A posh couple experience car trouble on their way to a villa party and stop into a local mechanic's shop for assistance, unaware of his shady background. After he and his mentally challenged assistant fix the car, the couple invite them to the party to return the favor, leading to an evening of mayhem.
Trampa para un violador, La Maison au fond du parc, Der Schlitzer, Ház a park szélén, A Armadilha, A Casa no Fundo do Parque, Дом на краю парка, 公园旁的凶屋, Dom na skraju parku, 포카 살인, Farlig indbydelse, 真夜中の狂気
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One of the outright sleaziest movies to come out of the Italian horror golden years and also one of my favorites. It’s not hard to see why some people hate it because it is a difficult watch, although if I’m totally honest it’s never been as hard for me as it probably should have been? Maybe that’s because all of the abuse is the human kind and not on animals or maybe it’s just because I’m completely dead inside. Who can say?
I love a lot of the cast here from other movies, but David Hess is the true standout as an absolute nightmare of a garbage person. Just the absolute worst, beating and raping and yelling his way through…
Scary monsters under the bed, shadows on the wall and ghosts hiding in the attic are no match for the sheer terror of having David Hess in your home.
Fucking jesus, this is wedged firmly in the apex of the inverted peak of exploitation. Bottom of the barrel sleaze cemented to the wood after fermenting in its own juices and being forgotten about. Spores of vitriol and sordid night time grow on top of despicable black mould and putrid trapped gas. Deodato needed fucking power tools to get it off, even after taking the layer of Cannibal Holocaust off the top of it with a sledgehammer and chisel.
David Hess spreading his specific brand of slime across proceedings, right from the hell of the opening scene. It spreads like sadistic algae into an upper class home and suffocates good times under its impenetrable sordid mass, constantly writhing and pulsating…
It was shot on a shoestring budget three weeks after the filmmaker wrapped production on his best-known film, Cannibal Holocaust, and is in some ways a remake of The Last House on the Left.
This is a very violent and nasty film that will most likely rub many people the wrong way, as one would expect from a film with such a director and description. Many scenes made me anxious, while others were somewhat cathartic. The soundtrack, especially the song with the choir children singing, offers a beautiful haunting, dreamlike vibe to the movie, almost as if you're stuck in a nightmare, but instead of being dark and dreary, it's almost cynically brightful, and that aura of almost innocence feels…
A sleazy, Italian exploitationer, directed by the infamous Ruggero Deodato, and starring the one and only David Hess.
Somehow House on the Edge of the Park is more tame than I remembered it being? Or maybe I have just become desensitized by watching so much depravity over the years. Hess is still a nasty creep of course, and his antics made me want to take a shower after watching the movie, but I have definitely seen much worse.
What I (still) haven't seen is Wes Craven's The Last House on the Left, for which I am deeply ashamed. 🙈
Good times watching this with Michelle [her review], who started screaming when David Hess’ penis made an appearance. 🍆
Like a cruel sledgehammer of misery House on the Edge of the Park crushes every last piece of moralistic dignity. Easily one of Deodato's most polished and mean spirited films, a slow building claustrophobic dreadfest that escalates into a whirlwind of perversion and deviance. Stylish, gritty and bleak it provides a mesmerizing juxtaposition of lavish visuals and intense violence. The swanky party atmosphere is the perfect environment to be exploited into a nihilistic nightmare.
David Hess commands the screen with diabolical ferocity during one of his finest performances. The guy was just so perfect at being super sinister yet oddly charming. I don't know who would decide to invite him to a party though! Actually I would totally invite him over after he charmed the crap out of me. Only to have him shank me in my face after losing at a game of Monopoly!
I'm going to need to shower off the fifth after this one!
Rewatch after approx. 25 years. The Code Red Blu-ray looks good. But damn... what a nasty film.
Mean spirited home invasion exploitation from Cannibal Holocaust director Ruggero Deodato. The House on the Edge of the Park takes obvious influence from The Last House on the Left, right down the casting of proficient scumbag David Hess in the lead. There's a streak of classism underpinning the plot, with Hess and his sidekick (Giovanni Lombardo Radice) inviting themselves to an upper class get-together, only to find themselves the butt of the joke until the tables are predictably turned. I mean, you just don't bring a straight razor to a party for nothing do you. The film is a real maelstrom of sex, violence and sexualised violence with barely any respite in between. David Hess is not the likable villain…
As a horror fan, you're bound to come across judgemental people who ask questions like, "what's wrong with you?" and "why do you like this?".
Next time you encounter someone like that, show them House on the Edge of the Park.
Then, they'll never speak to you again. Problem solved.
“There are so many guys strutting around with great bulges in their pants. When you’re down to the nitty gritty, you find out they’re only there for the decoration.”
Spooky Season #6
I appreciate knocking another Deodato classic off of my watchlist, but I thought that it’d be… more gross? Once again, David Hess proves himself to be the best at playing super-sleazoids, essentially a horror genre analogue to the deeply disturbed characters that Jamie Gillis played so well in the X-rated industry at the time, like in Water Power, Skin-Flicks and Roommates. I’m sure there’s something to be said in analyzing the meaning/impact of the hypersexualized New York Jewish man in these kinds of roles; Hess sure has a pronounced appetite here, whether for…
Typical for Deodato in that it's fairly intense, largely stupid, and wildly repellent. A bougie couple invite a couple of creeps (one of whom we already know is a rapist and murderer -- played by David Hess, natch) up to their friend's mansion for a "party". At first it looks like this'll feint and end up being about a decadent upper class being as foul as their disgusting guest, and there are some gestures in that direction to be sure (mostly after a truly ridiculous final twist), but overall this is a 90-minute excuse for nasty misogyny and graphic, ooky sex scenes. The sleaze lover in me found a lot to like here but everyone else should probably bail.
