

And now the prestigious Music Box is showing it?

I had to go to the master for some advice. I contacted longtime Buffalo Grove resident Adam Rockoff, horror screenwriter and author of such books as “The Horror of It All: One Moviegoer's Love Affair With Masked Maniacs, Frightened Virgins, and the Living Dead.”

I asked him for his assessment of “Dead End Street.”

“It was one of those titles that was almost like an urban legend,” Rockoff said. “Before the internet, if a movie couldn't be found in the video store - and “Dead End Street” certainly couldn't - you gleaned what you could about it from Fangoria (a popular horror magazine) or word-of-mouth. But I couldn't even find anyone who had seen it! All I knew about it was there was supposedly some twisted scene involving a deer hoof.”

Alrighty, then. I asked Rockoff how “Dead End Street” stacks up against Craven's earlier movie or the infamous Israeli rape-and-revenge production “I Spit on Your Grave,” a film Roger Ebert called “a vile bag of garbage.”

“The difference is that while 'Last House on the Left' and 'I Spit' are brutal, they were still made by quasi-mainstream filmmakers with a generally professional cast and crew,” Rockoff said.

“'Dead End Street' was different. Nobody knew anything about its director, Victor Janos, and all the actors used pseudonyms. It is as sleazy and nihilistic as you can get without being hard-core porn.”

OK. Sounds even ickier than I remember. Was Victor Janos also a pseudonym?

“A man named Roger Watkins came forward and claimed that he had directed 'Dead End Street,'” Rockoff said. “It was all corroborated, along with the fact that Watkins was a sometime porn director and amphetamine addict who had spent a good portion of the movie's budget on speed.

“So this is one of those rare films where the things that went on behind the scenes were almost as wild as what's on screen.”

Rockoff is also the author of “Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film, 1978-1986” and the screenwriter for the 2010 remake of “I Spit on Your Grave.” Read my profile on Rockoff at http://bit.ly/1el7WHE.

To buy tickets for “Dead End Street,” go to musicboxtheatre.com.

Real robbers discuss 'The Brinks Job'

Former Chicagoan William Friedkin's 1979 crime drama “The Brinks Job” will be one of several films shown at the ninth annual “Noir City” festival at Chicago's Music Box Theatre, Friday, Aug. 25, through Thursday, Aug. 31.

In 1979, I interviewed two of the men who staged a robbery of a Brinks armored truck terminal for a staggering $2.7 million, a heist so big in 1950, it became known as “the crime of the century.”

I spoke with Adoph “Jazz” Maffie, then 65, and Sandy Richardson, then 72, about their thoughts of the Brinks job and the 14 years they spent behind bars for the crime.

“If you could put an old head on young shoulders, kids would not be foolish enough to make the same mistake we did to go out and steal,” Richardson said. “If I had stayed working for the years I was in prison ... I would have made more money than I got from the crime.”

Maffie praised Friedkin's movie for its accuracy. “I thought they did the whole thing very well. If they took time to tell the whole story, it would have taken 10 hours.”

So why did they do it? Just for the money?

“It wasn't the money alone,” Richardson said. “It was just such a challenge. They (Brinks) had such complete confidence in their security that it was just something that we said to ourselves, 'Well, we'll see.' That's about the size of it.”

“We wouldn't want anyone to get into trouble on account of this picture,” Maffie said. “And it's a helluva picture. No killings. No cowboys and Indians. Just a nice movie. And at the end, they can see we were sent to jail for life.”

“The Brinks Job” will be shown at 5 p.m. and 9:15 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 29 at the Music Box, 3733 N. Southport Ave., Chicago.

This year's Noir City highlights movies about holdups, heists and schemes gone awry. It will be hosted by Eddie Muller and Alan Rode of the Film Noir Foundation.

Festival passes cost $85 ($70 for MBT members). Single admissions cost $12 ($9 for MBT members). Go to musicboxtheatre.com for a list of films and schedules.

<i>Dann Gire's Dann in Reel Life column runs Fridays in Time out! Follow him on Twitter at @DannGireDHfilm.</i>