House on the Edge of the Park

House on the Edge of the Park (Italian: La casa sperduta nel parco) is a 1980 Italian exploitation film from the Italian director Ruggero Deodato. It stars David Hess, Giovanni Lombardo Radice and Lorraine De Selle and features a musical score by Riz Ortolani. The entire film was shot in under four weeks, on a very limited budget.

Degenerate New York mechanic, Alex (David Hess, to some extent reprising the role he played as Krug in Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left) spends his downtime prowling the streets abducting and assaulting, sometimes murdering the local women. A typical day sees Alex and his workmate, the slow-on-the-uptake Ricky (Giovanni Lombardo Radice of Cannibal Ferox, Cannibal Apocalypse and City of the Living Dead), closing the garage for the night, only for a car containing socially mobile yuppie types Tom (Christian Borromeo, Tenebrae, Murder-Rock) and his girlfriend Lisa (Annie Belle, Absurd) who need some urgent repairs on the cadillac. Ricky agrees to help and in no time the job is done – as a way of thanking them for their time, Tom invites them to a party at their friend’s large villa, situated, yes, next to a park. Pausing only for Alex to equip himself with a straight razor, they set off for a night of high jinx.

Upon arrival, it’s clear that the social and financial divide between the two groups of party-goers is some cause of amusement, at Alex and Ricky’s expense. Ricky is coerced into cinema’s greatest dance sequence and later a game of poker, with some extremely naughty cheating going on. As Alex’s anger continues to rise, he is seduced by Lisa whose sexual advances lead him to the shower, only for her to reject him. His rage is unleashed on another of the guests, Howard (Gabriele Di Giulio), who after a severe beating is urinated on and then tied to a table leg as Alex announces that he’s running the show now. Despite being outnumbered, Alex and Ricky subject the group to a relentless torrent of sexual and violent attacks, Alex slashing Tom with his razor and Ricky becoming involved with Gloria (Lorraine De Selle from Cannibal Ferox and Wild Beasts) who finds it easy to distract him from his more violent intentions by performing a striptease. Meanwhile, Alex is running rampage, with next door neighbour, Cindy (Brigitte Petronio, The Cynic, The Rat and The Fist) cut to ribbons and the rest of the household lining up to be next. Ricky finally snaps and begs him to stop, only to be disemboweled for his troubles. The worm turns when, rather belatedly, Tom remembers there’s a gun hidden in a desk drawer. Quicker next time, eh?

Sporting a title which revels in the greatest obsession of exploitation filmmakers, houses and the environs thereof, House on the Edge of the Park is regularly compared to The Last House on the Left, primarily because Hess plays a similarly unhinged killer. Hess was singled out for the role because of his portrayal of Krug and was allegedly lured to the part by the promise of half the film’s rights. However, the tragedy and dynamics of the earlier film are shifted considerably by Deodato’s effort, with the rich party hosts being morally dubious and the whole household frankly needing a stern talking to.

The infamous director came straight from filming Cannibal Holocaust and was in no mood to lighten things up, employing hard-nosed writers Gianfranco Clerici and Vincenzo Mannino to sketch out the sense-light/violence-heavy screenplay – and their track record for sadistic sleaze was admirable, with a host of grim shockers under their belt, from Don’t Torture a Duckling to Last Cannibal World and, in 1982, the misogynistic yet mesmerisingly mean The New York Ripper. Despite admitting that he thought the script was ‘too violent’, Deodato went ahead and filmed it anyway, omitting only a ‘bridge too far’ scene involving abuse with a tampon.

The savage make-up effects by Raul Ranieri, who also worked with Deodato and Hess on Hitch-Hike and on Umberto Lenzi’s Eaten Alive! coupled with an unremitting sexual violence landed the film in hot water in the UK, being rejected for a cinema certificate in March of 1981 and after sneaking out on VHS finding itself on the now notorious DPP ‘banned list’. When it was resubmitted in 2002, it was, ironically, savagely cut by over 11 minutes, essentially all the rape and slashings. The latest cut is still trimmed by 42 seconds of razor mayhem some 33 years on from its initial release.

Though regularly flagged up as an example of films which are morally bankrupt and can only serve to corrupt the mind, House on the Edge of the Park is unfailing enjoyable, primarily because of the energetic and all-or-nothing performances of Hess and Radice. Their victims are almost a roll call of Italian exploitation faces whose names may escape you but are part of the firmament of 70′s and 80′s grub-core.

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The disco dancing scene, whether intentionally or not, is a riot and the fact that all the characters are represent many of the worst elements of society simply adds to the rather cartoon quality of the film, something of an uber-violent pantomime. Though Ortolani’s score is nowhere near as accomplished as that of his masterpiece for Cannibal Holocaust, it is nevertheless similarly inappropriate, raising the question of whether he ever understood the kind of films he was scoring for.

Before the untimely death of David Hess, plans were underway to revisit the film with a sequel, with both Radice and Hess appearing in some capacity, and Deodato slated to direct.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

Dance along like Ricky!