La Maison au fond du parc

Italian Horror maestros have always been revered, regardless of whether their films are really any good and by whom or what they've been, umm...influenced by. This pic is sort of a carbon copy of a few other flicks, given a discreet roll of the fluffy dice to change the story around here and there. However it was all enough to satisfy the new bloodthirsty and thrillseeking generation of filmgoers in the 80s and thus delivered the goods, earned its sleeper reputation for cult classic status in the next 30 years or so and got promptly banned on the UK Nasties List, sealing the whole deal. We come to worship at the alter, in as much as what we're actually expecting from a film like 'La casa sperduta nel parco' in terms of quality, enjoyment and originality. The film has dated, and badly. But Hess's disco stud is incredibly good value, along with the Dil's 'Class War' thrown in and a few psychological insights that 'may' have been pertinent at the time. A few neon drenched shots of NYC in the retro age are always welcome - a trademark found in Spaghetti Horror of this breed. You're either partial to this genre within a genre or you're not - I had fun with it and so did a whole world of other people. You know who you are.

And what a ride it is. "The House on the Edge of the Park" is yet another variation (I'll avoid the term 'rip-off') of "Last House on the Left," which succeeds because of David Hess's outstanding portrayal of a razor-wielding psycho. Unlike "Last House," which made generational conflict its primary theme, HotEotP is an unashamed exploitation picture that director Ruggero Deodato uses to embellish the excesses of the genre, and there's no better an actor than Hess to carry out such activities.

Hess plays Alex, a NY mechanic who, before the opening credits begin to roll, rapes and strangles an anonymous female (although it's not made clear whether the girl is actually dead). Cut to him and his friend Ricky (Giovanni Lombardo Radice), who have plans to go "boogie-ing" when they're accosted by a rich young couple with car trouble. Ricky fixes the problem (a torn alternator wire), and Alex persuades the couple to invite them to a little 'get-together' at an appropriately-secluded villa. Before long, Alex and Ricky are engaging in some rather heavy petting, and things turn violent.

That's the basic plot setup. At times, the movie moves from scene to scene as if being improvised on the spot, which either intesifies the action or slows it down. That the house (as a setting) is rather small limits the amount of action that can go on inside it. Yet Ruggero Deodato knows how to manipulate his audience--his use of violence and sex to advance the film along works in all the right ways, and keeps your attention. And the sex, violence, and depraved behavior here is pretty extreme, to say the least (the film boasts only one murder, but is far more vicious than LHotL, in my opinion).

Also elevating the film a few levels is a surprisingly name cast of genre actors, including Christian Borromeo ("Tenebrae"), Radice ("The Gates of Hell"), and Lorraine De Selle ("Cannibal Ferox"). These familiar actors add a unique gloss to the sleaziness of "House on the Edge of the Park."

7/10

I cannot pretend to defend the shakey moral foundations that this film rests on; that said I love the rather thin output of Ruggero Deodato. His flick "Live Like A Cop, Die Like A Man" is one of the best of the Italian Violent Cop Thrillers of the seventies... his Cannibal Holocaust is notorious all over the world, but of the Italian Cannibal flicks of the early eighties sub genre, it's rather well made and acted - for what it is. This is sloppy, like all of the Italian sleaze directors U.S films are (particularily Umberto Lenzi), but it has a sleazy charm despite all the chicks being no more than rape magnets. Gotta love David Hess' acting work from this period too; the guy is, um, unique looking, to put it kindly. Check out his website, he takes himself soo-oo seriously; do all actors think they're artists?

This film is one of the best made of the video nasties. Alex (David Hess) rapes and strangles a young woman in the back of her car before the credits start to roll. Soon after a young rich couple pull into their garage to see if they can fix their car. They agree but only if they can tag along to their party. After fixing the car Alex and Ricky (John Morghen AKA Giovanni Lombardo Radice) tag along. They spend the best part of the film terrorizing the 5 yuppies at the party. There's gore, torture and rape applenty. Hess is awesome as the crazed rapist and Morghen is equally great as the retard. This film is one you must see. The ending is truly amazing.

This is interesting sleaze in a lot of ways, mainly because it's one of those movies that looks like nothing more than cheap, hateful sex trash when there are underlying ideas (even though I will not dare call this an intellectual film by any means). One thing I would like to say is that it is true that some of the things going on here can be viewed as romantic if you view it in a very unconventional way. One of the "rape" scenes definitely seems more like a rough, consensual sex game rather than a brutal, totally forced rape. At the same time, a lot of this can really be viewed more as about a guy (David A. Hess as Alex) who has had some serious female trouble at one point and is so terrified of a woman he loves leaving him that he responds animalistically with hateful, misogynistic acts of rape and abuse so that he can get close to all the women he likes in the only way he knows could work for him, no matter how cruel and damaging it is to anyone else. His companion Ricky is obviously someone who is mentally slow and hated by society, finding friendship only in scum like Alex, who he looks up to like a big brother/mentor type. He is shown to not know any better for the most part, but we know there is good in him when he not only can't bring himself to violate a woman, but he is also the one who tries to stop the terror from continuing. This leads to a twist ending that I thought was actually surprisingly clever for this type of film. This one's not quite as good as "The Last House on the Left" if you're going to compare movies with mean David A. Hess characters, but, despite similarities, this film stands up fairly well on its own, in my opinion.