House at the Edge of the Park 1980

 In Wes Craven's Last House on the Left David A. Hess proved he could play a psychopathic dirt bag.  In 1980's The House on the Edge of the Park he once again gets to prove that fact.  He is basically playing the same character so it's no surprise that this one is a brutal exploitation film that was banned in the UK as a "video nasty" In order to pass British censors it needed nearly 12 minutes cut from the original version.  Fear not though because we here at The Man Hole have the full 91 minute version to watch.  The film was directed by Ruggero Deodato who was also responsible for another film Cannibal Holocaust which is widely considered to be the most controversial and gruesome film ever recorded.  Cannibal Holocaust is also considered to be the first "found footage" horror movie like Blair Witch Project.  Gianfranco Clerici and Vincenzo Mannino shared screenwriting duties with the former also writing the screenplay for Cannibal Holocaust. 

This one isn't for the easily offended of the feint of heart.  It's disturbing; extremely so.  Lots of rape and torture scenes.  If you are a fan of Last House you will like this one as well.  What we have is a film with Hess the psychopath with a knife helping and forcing his mentally challenged best friend Ricky to rape and torture a house full of social elites.  Here's the kicker the social elites are almost as unlikable as the two villains.  Of course Hess does his job well as Alex and Giovanni Lombardo Radice (Ricky) is convincing as just wanting to do whatever makes Alex happy and a sympathetic character when he decides Alex has gone too far.  Before co-starring here some of the female actresses were in soft core porn so nudity was nothing for them. 

I honestly don't know how to feel about this movie.  The best I can do is compare how this film made me feel with how I felt about Last House on the Left.  With Last House I felt the story was good but the violence and gore was a bit excessive and in fact a few times I considered turning the movie off but I did manage to make it through.  Last House suffered from a small budget and it could have been planned out better and perhaps there would have been a better film.  This one while I never considered turning it off I still don't think I enjoyed it.  Don't get me wrong I'm glad I watched it, most movies be they good, bad, or somewhere in between I'm glad I've seen.  Usually it is to tell others about it and encourage them to see it.  Or, to warn them away.  While I won't warn you away from this one, I will say unless this is a genre you are interested in you won't like this film.  The ending, while hard to believe, is interesting and it does help the movie a bit I still can only manage 2 Straight Razors out of 5 for this one.  That's purely on the job the actors do here and just for the fact that the creators wanted to make a disturbing film, well they certainly did that.  For some reason Denise, The Horror Honey liked a tiny bit more than I did (not sure why or how) and gave it 2 and a half out of 5.  Sometimes I worry about her. Either way we have a new leader in the Clunker of the Month category.  Now here's another huge announcement I need to lay on you all:  Starting today we will be going to 3 movies a day.  We're in the home stretch and we have a week left until the big day.  Keep checking back as we will be posting more throughout the day and every day until the Halloween day free for all, more on that later.  And of course as always thanks for reading.