House on the Edge of the Park

Manic mechanic Alex (David Hess) runs a young woman's car off the road and rapes and strangles its occupant.

Some time later Alex and his slightly retarded friend Ricky (Giovanni Lombardo Radice AKA John Morghen) are getting ready to "boogie" when a rich couple, Tom and Lisa (Annie Belle) drive into the garage, their car needing fixed. Alex is relucant to help, but after Tom offers them $40, Ricky has a look and quickly fixes the vehicle.

Alex learns that the couple are heading to a small get together and invites himself and Ricky along – pausing only to collect his straight razor.

At the isolated suburban house are three other guests, Howard, Gloria (Lorraine De Selle) and Glenda. The five bourgeois seem bored and do their best to wind up Alex and Ricky. Lisa gives Alex the come on, while Ricky is encouraged to perform an impromptu striptease for the others.

After Ricky is ripped off in a rigged poker game, Alex finally snaps. "Now we're going to have some fun with these cunts." A catalogue of torture and humiliation follows until, finally, the bourgeois extract their revenge on Alex, taking turns to shoot him.

It turns out that Tom is the brother of the girl Alex murdered. The whole thing was a set-up – they just needed it to look like Alex had broken in and was killed in self-defence.

With Ruggero Cannibal Holocaust Deodato directing a script by the writers of The New York Ripper, David Last House on the Left Hess and John Cannibal Apocalypse Morghen starring along with Annie Absurd Belle and Lorraine Cannibal Ferox De Selle, House on the Edge of the Park has an impeccable nasty pedigree.

By itself the sequence where Alex slashes up the virginal Cindy – a late, unfortunate arrival at the house ("They say you always remember the first time. And you will remember Alex, won't you") – is enough to cause the film problems with the BBFC.

But when bolstered with not one but two dubious sex scenes – Lisa apparently being turned on by Alex when half way through rape (shades of Straw Dogs), and Gloria suddenly deciding to get it on with Ricky after he had been threatening her – it's understandable that House on the Edge of the Park's recent UK release sees it minus 12 minutes of footage.

Confined largely to the single house set, Deodato's direction is efficient and no-nonsense. Nevertheless, it's Hess who's really running the show with his scarily convincing out to lunch performance.

Riz Ortolani's music provides a distastefully ironic counterpoint to the on-screen mayhem, "Do it to me once more" being just about the most inappropriate set of lyrics imaginable for a rape-revenge tale.

While Deodato and Hess will always be known for Cannibal Holocaust and Last House on the Left respectively, their work on House on the Edge of the Park deserves to be wider known. Just don't expect to see it on Film Four *cough* Extreme any time soon.