10 Nastiest Video Nasties

5. House On The Edge Of The Park (1980)

David Hess essentially reprises his role as sadistic thug Krug from Last House On The Left, only in Ruggero Deodato's sleaze-fest he is called Alex and he wears a snazzy yellow jacket. At the start of the movie, Alex rapes and kills a woman, stealing her pendant as a keepsake. You then see him working at a car repairs garage with his dim witted sidekick Ricky (played by the legendary Giovanni Lombardo Radice). They are shutting down shop when a couple of yuppies pull up and ask for a repair. Ricky does the job to Alex's chagrin and the yuppies invite them to a house party. At the party, the yuppies cheat Ricky in a card game and laugh at him dancing. Alex erupts into brutal violence. Things get seriously sick when a teenage girl arrives at the door and Alex slices into her with a razor. At this point Ricky tells Alex they have gone too far and the momentum switches to the yuppies' favour. Alex is ticked off with Ricky's lightweight behaviour and slashes him in the abdomen. He then gets emotional and starts crying over his friend - David Hess crying! The yuppies overpower Alex and tell him that this party has been carefully orchestrated for the purpose of killing him as they know it was Alex who raped and murdered the girl at the beginning of the film (she is a sister of one of the yuppies) and they wanted it to look like they had to kill Alex in self defence. And kill him they do, shooting him in the swimming pool. When the ban was rescinded in the UK in 2002, House On The Edge of the Park was a seriously castrated film with almost 12 minutes of cuts to it. You can now get it with a mere 53 seconds of cuts. A highly unpleasant and problematic film that is packed to the gills with sleaze, House On The Edge of the Park in its uncut, Video Nasty form is as nasty a film you will ever see. Of course it purloins ideas from better films - like Last House On The Left, even going as far to get David Hess in the movie as the chief, perverted bad guy. The best thing about the film is Riz Ortolani's jaunty disco score which despite being very jolly, fails to mitigate the film's nastiness.