HOUSE ON THE EDGE OF THE PARK

(A.k.a. LA CASA SPERDUTA NEL PARCO)

Alex (David Hess) is a dangerous man. Just how dangerous he can be is illustrated vividly in the pre-credits sequence where he rapes and strangles a girl in the back of a car.

When he’s not violating innocent females, Alex makes ends meet as a mechanic at a New York garage. But not on a weekend: that time is reserved for partying. As the film starts proper, we observe Alex grooming himself in preparation of a night on the tiles with his simpleton pal Ricky (Giovanni Lombardo Radice) when a posh young couple pull up at the garage in a swell-looking motor.

Initially reluctant to help them out on his own time, Alex’s tune changes when he learns that the couple – Tom (Christian Borromeo) and sexy Lisa (Annie Belle) – are on their way to a house party in an exclusive area. After fixing their trivial engine problem, Alex invites himself and the sheepish Ricky along for the ride.

Once they arrive at the house, a plush affair set back from the main road and hidden away by privacy-assuring trees, the foursome hurry in to join the party. In truth, it’s a rather sedate shindig: only three other guests are present, but at least they do include the seriously sultry Gloria (Lorraine De Selle).

Alex is most pleased – he’s remembered to bring along his trusty cutthroat razor blade and intends on having some fun at the expense of his rich hosts.

While Ricky busies himself by dancing like a tit to some truly horrific disco beats and stripping off to the raucous approval of the other partygoers, Alex tries his charms on Lisa. Well, who wouldn’t? Trouble is, she’s a terrible cock tease, and keeps leading him on so far ... only to blow cold when he gets too up close and personal. It’s not a particularly wise move, as we know from the thug’s introductory scene.

It doesn’t take long before Alex starts to tire of his posh hosts and their merciless mocking of the retarded Ricky. Predictably, the air turns hostile. At first, it’s nothing too bad: a bloody nose here, some shouting and hair-pulling there. But when demure young neighbour Cindy (Brigitte Petronio) makes a house visit, events take a turn toward the decidedly more ugly ... and the only way this night can end is in extreme violence.

Already courting minor notoriety on the back of his 1970s gut-chomper JUNGLE HOLOCAUST, Ruggero Deodato consolidated his reputation as a purveyor of prime Italian sicksploitation with this instantly infamous 1979 effort. Of course, his subsequent film – CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST – would go several steps further, going on to be one of the most enduringly controversial horror films of all time.

HOUSE, however, shouldn’t be overshadowed by Deodato’s later flesh-eating epic. It’s a harrowing, stylish and deceptively well-made thriller in its own right.

The casting is an obvious strong point, with a veritable who’s who of infamous cult horror movie actors lining up to take part. Hess basically reprises his psychopath persona from THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT and HITCH-HIKE, and delivers in a manic style that only he seemed capable of pulling off with credibility. He is genuinely scary on the screen; a convincing sleazeball. Radice, meanwhile, in his big screen debut, demonstrates the edgy energy that would later punctuate the likes of CANNIBAL FEROX, CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD and STAGE FRIGHT.

De Selle, Borromeo, the lovely Belle ... Deodato is fortunate to have such a classy cast at hand to breathe life into Gianfranco Clerici and Vincenzo Mannino’s pulpish, angry screenplay.

The director is also aided by slick editing, nice lighting and a superbly paradoxical score from the ever-reliable Riz Ortolani. Yes, the disco tunes grate – but it’s almost as if they’re meant to. After all, Deodato works with his scriptwriters intelligently to keep the lines of morality blurred throughout this troublesome beast: Alex is reprehensible, certainly – but is he any more loathsome than the upper class snobs he despises? They’re not afforded sympathetic characters, and this is intentional – something that becomes increasingly apparent as the film unfurls.

A biting social commentary; a tensely claustrophobic thriller; a class struggle paired down to its basest terms: HOUSE ON THE EDGE OF THE PARK is all of these, as well as being a weirdly schizophrenic film that clearly owes to Craven’s aforementioned LAST HOUSE, while reaching out for its own identity by way of weirdly ill-fitting sex scenes and a show-stopping torture of the young Cindy that feels totally wrong in its randomness.

