The House On The Edge Of The Park

AKA La Casa Sperduta Nel Parco

Director: Ruggero Deodato

“The House On The Edge Of The Park” (1980) is brought to us by Ruggero Deodato, who is probably most famous for directing the notorious video nasty: “Cannibal Holocaust”. “The House On The Edge Of The Park” was also dragged into the video nasty scandal back in the 80s and to this day has still not been released in the UK fully uncut. The copy I have, brought to us by the excellent Shameless Screen Entertainment, is the nearest thing we can get at the moment and upon submitting the film to the BBFC, Shameless managed to contest cuts they wanted to make meaning there is now only 42 seconds missing (more on that later).

Before we get into the film, here is a quick disclaimer: the film has quite a sensitive subject matter. I am just some schmuck writing reviews in his pants so I do feel I might be a little bit out of my depth here but this is a film I feel doesn’t get talked about enough which is why I wanted to highlight it.

The film opens with Alex, played by David A. Hess, who you may recognise from Wes Craven’s own entry on the video nasty list “The Last House On The Left”. Alex is driving through New York when he spots a fellow road user he takes a fancy to. After tooting his horn to try and get her attention he manages to block her path using his car, gets out and then rapes and strangles her before the opening credits roll. At this point we are introduced to the films main musical cue, “Sweetly”, by Riz Ortolani. The song is a dreamy lullaby which is used to great effect throughout the film.

We then see Alex and his friend Ricky closing up the garage where Alex works. Ricky is played by Giovanni Lombardo Radice who is best known for his roles in Umberto Lenzi’s “Cannibal Ferox” and Lucio Fulci’s “City Of The Living Dead”. Radice is a fantastic actor and his presence lifts any film he is in and his portrayal of Ricky is truly great. Although not explicitly mentioned, Ricky appears to have some sort of learning difficulty and clearly looks up to Alex as a brother figure. Their dynamic is similar to that of George and Lennie from John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men”… if George were a serial rapist, that would have made for a completely different story!

Alex and Ricky are getting ready to go to the local disco when a young and clearly quite well off couple (Tom and Lisa) pull into the garage and need their car fixing whilst en route to a party. Alex is reluctant to help initially but Ricky wants to prove he can fix the car. Meanwhile Alex eyes up Lisa and invites both himself and Ricky to the party which Tom and Lisa seem totally fine with. Before leaving Alex says he needs to get his keys from his locker but puts a straight edged razor in his pocket instead. As you do when going to a party for a good time.

Upon arriving at the party villa, Tom and Lisa introduce Alex and Ricky to the rest of the group. There’s the owner of the Villa, Gloria, (who Ricky immediately takes a shine to), Glenda and Howard. Seems like quite a small crowd for a party so maybe that’s why they were so keen on inviting Alex and Ricky. Upon entering the villa, Howard is openly derogatory about Alex and Ricky’s attendance which Alex shrugs off with a retort stating “don’t worry, we won’t disappoint you”. Gloria even says to Lisa “where did you find them?” while commenting about the way they dress and move as if they were from another planet. Clearly impressed by the villa and it’s contents Alex turns to Ricky and says “we’re among rich people”. 

It’s not long before things start getting awkward though, as Ricky is egged on to dance with Gloria. This is much to the amusement of the rest of the group, apart from Alex, who begins to look at the party makers with a sense of contempt. As the group continue to goad, Ricky believes they are impressed with his performance and he begins to up the ante by taking his clothes off while they start plying him with booze.

At this point, Alex has had enough of seeing his friend be mocked and tries (albeit aggressively) to explain that the group are laughing at him. Alex’s brotherly protectiveness of Ricky is actually quite sweet and shows that he does have some humanity – not much, but a little. Ricky protests by saying “don’t treat me like that Alex, I don’t like it”. 

To try and distract Alex from Ricky’s performance, Lisa takes him to one side which Alex uses as an opportunity to touch Lisa’s legs. Lisa seems quite comfortable with this, despite her boyfriend also being in the room, but as his hands begin moving closer to Lisa’s lady garden, she moves his hand away.

Shortly after Ricky has removed most of his clothes (only to put them back on again), the group decide to play poker. During this, Alex wanders off and finds Lisa in the kitchen. She lets him position her on a table while he kisses her legs. Her face starts off looking like she is enjoying it before changing to almost disgust and then leaves to take a shower. Alex follows Lisa up to the shower and he gets naked and joins her. Lisa is clearly using her femininity to draw Alex in but stops him before much physicality happens. True to form, after letting Alex scrub her back, Lisa offers to scrub him only to slyly leave whilst Alex has his back turned.

