15. House On The Edge Of The Park (1980)
More depraved cinema from Ruggero Deodato, coming close on the heels of Cannibal Holocaust. Exploitation fans will pee their pants at the prospect of David 'Last House on the Left' Hess and Giovanni Lombardo Radice - the baddie from Cannibal Ferox, teaming up together as bad guys in this shocking and sleazy home invasion horror. The opening scene exemplifies the nastiness of the film - Alex (David Hess) is driving round New York looking for trouble and he gets this in the form of a young woman whom he rapes and kills. Later he is seen with Ricky (Giovanni Lombardo Radice) working in a garage, shutting up shop for the day. A couple in a flashy car drive up to them asking for help. Alex refuses but dopey Ricky fixes the car. It transpires that Tom and Lisa are going to a party and they let Alex and Ricky tag along. They go to a fancy house where Tom and Lisa's friends - Gloria, Glenda and Howard are waiting for them. Trouble begins when one of the women gets Ricky to do a striptease to a disco record. They then involve Ricky in a poker game that is plainly rigged. Lisa prick teases Alex and he gets angry both at her and the rigged game of poker that Ricky is involved in. Alex takes out his razor blade and kicks the crap out of Howard, ensuring his humiliation by peeing on him and then tying him to a piano leg. Alex announces that it is his party now. The small group of people are forced to experience more sadism and degradation at the hands of Alex including: face slashing by razor, unwanted groping and rape. A young girl called Cindy arrives at the door and ends up getting slashed in a gruesome manner by Alex's razor. Ricky pleads with Alex that things have gone far enough - Alex kills him by slashing his stomach prompting entrail appearance. Tom manages to get a gun, shoots Alex a few times and forces him out of the back door. There is a twist - a lame one. The murdered woman at the beginning of the movie was Tom's sister and Tom set this whole affair with Alex up in order to kill him. This is profoundly silly. How did Tom know Alex was the murderer? Why didn't he just shoot him at the garage and prevent his guests all the misery? Lame, lame, lame. If you want to sit down to watch a depraved movie, House on the Edge of the Park will hit all the buttons. It is an unrelenting procession of sleaze and filth. Its mean spirited, nasty core is perhaps unrivalled among the clutch of Nasties that were prosecuted. It still packs a punch to this day with Deodato himself admitting that he himself was shocked by the amount of violence in the film. I have an original video nasty version of this film and I find it depressing and seedy but compelling. The film was submitted to the BBFC in July 2002 and was passed with a whopping 11 minutes of cuts. This truncated version is far too milquetoast to enjoy. With no violence, the plot becomes redundant. A resubmission in 2008 was passed virtually uncut with only 37 seconds snipped from it. The best thing about House on the Edge of the Park is the fabulous disco soundtrack by Riz Ortolani. Controversial because: sickening sexualised violence against women.