Man At The Door — Man At The Door(DVD)

From the mid-1970s Man At The Door is somewhat of a mysterious/ seemingly long-lost slice of grimy ‘n’ rough grindhouse sleaze. It blends together roughie elements with straight hardcore. And while the latter is a little vanilla/ dull- the more unpleasant/ degrading elements are fairly effective/ tense. Here from Impulse Pictures- Synapse Films' sleazy grindhouse sublabel- here’s a bare-bones region region-free release of the film.

Man At Front Door has no IMBD entry, and equally when searching on the net- nothing comes up aside from this DVD. So, everything I’ve found comes from the back of the box- it’s from the year 1976 and was seemingly directed by one John Ruyter. The only close to name I can find is John De Ruyter- who worked on the original I Spit On Your Grave (1978) as a camera operator- so it could well be the same person. 

The print here runs at just over the fifty-six minutes mark- and as far as I can gather this is the total uncut version of the film. The stock is very ‘grindhouse’ with a fair bit of grain, sudden damage, etc.- though it’s not too bad, as I’m guessing this film was never played very much.

The film opens with a blond-haired woman wandering around a house- the phone rings it’s her limp-haired brunette housemate who says she is working late. We roughly pan back to see her nude and impaled on a man’s member, we then get a fairly straight hard-core female-on-male encounter.
There’s a knock at Blondie's door- it’s a moustached and bespectacled man, with thinning hair and a comb-over.  He forces himself into the house, and starts attacking the woman- fairly soon tying her to a chair and pulling off her clothes. And we find out she a virgin. From here on we get a mix of humiliation & sleazy intimidation from the man, before moving towards more straight hardcore as more women turn up at the house.

On the roughie side of things- which largely happens in the first half of the film- we get various nude tied & verbal abuse sessions, forced urination, and forced sex. On the hardcore side of things- which takes up say 60-70 per cent of the film-we have male and female encounters, woman-on-woman sessions, and a three-way. 

The ‘man’ certainly has a rather sweaty unpleasant & leering forceful manner, and at times one really does feel generally sorry for the blond woman, and the abuse she gets. She sells her role well enough, and you do feel her terror & panic. There are say three or so other members of the cast, and these are fairly standard 70’s adult film actors- with the women featured having a rather standard body shape/ look.

I’d certainly say Man At The Door is more of a hardcore film, than it is roughie. But I’d say if you do have a penchant for 70’s roughie, and you think you’ve seen them all Man At The Door will most certainly be for you- just don’t expect a pure roughie.

This region-free DVD is a very bare-bones affair- with only a selection of trailers from other Impulse Pictures titles. The print looks rather gritty & grainy- though there are only a few touches of real damage on the print. The audio is passable enough- with the dialogue largely being heard, with a score taking in library cues- some of which are quite effective within the context of the film.

It’s certainly good to see Impulse Pictures tracking down and releasing more thought-lost/ mysterious sleaze, and I do hope there’s more in the pipeline, maybe even another film from Mr. Ruyter.