Video Nasty #13: The House on the Edge of the Park

Synopsis: Mentally challenged Ricky and his psychotic italian american friend Alex have been invited to a middle class house party after fixing the host's car. Quickly annoyed by frustrating sex games and a rigged game of poker, Alex holds the party hostage and takes revenge in the most despicable manner.

Like Night Train Murders, The House on the Edge of the Park is a 'rape revenge' movie clearly inspired by The Last House on the Left. In fact, David Hess all but reprises his role from Last House on the Left as the ring leader of the atrocities when the party goes wrong. And it doesn't take long. The condescending guests cheer the mentally incapacitated Ricky on as he boogies and strips to the cheesy disco, desperate to impress his new friends. Alex is clearly disgusted with their behaviour, and turns his attention to the advances of Lisa, the blonde who invited them to the party. Lisa's sexual games frustrate Alex, and when he discovers the party guests have conned Ricky out of money in a bent game of poker a lame fight kicks off, with Alex and his switch blade coming out as the winner. Ricky thinks they should leave but Alex makes it clear they're in for the long haul 'You must be cartooning', he says, 'the best is yet to come. Now we're gonna have some fun with these cunts'. And so begins Alex's prolonged torture, mutilation and rape of the guests.


The next 40 minutes are very tense, the guest's lame attempts to escape always foiled at the last second. An astonishing 11 minutes and 43 seconds were cut from the later half of the film to satisfy the BBFC. The story remains mostly intact, the biggest consequence being the the film's only murder being mostly left on the cutting room floor, creating some extremely annoying and incongruous cuts. I can only assume that I had same issue with the film as the BBFC. I was slightly perturbed by the way the female characters were represented in the film, they all appeared to be sluts and after a struggle enjoying being raped. Thankfully, my concerns were mostly resolved by the nonsensical twist at the end of the film.

The House on the Edge of Park has one of the dumbest twists i've ever seen on film, and i've seen M. Night Shamalan's back catalogue. Just when it seems that all hope is lost, one of the guests reveals a gun and shoots Alex in the leg. He explains that Alex raped and killed his sister last year (something we see at the start of the film), and that the whole party has been an elaborate ploy to take his revenge on Alex, making his eventual murder look like self defence. This explains the sexual teasing, apparent enjoyment of rape, and fixing the card game; it was all done to make Alex flip. Here's the stupid thing: For some unknown reason they'd let Alex rape, mutilate and, in one case kill so they could take their revenge safe from prosecution. And they never explained how they knew it was Alex who had killed his sister.


As with the director's previous film, Cannibal Holocaust, we are treated to some unsubtle dialog to hammer home some of the psuedo-intellectual themes of the film; the true cost of violent revenge and if enjoying it makes us as bad as our enemy. 'It's all over', the brother says after killing his sister's murderer. 'But at what price?' his girlfriend replies (rape, mutilation and death, btw.). Just incase you don't get the message, he replies 'but you found it exciting didn't you?'.

Despite the ridiculous ending and the fact I was watching the heavily censored BBFC approved cut, I really enjoyed The House on the Edge of the Park. The film is shot well, manages to maintain tension through out and has surprisingly good performances, especially from Giovanni Lombardo Radice (Ricky) and David Hess (Alex). Now I really need to watch The Last House on the Left