The House
on the Edge of the Park
Dir: Ruggero
Deodato
1980
**
The House on the Edge of the Park is
probably best known as one of the infamous video nasties that was initially
rejected for a UK cinema certificate by the BBFC. While many of the films
in this bracket really weren’t that bad, The House on the Edge of the
Park absolutely deserved the term ‘nasty’. Not only is it nasty, but
it is also a cheap rip-off. Wes Craven's The Last House on
the Left had been so successful, that writers Gianfranco Clerici,
Vincenzo Mannino, and director Ruggero Deodato, decided to film a shameless
copy in the three weeks they had spare after finishing production
on Cannibal Holocaust. It is a low-budget cheap shot. Before VHS and home
video a film essentially disappeared after its initial release so I guess they
hoped few people would have seen or remembered Craven's 1972 film,
so confident/cheeky were the film makers, that they actually cast David Hess
for the role of Alex because he played pretty much the same villain in The
Last House on the Left. They wanted Hess so badly, that they gave him half the
rights to the film. It was one of many violent thrillers to be given a
"House" title in attempt to ride the success of Craven's earlier film
– all of them are bad but to be fair they all share the
same unnecessary nastiness of the original. Alex (David Hess) is a
serial-killer driving around New York City at night when he spots a young
woman, Susan, driving alongside him. He follows her to a nearby park where he
rapes her before strangling her to death. He takes her locket as a trophy to
another one of his many killings. Some time later, Alex and his friend Ricky
are closing up the underground garage where they both work, planning to go to a
local disco. Before they can leave, a Cadillac pulls in with a young,
well-dressed couple, Tom and his girlfriend Lisa, asking for help with their
car. Alex refuses to help them, saying that the garage is closed, but the
slow-witted Ricky decides to help and easily fixes the problem. Tom tells Alex
and Ricky that they are driving to a friend's house in New Jersey for a party,
and invites them along. Before leaving, Alex stops by his locker, which is
filled with various weapons he uses to murder people, and takes a
straight-edged razor. The four
arrive at a large villa where they are welcomed by the owner, Gloria, and her
friends Glenda and Howard. Minutes later it becomes obvious to Alex and Ricky,
that the rich people are looking for easy thrills. Gloria asks Ricky to do a
striptease to some disco music and he makes a fool of himself, and is further
humiliated by being goaded to drink alcohol with each move. However, Alex stops
Ricky before he strips completely naked. Tom, Howard and Glenda next play poker
with Ricky, while Lisa begins sexually teasing Alex and invites him upstairs to
shower with her, only to push him away. As Alex grows more frustrated, he sees
that the hosts are cheating at poker with Ricky. Alex pulls out the
straight-edge razor, and a fight breaks out between him and Howard. Alex throws
Howard outside the back door, beats him viciously, and throws him into the pool.
Laughing, Alex urinates on Howard and drags him back inside, tying him to a
piano leg and proclaiming that he is running the party now. Alex and
Ricky proceed to beat on their hosts-turned-hostages with Alex slashing Tom's
face with the razor and beating his face into the poker table. Ricky holds the
others at bay with a wine bottle while Alex sexually assaults both Gloria and
Glenda. Lisa runs to an upstairs bedroom where she tries to escape, but Alex
catches her and proceeds to rape her. When Alex takes Lisa downstairs to rejoin
the others, the doorbell rings. Alex forces Gloria to answer; when she opens
the door, it's their teenage neighbor, Cindy. Alex grabs Cindy, while Gloria
tries to escape. Ricky, still holding the broken wine bottle, runs outside after
Gloria and catches her, showing Gloria that he means her no harm by tossing
aside the wine bottle. Gloria responds to his simple nature by taking off her
clothes and seducing him. Inside, Alex
cuts Cindy's blouse off with the razor while singing. Ricky then returns to the
house with Gloria just as Alex forces Cindy to strip off the rest of her
clothes, and proceeds to savagely slash her with his razor over and over again.
At this point, Ricky realizes they’ve gone too far and attempts to stop Alex.
Upset at being betrayed by his friend, Alex turns against Ricky and slashes his
abdomen wide open, and then breaks down in regret. Bloodied and
battered, Tom runs into the nearby study and pulls out a 9mm pistol out from a
desk drawer. Tom shoots Alex a few times, then kicks him through the glass back
door. Gloria and the other women untie Howard, and the five descend upon the
fatally wounded Alex lying on the ground. Tom removes the locket Alex is
wearing and reveals the reason for all this: the woman that Alex raped and
murdered at the park is Tom's sister and Tom wanted revenge. He and Lisa wanted
to lure them to Gloria's house so they could kill them and make it look like
self-defense. After shouting at him, Tom shoots the wounded Alex in the groin,
making him fall into the swimming pool. Tom and Lisa take turns shooting Alex,
who thrashes weakly in the water, before a final bullet to the head by Howard
finishes him for good. Returning to
the house, Gloria stops Howard from shooting Ricky, while Glenda tends to the
wounded Cindy. Tom and Lisa go into the study where they talk about their plan.
Tom says that despite some mistakes, that it worked out for the best, and then
picks up the phone to call the police. Giving Clerici, Mannino and Deodato, the
film does add a clever twist to the ‘house’ format but it comes after so much
brutal violence, that it is impossible to ‘celebrate’. If I had to compare all
of the ‘house’ films I would say this one was best, but the fact that it came
last, after so many awful films, and considering how brilliant Clerici, Mannino
and Deodato usually are, I have to say it is the worst. Cannibal
Holocaust is
a masterpiece, one of the greatest horror/thrillers ever made. It is low budget
but full of great ideas, it started the found-footage sub-genre and still
hasn’t been bettered. The one thing I will give the film makers credit for
however is that they know what is scary – people. Goblins, ghosts, Aliens…sure
they’re scary but they’re not real, people are, and people are the worst. It’s
well crafted and the contemporary horror masterpiece Funny Games owes it a lot
but you have to be a questionable character to really enjoy a film such as
this. It is nasty and I didn’t enjoy it but David A. Hess was brilliant
in his character as he always was and the shots of 1970s New York
are glorious.
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