Michael's Sleaze Lase-O-Rama: The House on the Edge of the Park (1999, EC Entertainement)

Source: LDDB.com

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Alex (David Hess) and his autistic friend Ricky (Giovanni Lombardo Radice) are two working-class mechanics who run a shop in a seedy part of New York. While Ricky laments that he's never had any success with women, Alex is entirely too successful, though he derives that success mostly with the help of bladed weapons like knives and straight razors. Thoroughly amoral, Alex derives great pleasure from assaulting, raping, and murdering his way through the women in his life, a fact which is established before the opening credits scroll as he runs a young woman (Hess's then-wife, Karoline Mardeck) off the road, then rapes and strangles her, taking the necklace she was wearing as a memento of their time together before leaving her body in the back seat of her own car.

Back at his shop, Alex is about to close down for a night of partying with Ricky when a last-minute arrival drives into his garage. Tom (Christian Borromeo) is an upper-crust socialite whose car is giving him trouble. Alex isn't interested in helping, even after Tom's attempt to bribe him with a significant amount of cash, far more than what the job should cost, until Tom's attractive companion Lisa (Annie Belle) makes her presence known.

Lisa explains they're on the way to a party with some friends. Ricky quickly diagnoses the problem as being a loose wire, and Alex offers that, instead of paying for the repair, they could simply take him and Ricky along for the festivities. Tom and Lisa agree, and the four drive to the titular house, where they are met by the rest of the guests, who have all arrived by the time they get there.

At first all is well, with drinks flowing, music playing, conversations turning flirty, and the start of a friendly game of poker...up until Alex notices the rest of the socialites turning Ricky into the laughing stock of the party. Realizing the rich folk are just playing a sick game, one they have likely perpetrated on others of lower-class standing in the past, Alex decides to turn the tables, using his brute strength and his lovely, pearl-handled straight razor to get his revenge.

What Alex doesn't realize is that these yuppies aren't the craven cowards and snot-nosed brats he presumed them to be. And just as Alex is capable of turning on the violence to get his way, the rich kids have a plan to both survive the night and mete out their own particular brand of justice.

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Holy good gravy, is this movie ever hard to watch.

I mean, to be fair, nothing with Ruggero Deodato's name on it is particularly easy on the sensibilities, as anybody who's sat through even a sliced-up, animal-cruelty-free version of Cannibal Holocaust knows, but if The House on the Edge of the Park proves anything, it's that you can take the director out of the jungle, but you can't take the jungle out of the director.

Shot almost entirely on studio sets in Italy over twenty grueling days in 1979, just after filming on Cannibal Holocaust had concluded, for a ridiculously low sum of money, The House on the Edge of the Park is a grim, 91-minute depiction of depravity which clearly owes more than just its title to the Wes Craven and Sean S. Cunningham sleaze shocker The Last House on the Left from seven years earlier. Like Last House, David Hess is once again playing a sadistic psychopath gang leader type who takes pleasure in stabbing women with both his own anatomy and various bladed instruments, but who winds up getting his own bloody comeuppance by the time the credits roll.

Fans of Italian cinema can enjoy a great game of 'spot the actor/actress', as several other cast members went on to productive careers. Radice, in fact, became a staple of Italian exploitation after this, his first acting credit. Lorainne De Selle, who plays Gloria here, went on to play another Gloria in Umberto Lenzi's Cannibal Ferox alongside Radice a year later. Blond-haired pretty boy Christian Borromeo would show up in Dario Argento's Tenebrae in 1982. Annie Belle, on the other hand, was already well-known for her work in the Emmanuelle series, not to mention a handful of other French and Italian productions. Surprisingly, for the stunning Marie Claude Joseph, this was her first and last acting role, although if my first job was on a Deodato film where I was menaced by David Hess, I might have made the same decision.

There's been much criticism leveled at The House on the Edge of the Park over the years, much of it negative, and I can totally see why. As noted, the film (especially the full, uncut version) is hard to watch in much the same way Last House on the Left is. Where Deodato's movie differs is that at least with Last House, there's an obvious demarcation between the good guys and the bad guys. In Edge of the Park, almost everyone involved is at the very best unlikable, or at the worst impossible to sympathize with. Alex, of course, is a complete sociopath, but he's also the focus character for the entire story: nothing in Edge happens unless Alex is involved, and he's in virtually every frame of the picture. In fact, he goes so far as to strip and slice up the innocent, virginal Cindy (Brigitte Petronio), a teenage neighbor who stops by to see what all the noise is about and is tortured and humiliated because she knocked on the wrong door at the wrong time.