The film remains a curiosity even in 2011, challenging perceptions and posing moral conundrums that make its violence (a lot of which is not overtly graphic) seem harsher than it is. Perhaps this is why the BBFC still have issues with the film to this day.

To this end, this new Special Edition DVD from Shameless is sadly still cut but the BBFC. But at least it’s no longer banned outright (it was a video nasty in the 80s) and at least it’s not shorn of an incredible – and insulting – 11 minutes and 43 seconds, as was Argent’s UK DVD release from 2002.

Here, we lose 42 seconds of footage from the aforementioned razorblade torture of the worryingly young-looking Cindy. The BBFC say the scene consists of "sexualised violence". And so, it’s gone.

It’s a real pity, because that’s literally the only thing that prevents Shameless’ new DVD release from being the film’s definitive edition.

First off, the picture quality of the transfer provided is brilliant. Presented in the original aspect ratio and enhanced for 16x9 television sets, I’ve never seen so much clarity of contrast and sharpness of detail in this film. It looks amazing compared to, say, Shriek Show’s Region 1 DVD of a few years back – a real treat for fans of the film.

Then there’s the audio. English 2.0 audio is clean and consistent enough, being good but not remarkable. The bonus here is that we also get the original Italian 2.0 audio track too, which is in similarly decent shape. This works in part because it’s good to see most of the cast speaking their native language. However, it is of course to laughable to witness Mr Hess being dubbed into Italian.

Optional English subtitles are well-written and easy to read (yellow with a thin black border to them).

A static main menu page leads into an animated scene-selection menu allowing access to the main feature via 12 chapters.

A great set of extras kick off with a 24-minute featurette featuring interviews with Hess and Deodato. Both are filmed in the same setting, but separately. They’re both candid, affable interviewees – Hess being his usual larger-than-life self, despite the wear of age showing in this recently produced featurette (sadly the big guy passed away on October 7th 2011). There are some good stories here (Hess alluding to having had a relationship with Belle during filming; two different accounts of the lead actor’s arrogance on the film’s set), and the whole thing keeps on track ... unlike that weird Hess interview that graced the aforementioned Shriek Show DVD. Subtitles are provided for Deodato’s replies, spoken in Italian.

Next up is an excellent shot-on-handheld-video account of a discussion held to discuss the film’s continued censorship in the UK. Attended by Deodato and Radice, this is primarily headed by Martin Barker – a professor who was co-assigned by the BBFC in 2006 to study the influence of HOUSE and four other films (IRREVERSIBLE, ABSURD, BAISE MOI and ICHI THE KILLER) on those who watched them – and Craig Lapper of the Classification board. This is really interesting fare, especially considering the disclaimer at the opening apologising for the lack of picture quality and claiming this footage was not originally intended to be shown publicly. For anyone with an interest in the academics behind film censorship, this makes for a good (and well-balanced) starting point.

At 47 minutes, it’s lengthy too. Still, it engages throughout, and Barker makes a fair point – partially through the art of wildly gesticulating – that all the films the BBFC seem to have a problem with, appear to be concerned with the threat of "male arousal"...

Hess offers his own thoughts on the UK cutting of the film, in an amusing and vociferous 5-minute featurette.

We also get the film’s enjoyably trashy original theatrical trailer, and a VERY brief video introduction to the film from Hess (10 seconds).

The disc is defaulted to open with trailers for FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET, CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST and DON’T TORTURE A DUCKLING.

A great film gets a fantastic DVD release, then. Unfortunately the BBFC still think we’re too impressionable to be trusted with the full uncut version of HOUSE ON THE EDGE OF THE PARK, and so this release comes somewhat compromised by 42 seconds of cuts.

Despite the cuts, the film has never looked better and the extras – including the option of Italian audio – are awesome. It’s a timely reminder of what a great genre figure Hess was, and how talented Deodato used to be.

What a crying shame that the pair never got to make their touted sequel.

Review by Stuart Willis