The dead-zone nonlinearity is frequently encountered in many industrial automation equipments and its presence can severely compromise control system performance. In this work, an adaptive variable structure controller is proposed to deal with a class of uncertain nonlinear systems subject to an unknown dead-zone input. The adopted approach is primarily based on the sliding mode control methodology but enhanced by an adaptive fuzzy algorithm to compensate the dead-zone. Using Lyapunov stability theory and Barbalat’s lemma, the convergence properties of the closed-loop system are analytically proven. In order to illustrate the controller design methodology, an application of the proposed scheme to a chaotic pendulum is introduced. A comparison between the stabilization of general orbits and unstable periodic orbits embedded in chaotic attractor is carried out showing that the chaos control can confer flexibility to the system by changing the response with low power consumption.