That said, the upper-class types aren't exactly worth cheering for either: they feed Ricky a potent supply of alcohol, encourage him to perform a strip tease to music, and the male members of the group conspire to rob him blind in the poker game. Lisa's behavior is impossible to get a grip on as she seems to take great delight in teasing Alex with displays of her sexuality before pushing him away, much to his confusion. When Alex finally does snap and forces himself on her, she seems to actively enjoy it--a fact pointed out at the end of the film by one of the other characters. They're bullies, and as Alex notes, it isn't likely this is their first time luring a couple of lower-class people into their web and bleeding them dry, a suspicion he vocalizes at the start of his rampage of revenge which none of those present bother to deny.

HERE THERE BE SPOILERS

But it isn't until the film's last few minutes when Deodato drops the film's final bombshell: everything the rich kids have done, from Tom and Lisa's trip to Alex's garage, to the house party, has been for one, specific reason. See, Tom noticed the pendant around Alex's neck earlier, and recognized it as having belonged to his sister, the young woman Alex raped and killed at the start of the film. The entire purpose of the night was nothing more than to get Alex to their party, where they could murder him. After all, Alex (and, by association, Ricky) are nothing more than low-class scum. How hard could it be to sell a story to the police that he broke in during the party, threatening to rob and assault them, so Tom and his guests were forced to kill him in self-defense?

It's a convoluted plot, one which the characters themselves even admit got entirely out of hand before Tom was able to get his hands on the gun which he uses to put an end to Alex's reign of terror...and yet, somehow, it all works. Normally I roll my eyes at these sorts of "surprise endings", but for whatever reason, everything in this film actually works. Not that it makes the preceding 90 minutes easier to stomach, because let's face it, this is Deodato we're talking about here, a man who never shied away from serving up Grand Guignol-sized helpings of murder, rape and torture for the unblinking lens of the camera. But this aspect of the story managed to take me by surprise, and I have to tip my hat to that.

HERE ENDETH YON SPOILERS

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The LaserDisc for The House on the Edge of the Park is one hell of a holy grail. Produced only in the Netherlands, in a very limited run, it is a thing of beauty, as it was one of the few ways to see the uncut version of this film, in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio, back in the day. The audio is Mono only (not surprising, since that's how it was filmed), but the 'disc does contain both the original English language version and a German re-dub courtesy of the Digital and Analog tracks respectively. The picture quality is great, a digital remaster far superior to any VHS version which would have been available at the time, and shown in NTSC format making it compatible with pretty much any North American player. This was the only pressing of the film on LaserDisc, so if you're looking to add it to your library, prepare to open your wallet as they are not cheap. I don't even own a copy of this--I had to borrow it from a friend who explained in great detail exactly which parts of my anatomy he would saw off should anything happen to it.

Finally, I'd be remiss to mention the soundtrack by frequent Deodato collaborator Riz Ortolani. While most of the film has no background music, save for the records played once the house party is in full swing, there are still three compositions which are used to wonderful effect across the picture. The best: a creepy, sing-song-y tune called "Sweetly", which is only played during the film's most depraved moments and will get stuck in your head long after the credits have rolled.

The House on the Edge of the Park is, like much of the rest of Deodato's output, a cinematic shotgun blast to the face. While not as hard to stomach as Cannibal Holocaust, the level of discomfort it will inflict on the viewer is right on par with anything Wes Craven created in his pre-Nightmare on Elm Street days. If you can watch Last House on the Left or The Hills Have Eyes without flinching, House on the Edge of the Park probably won't get under your skin either, but that's a pretty significant "if". The violence is understated for Deodato, but it's difficult to watch nonetheless. The copious full-frontal nudity from both male and female cast members can certainly be eye-opening, especially to modern audiences not used to seeing such things in modern-day cinema, and David Hess's portrayal of Alex is no less effective than his turn as Krug from Last House, or Joe Spinell's portrayal of Frank Zito in Maniac. It's not horror, but it is horrifying, and unlike Last House and Hills, nobody in Hollywood has decided a 21st century remake is a good idea.

Perhaps that's the best thing one can (and should) say about it.

Watch the EXTREMELY NSFW original trailer here, and decide for yourself if it's worth tracking down for yourself:

Three straight razors out of Five.