Displeased with being teased and feeling frustrated, Alex goes back downstairs. Alex soon realises the group have been cheating at poker, so Ricky has lost all his money. Alex calls the group out on fixing the cards and, upon being rumbled, Howard and Tom try to fight with Alex but he easily gains the upper hand. This fight almost seems like fun to Alex as he continues to quip throughout, up until he ends up holding Tom’s throat with his razor (remember that nifty bit of kit we mentioned earlier?). Alex forces the group to deal the cards again without cheating and Ricky wins. At this point, Alex says to Ricky he can pick whichever girl he wants as his prize. Obviously the women get no say in this. Ricky chooses Gloria. The way Alex begins talking about the women in the group as objects is disturbing, to say the least. Alex insists that Ricky has sex with Gloria on the sofa so they can all watch. Gloria is not happy about this and struggles whilst Ricky continues kissing and fondling her, all the while giggling as Alex looks on encouragingly. Alex seems to be enjoying the power he now has over the group.

Howard attempts to stop Ricky but is overpowered by Alex again, while exclaiming “Alex always gets what he wants and nobody, I mean nobody, gets in his way!”, I’m wondering if he is an only child. Talking about yourself in the third person is always a giveaway. Alex gives the blade to Ricky to keep the rest of the group in check, so Alex can continue to beat Howard outside. This results with Howard being pushed into the swimming pool and urinated on by Alex.

Alex then ties Howard to a table leg whilst Ricky locks all the doors and turns out some of the lights. I’m not sure why only some of the lights are turned off… Maybe Ricky is scared of the dark? There is a brief moment of calm while Alex lights a cigarette and Ricky looks around the room. It seems as though Ricky is beginning to have a change of heart as he looks at the scared and beaten faces of the group.

Alex takes Gloria over to a footstool and bends her over, tempting Ricky to continue to try and have sex with her. Ricky is clearly aroused by the prospect but the moral implications of what he is doing is starting to loom large in his mind, especially when Gloria begins shaking and crying. Alex goads Ricky to continue, to which Ricky finally breaks down and tells him to shut up, stating “she’s afraid, can’t you see, I don’t like to do it this way” and he begins to cry. We then see the hold Alex has over Ricky, almost like a playground bully, as he questions what Ricky has just said: “my best friend just told me to shut up”. We really see Ricky’s fear of Alex now and it makes me wonder how much of all of this stuff Ricky just goes along with out of fear of Alex, or the fear of losing Alex as a friend, or as I suspect, probably a bit of both. Having been bullied by someone who I thought was my friend, I can relate to this, or I could just be twisting what is on screen to something to which I can relate. Either way, the scene is very powerful and highlights just how well the two actors work together.

Alex tries to make an example of Ricky to the group, still asserting his authority, but Ricky is too upset to do what Alex wants. This shows a small crack in Alex’s control over the situation. In desperation to save face, Alex even tries to scare the group by saying “boo!” at them, as he stalks the room thinking of his next move – classic playground bully.

Alex says if Ricky isn’t going to have sex with Gloria then he will have to show how it is done. Predictably, he goes straight to Lisa and strongly implies he wants her to perform oral sex on him. Bizarrely, Lisa smiles at Alex just before she’s going to begin. Alex then pushes her away saying “she likes it!”. This could suggest that Alex is seriously warped and doesn’t want to engage in sexual activity consensually, which, if the case, is seriously fucked up. Glenda makes a run for the kitchen where she turns off some more lights. Alex breaks a bottle and hands it to Ricky to guard the group so he can grab hold of Glenda and begin to touch her. There are some nice scenes of Ricky exchanging looks with Gloria. Gloria is eyeing up the telephone, Ricky looks down at the broken bottle, back at Gloria, and it looks as though he feels ashamed about what he has become. Tom throws a chair to cause a distraction but it backfires as Alex then begins to attack him and repeatedly smash his face into the table. The violence here is brutal and looks very realistic and made even more unnerving by Ricky’s giggles in the background.

Gloria makes it to the phone while Ricky and Alex are distracted, and manages to call the police. Sadly, she is cut off mid call by Alex, who begins reciting a rather creepy version of “Little Miss Muffet”. Lisa makes a run for the upstairs and Alex leaves Gloria to follow her, leaving Ricky to once again guard the “rich arseholes”. 

Alex finds Lisa and forces her to take her clothes off while he too undresses. Then follows a scene which is a cut the BBFC attempted to make. Shameless appealed this and managed to reinstate the scene to this release of the film. From my perspective, it does not work and could be seen to purport a very twisted message. This is an ambiguous scene, to say the least. To sum up the ambiguity, Alex and Lisa have sex, or Alex rapes her. The music playing is quite fluffy and almost romantic. To begin with Lisa is resisting but Alex continues regardless. During the scene, Lisa appears to begin to enjoy the sex, kissing Alex and rolling on top of him. The sex scene itself isn’t overly graphic; if anything it is sensual and in normal circumstances would probably be labelled as love making.

