The House on the Edge of the Park

Ruggero Deodato was known for his hyper-violent thrillers, bloodthirsty films that brought a level of sadistic realism to the Italian screen: blood-drenched giallo thrillers, gore-spattered zombie flicks, and demonoid supernatural chillers that possessed audiences with promises of cheap, bloody, sexy thrills.

Here, he uses the heavy talents of Krug Stillo himself, the late, great David Hess, who had already shocked drive-in and grindhouse exploitation enthusiasts, and puking teenage debutantes of 1972, with his turn as the brutally sick and vile Krug, kidnapper of the innocent Mari (Sandra Cassel), killer of the socially misfortunate Phyllis (Lucy Grantham), father to the feckless, tragic junkie Junior (Marc Sheffler), who finally gets his comeuppance after a grueling battle with Gaylord St. James in a booby-trapped posh house under a banner reading “Happy Birthday, Mari,” strewn and hanging halfway across the wall.

By chainsaw, no less. Just a few years shy of Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The Last House on the Left (1972) had “kids throwing up,” according to actor Fred Lincoln, who played Weasel. I suppose he meant long lines of kids in grindhouses and at drive-ins, puking into their popcorn.

Here, not so much, but the essential themes of Last House are the same as House on the Edge of the Park, and so the reason Hess was pegged for the role is apparent. He begins by violently raping and strangling a female motorist. After the credits, he’s staring into a mirror at his auto body repair shop, getting on his best 1980 Tony Montana disco duds, when his dorky, overly enthusiastic incel friend Ricky (Gates of Hell actor Giovanni Radice) shows up, a bundle of idiot enthusiasm.

A rather naff, hip, and obviously wealthy young couple pull in and want some service on their vehicle. Alex (Hess) refuses, but Ricky is FTW, and they incongruously invite the two disco-bound grease monkeys to a party at an upscale, ritzy pad “on the edge of the park.” Off they go, right after Alex goes to get his straight razor.

Arriving, the 1980 partiers are revealed to include three women, one of them a quite distinctive Black woman with a shaved head, and the grease monkeys mix with the proto-Eighties yuppie hipsters about as well as oil and water.

Alex/Hess, the “heavy,” begins to abuse the weak, feckless, pampered, and powdered bourgeois males, pissing on one, beating him, tying the males up. Keep in mind: it’s two against, like, six. One wonders at the fact that they couldn’t just overwhelm their attackers, or that one of them couldn’t escape.

(But this has actually happened in real life, in the history of criminal murder massacres, such as the Carr Brothers massacre in Wichita, Kansas, in 2000. I mean, specifically, the dynamic of two maniacs terrorizing several people at once; people in modern times are often neutered, passive. Here, in the fiction of this film, that passive acceptance of suffering, of annihilation. The lemming-like march toward personal doom, forced on the prey by the stronger, predatory beast.)

Alex and Lisa (Annie Belle) go upstairs, where Lisa showers and Alex drools before being turned away. All of the women in this flick look as if they just stepped out of a hot body contest. Later, the two make love, but it’s followed by increasing volleys of bloody abuse as the two males (Christian Borromeo and Gabriele Di Giulio) are beaten, tied up, and the whole thing moves inexorably toward its hideous climax (no pun). A woman is slashed, and Ricky meets a fate no one could have foreseen.

Out to the pool for the final, shuddering scene. David Hess pulls an expression that has to be one of the most unintentionally humorous expressions ever lensed for a motion picture.

We could give away the ending, but we aren’t as cruel as Alex.

The House on the Edge of the Park (1980) - Theatrical Trailer

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