6.5 | / 10 |
Users | 4.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Two lowlife punks invite themselves to a party at a posh villa and after being taunted by their snobbish hosts, hold everybody hostage and subject them to various torture and mayhem.
Starring: David Hess, Annie Belle, Christian Borromeo, Giovanni Lombardo Radice, Marie Claude JosephHorror | 100% |
Thriller | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
Italian: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
English SDH
Blu-ray Disc
Three-disc set (2 BDs, 1 CD)
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 5.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
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 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 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.
Disc One - Feature Film
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.
La casa sperduta nel parco | Limited Edition to 1500
1980
La casa sperduta nel parco
1980
La casa sperduta nel parco
1980
La casa sperduta nel parco
1980
2014
2013
2015
2012
2015
1981
Day of the Woman
1978
2013
2018
2014
2012
1989
Unrated Edition
2006
Unrated Director's Cut
2009
Unrated
2010
2019
Hellraiser 8
2005
2013
2012
1972