Downstairs Ricky pleads with Glenda to put the lights back on as he “can’t keep control” of his head in the dark. This might be why only some of the lights were turned off earlier, as Ricky actually is scared of the dark, or the darkness in his head. It may have been a far nicer party had Alex brought a torch instead of a razor.

After Alex (and Lisa?) finish, Alex states “now that wasn’t so bad was it?”, clearly pleased he finally got to do what he has been after all evening. Lisa replies “it was disgusting”. After they rejoin the group downstairs, Alex goads Lisa to have sex with Glenda while teasing Tom, calling him a jealous faggot.

Suddenly, the doorbell rings! No, it’s not the police… Alex takes hold of Gloria, razor at throat, and tells her to open the door slowly. Alex takes a step back and hides the blade as he realises it isn’t the police or a threat. In comes a friend, Cindy, who immediately starts to flirt with Alex, right up until she spots the broken bottle in Ricky’s hand. As Cindy screams, Gloria runs out of the front door with Ricky chasing after her. He eventually catches up with her and throws the bottle away after being spooked by a passerby and his dog. Gloria runs away again only to be found again by Ricky who claims he doesn’t want to harm her and he breaks down again.

Gloria comforts him, caresses his cheek and they kiss. The films main theme plays again as we intercut between Alex cutting off Cindy’s clothes with the razor and Ricky and Gloria making love. Gloria is totally in control of this situation, it is her who is holding Ricky’s hand and placing it upon her breast. You get the sense this is the first time a woman has voluntarily showed any affection to Ricky. Of course at this stage it is wholly possible she is doing this to help get the upper hand and to ultimately stop Alex but Gloria’s affection seems genuine. I do wonder why it is they don’t contact the police BEFORE having sex… Or after, for that matter.

During the cutting of Cindy’s clothes, Alex sings a version of the main themes lullaby, replacing the word “sweetly” with “Cindy” which is very unnerving. 

After Ricky and Gloria have finished being intimate, they walk back to the house. Ricky wants to go back inside and convinces Gloria that he will be able to talk Alex round to stopping as they are friends. When Gloria mentions they need to notify the police, Ricky’s tone changes and says “you want me to rat on my friend Alex?” at which point Alex hears them and brings them back into the house. 

Alex tells Ricky that Cindy is “virgin territory” and that they are both going to rape her, Alex first and then Ricky. At this point Ricky proudly announces that he just had sex with Gloria and that he should have seen it, “she really got off on it!”. Gloria looks hurt by the way Ricky is talking about her but soon realises what he trying to do when he suggests to Alex that maybe they “should call it a night, we’ve had our fun.”

This does not go down well and Alex threatens Ricky with the blade before going back over to Cindy and begins slicing her naked body, mostly the arms, with the razor whilst Ricky pleads with him to stop. The BBFC insisted the shots of the razor cutting Cindy’s intimate parts, mainly her breasts and near her genitals, remained out of the film on the grounds of sexual violence. Ricky walks over to Alex to stop him and Alex cuts Ricky badly with the blade on his abdomen. In a state of shock, Ricky drops to the floor, bleeding badly as Alex walks up to him, blade in hand, looking like he is going to continue attacking Ricky, before dropping the razor. Alex starts comforting Ricky and asking him why did he turn against him? Alex is genuinely upset, starts to cry, and tells Ricky that it’s always been them together and that he shouldn’t go off with Gloria as he will only get hurt. Sobbing, Alex shouts that “they are trying to turn us against each other, what do they know about friendship anyway, I’ll get em.” while Ricky quietly tells Alex to stop.

During this scene, David A. Hess performs brilliantly, to the point that while he is comforting Ricky, I felt a little bit of sympathy toward him. I know he is the one who put Ricky into that state but the acting really draws one in.

As Alex gets up, retrieving his razor from the floor, Tom reaches for a gun in the nearby draw and tells Alex to stop. Alex stands up, hands in the air, and is shot in the leg by Tom. Alex tries to walk toward the patio doors and is shot again in the shoulder and he falls outside. Tom confronts Alex and tells him that the girl raped in the opening sequence was his sister and this was all a set up to lure them to the house, kill them and then tell the police that the two “hoodlums” had broken into the house and they shot them in self defence. Alex stands up, but is shot again by Tom, which leads to a slow motion reaction shot of Alex screaming in pain and falling into the swimming pool, which unfortunately isn’t completely successful and is a little bit much.

