Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		5.0
Overall		3.5

House on the Edge of the Park Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 28, 2022

For fans of Brazilian jazz, there's only one Deodato, and that's Eumir, the fabulous keyboard player who managed to take his funky update of Richard Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra to the top of the charts in the seventies. The seventies saw another Deodato causing cultural zeitgeist ripples, albeit in the medium of film. With such sensational entries as Jungle Holocaust giving a bit of "preview" as to what the eighties would have in store for director Ruggero Deodato, that guy with the shared surname was about to actually become infamous in certain circles. 1980 in fact saw Deodato release his most notorious film, Cannibal Holocaust, to the screen, and as Deodato himself relates in a supplement included on this multi-disc set, House on the Edge of the Park owes its life (and/or death(s), as the case may be) to the fact that Deodato and his production team were able to bring Cannibal Holocaust in significantly under budget, so that they had a pile of cash lying around and burning a veritable hole in their collective pockets. And so in the good, old fashioned Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney "hey, we have a barn, let's put on a show" tradition, Deodato and his team simply decided to port those funds over into a new production whose plot was evidently based on some real life murders committed by wealthy kids in Italy. That said, both the "familiar" feeling with regard to the film's title and the fact that it stars David A. Hess will no doubt tether the film (as it was obviously meant to) to The Last House on the Left.

House on the Edge of the Park gets off to a blistering pre-credits start with what initially seems to be some innocent flirting going on between two drivers on a highway, one of whom turns out to be focal character Alex (David A. Hess). Alex is revealed to be anything but innocent, cornering the hapless woman and then sexually assaulting and killing her. As commentators Bruce Holecheck and Art Ettinger mention, this now makes two recent Blu-ray releases from Severin with a pre-credits rape scene, with the other being A Scream in the Streets, though at least (?) in this case the actress portraying the victim was Hess' wife.

The film just segues post-credits to Alex meeting up with friend Ricky (Giovanni Lombardo Radice) at a garage where they work, with them both planning to head out to the local disco to entertain themselves. When two wealthy looking people with car trouble arrive, and despite Alex's protestations, Ricky fixes the issue. The male of the couple, Tom (Christian Borromeo), invites the two guys to accompany Tom and his girlfriend Lisa (Annie Belle), to a party where they had been driving to, and so the stage is set for what could almost be thought of as a "reverse" home invasion thriller, since the obviously psychopathic Alex has been invited to a gathering where there will be a veritable slew of potential victims.

Things become increasingly lurid at a kind of palatial estate the quartet end up at, and a number of actually kind of interesting albeit unabashedly smarmy feeling interactions play out. There are a number of gratuitous sex scenes, along with other moments of nudity without any coupling taking place, but it's the underlying tension of a group of kind of privileged yuppie types figuring out their party isn't going as planned that gives the film some immediacy. For those who only know of Hess through his work in these quasi-exploitation films, he had actually had an absolutely fascinating life aside and apart from any work in the movie industry. In fact, in the music industry he was kind of weirdly cheated out of two major hits when he made the first recordings of "All Shook Up" and "Speedy Gonzales" (which he actually wrote). He seems to be a near perfect character for some contemporary auteur to fashion a biopic around.

House on the Edge of the Park Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

House on the Edge of the Park is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Severin Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. The back cover of the keepcase states that this was "scanned uncut in 4K from the original negative". While there's a kind of gritty lo-fi look to a lot of the cinematography, this presentation benefits from a good accounting of the palette and some excellent detail levels. While there's still some fairly recurrent damage that can be spotted which made it through whatever restoration gauntlet was undertaken, it tends to be relatively minor and can often be in the form of either black nicks or white flecks. Some of the darkest material can suffer from slight deficits in shadow definition, and a couple of times blacks looked like they were just starting to tip over into purple-blue territory. Grain resolves naturally throughout and I noticed no compression issues of any kind.

House on the Edge of the Park Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

House on the Edge of the Park features DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono tracks in either English or Italian. As is typical with Italian films of this era, you're getting dubbing one way or the other, and as such as other labels are prone to state, "sync can be loose". While the overall mixes are similar, to my ears the Italian track sounds just a bit hotter and brighter (especially in the upper registers) than the English track. Dialogue and Riz Ortolani's surprisingly sweet sounding score are supported without any issues whatsoever. Optional English subtitles are available.

House on the Edge of the Park Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Disc One - Feature Film

• Audio Commentary by Bruce Holecheck (Cinema Arcana) and Art Ettinger (Ultra Violent)


• The Man Who Loved Women (HD; 31:50) is an interview with director Ruggero Deodato. Subtitled in English.


• Lights On (HD; 12:03) is an interview with cinematographer Sergio D'Offizi. Subtitled in English.


• Like a Prairie Dog (HD; 37:08) is an interview with Giovanni Lombardo Radice, who portrays Ricky in the film.


• External Beauty and Internal Ugliness (HD; 22:53) is an archival interview with star David Hess.


• House Sweet House (HD; 26:13) is an interview with set designer Antonello Geleng. Subtitled in English.


• Gallery (HD; 6:34)


• Trailer (HD; 2:41)

Disc Two - Deodato Holocaust

• Deodato Holocaust (HD; 1:11:33) is a really entertaining journey with Deodato as he reminisces about his long career. Subtitled in English.


• Deleted Scenes (HD; 00:29, 00:35, 3:11, 3:08, 1:21, 1:25, 1:26, 2:18, 1:05, 1:58, 1:01, 2:01, 00:24), are authored kind of weirdly in that there's no submenu listing them and they've been authored separately (as indicated by their timecodes), though they do move on automatically to the next one. There are some kind of hilarious nuggets buried here, including some trenchant comments by Deodato on films like Blair Witch. All of these are subtitles in English.


• Trailer (HD; 1:15)

Disc Three - Soundtrack CD offers Riz Ortolani's enjoyable score, which has a few (Eumir) Deodato-esque moments.

Additionally, packaging features a slipbox with some memorable key art.

House on the Edge of the Park Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Speaking of that other Deodato, one of my favorite relatively recent tunes of his was his collaboration with the late Al Jarreau called Double Face, and in that regard I wonder if House on the Edge of the Park might have created more tension by not revealing Alex as the psychopathic monster that he is in the film's very first scene, and had instead gone for a little ambiguity (i.e., been "double faced") instead. As it stands, the tension exists simply by dint of the fact that the audience knows mayhem is going to break out, and what ends up happening may not match the horror of the opening vignette. House on the Edge of the Park is not always successful, but it's often viscerally unsettling. Severin is offering generally solid technical merits along with a really impressive aggregation of supplements, for anyone who may be considering making a purchase.