Lisa takes the gun and gleefully shoots Alex again while he is trying to swim to the side of the pool. Howard has been tied up all this time – remember him? Gloria unties him and Howard approaches Alex who has managed to climb out of the pool. Howard helps him up, only to quietly tell him that he is going to die, and pushes him back into the pool. Gloria is offered the gun but refuses. Howard goes inside the house and tells Ricky, who is still bleeding on the floor, that it is his turn but Gloria stops him as Ricky weeps.

The final scene shows Tom and Lisa discussing that the plan hadn’t quite worked as they had plotted. You think? Tom says to Lisa that he thought she found the experience thrilling. Lisa never actually confirms this but looking back she does seem to be up for “playing the game” with Alex. Tom calls the police and we cut to Alex, now dead, floating in the pool before the credits roll with “Sweetly” playing once more. Of course, they could have just shot Alex as soon as he entered the villa and saved Tom having his head repeatedly slammed into a table, Howard being beaten and pissed on, Lisa being penetrated, Glenda being molested and Cindy being cut to shreds by a razor but I suppose we wouldn’t have a movie then would we!

I went into this film with zero expectations and it really surprised me with how good it was. David A. Hess is brilliant as Alex, he is charismatic, volatile, intense and he is a magnetic screen presence. Giovanni Lombardo Radice is excellent as Ricky, being both sympathetic and unhinged and it’s the chemistry between these two lead actors that is the main driving force behind the film. Whilst the film depicts some atrocious acts of sexual assault and physical violence, it is the dynamic of Alex and Ricky that really kept me interested.

The music in the film is perfect, despite there technically only being a handful of tracks used throughout the runtime. The previously mentioned “Sweetly” is used to great effect and “Much More”, a disco track, is slickly produced and very catchy.

This is the sort of film that most people won’t find enjoyable, in fact, describing the film as enjoyable is an odd adjective. I was gripped and invested in what happened to the characters, so in that respect it was enjoyable, yet the actions of the characters are so grotesque that saying it was enjoyable feels like I might be some sort of psycho. 

I wouldn’t say I liked any of the characters from the group of friends, apart from maybe Gloria, because by and large they don’t show any signs of being nice people. I sympathise more with Alex and Ricky, the serial killer rapists (that’s a bold statement to make on the internet). Ricky is the most sympathetic out of the pair, as you do feel he is led astray by Alex and clearly their friendship is somewhat abusive. The fact that Ricky goes from laughing at someone having their head smashed in to looking like he is ashamed at what he and Alex are doing makes his redemptive story arc difficult to fully believe but when he is finally telling Alex to stop it is a relief as I genuinely wanted him to come good in the end.

The ambiguity of the sex/rape scene between Alex and Lisa is a problem but an interesting one. Lisa is shown teasing Alex from the off and maybe Tom is right, maybe Lisa was enjoying the thrill of the experience, the thrill of teasing this monster with her sexuality, but I certainly don’t think the film is saying that Lisa was asking to get raped.

Even after Alex has been killed, there is a sense that it wasn’t worth going through all of this as Tom’s sister still remains dead. Alex’s comment about being in the company of wealthy people sounds spookily predictive given that the group of friends will use the difference in social standing to explain the death of Alex to the police. The class war element doesn’t seem quite so relevant watching the film now but I would imagine this was a much more powerful plot point back when the film was made. It raises often asked questions in these types of films: who are the antagonists and who are the protagonists? – and does violence cause violence? The answers to those questions is, dunno and yes, it does.

The director is clearly on the side of Alex and Ricky, not that he is saying that rape and murder is ok but he makes the group of friends so stuck up and unlikeable. If I had to go for a drink with either Alex and Ricky or the rich yuppies at the villa, I’d choose the sociopaths every time. The moral of the film is blurred by the fact we are more invested in the “bad guys” but I can put that to one side to enjoy the performances and mood in the film. There are lots of films where the main characters are bad people, that doesn’t make them bad films, just look at Nicolas Winding Refn’s film, “Bronson” as an example. The difference between this and a film like “Bronson” though is that it doesn’t glamourise or try to make light of the awful things the main characters do, which is a strength of the film. The film seems to be saying that vengeance isn’t the same as justice, which is an interesting concept but it isn’t fully explored here. 

It is a brutal film but ultimately this has way more going on than perhaps people give it credit, this isn’t just a “video nasty”. “The House On The Edge Of The Park” should be remembered as one of the great achievements of Italian cinema of the period and I highly recommend it, but obviously, it’s a rape revenge film so it isn’t going to be everyone’s bag, and don’t watch it if you are looking for something to cheer yourself up… Maybe watch “Cannibal Holocaust” for that (definitely don’t do that).