ON THE LIST: House On The Edge Of The Park

Two of the major associates of House On The Edge Of The Park had previously found notoriety, and placement on the Video Nasty list before this 1980 collaboration. Director Ruggero Deodato rose to infamy with his previous film Cannibal Holocaust, not only paving the way for the torrent of 'found footage' horrors we face today, but creating such a convincing film that he was formally charged with murdering his actors, and was forced to bring them to court to prove they were still alive! Star David Hess launched his acting career as Krug Stillo in Wes Craven's Last House On The Left. In fact, after Deodato watched Last House, he was so desperate to team up with Hess that he offered him half of all the movie's takings. Regardless of whether or not this happened, the two made their first of an eventual six collaborations, and started a lifelong friendship.

House On The Edge Of The Park is very different to Cannibal Holocaust and Last House, except for the kind of violence it portrays. The plot hangs on a revelation at the end. For this reason, I shall hereby declare a ***SPOILER ALERT***. The movie begins on a bold note,  with scatty cuts between the New York City skyline and lead antagonist Alex (David Hess) driving at night. He eyes up a young woman driving alongside him (Karoline Mardeck - Hess' wife under a pseudonym) and runs her off the road before raping and strangling her. This sort of sets the mood for the rest of the movie, and is the vital key to the remainder of the story.

Sometime after (we find out later a year has passed), Alex is in the garage he works in with his buddy Ricky, who is played with such fluency by Giovanni Lombardo Radice that we don't need to guess if he's all there in the head. This actor has quite extraordinary eyes, which are pivotal to us interpreting Ricky. He looks at times quite vacant, with a sideways expression, but when he straightens up and looks dead on, he is very engaging and unsettling. Alex is shutting up shop and dressing in a way-too-tight yellow suit to 'go boogyin'', when a young rich couple, Tom and Lisa (Christian Borromeo and Annie Belle) roll up with a false complaint of car trouble. Alex wants to boogie, and the couple are on their way to a get-together, so Alex basically invites himself along, and the couple are hardly resistent.

The running theme of class conflict is introduced quite early on, with Lisa condescendingly asking Alex about his living. When they get to the gorgeous pad where the party's at, Howard (Gabriele Di Giulio), Gloria (Lorraine De Selle) and Glenda (Marie Claude Joseph) are waiting. They, too, are unperturbed by the unexpected presence of Alex and Ricky, and everyone starts off having a swell time. Ricky is eager to demonstrate his dance skills, much to the odd enjoyment of the young rich folk, who laugh and yell things like 'Hot diggity!' and 'Strip! Strip!' Ricky's easy coercion by the latter exclamation displeases Alex, who grabs his friends and demands that he stops humiliating himself for the enjoyment of the rich bastards.

So instead they suggest a Poker game. While Ricky is busy getting his ass kicked and his money taken, Alex quickly pursues the sly smiles and batting eyes of Lisa, who pointedly informs him that she's off for a shower. Right at the beginning of a party. OK... She teases him into the shower with her, before making a quick exit and angering him greatly. This puts Alex's real character into motion, and where we may have first assumed that Deodato cast Hess for an effective reprisal of Krug, Alex is quite different. Hess himself noted the intelligence levels of the two characters: while Krug is very cunning and controlled, Alex is childish, stroppy and loud when he doesn't get his own way.

When he returns downstairs and realises Ricky is being cheated in the Poker game, out comes the razor blade Alex decidedly took with him from the garage, and the party turns into a violent home invasion/hostage situation. This part lasts a long time, and sees every member of the 'Young Rich' players being either beaten, threatened or sort-of raped. The rape is the difficult bit, and not really because it is very upsetting, but because it is difficult to class as 'rape'. Two of the three women seem to show some sort of genuine sexual interest in the men - Gloria to Ricky and Lisa to Alex - and when these two couples each eventually have sex, it plays out in quite a passionate and pleasing manner. Lisa having spent a good time being a serious cocktease, Alex feels entitled to payout from her, and although she hesitantly undresses, she soon appears perfectly consensual. Gloria and Ricky share a very sensual scene out in the garden.

Anyway, after Alex and Ricky have had their fill of the present guests, the doorbell rings, and gorgeous young Cindy (Brigitte Petronio) from across the street is here. Where the others take one or another opportunity to manipulate or attack the fellas, Cindy takes none, or rather doesn't get the opportunity. She is stripped naked and slashed up by Alex, in the scene most often noted in 'censorship'-related writings. Her role is not an active one; perhaps it only exists to emphasise Alex's callous cruelty. But - in another touch I'm sure Hess himself added - Alex leers over the girl, extensively, grimly singing a lullaby to her, and it is unnervingly menacing.


But while all this is going on, Tom (who looks strikingly like River Phoenix) finally reaches the gun in the drawer, and Alex having accidentally stabbed Ricky in a fit of juvenile rage, the tables most definitely turn. Ricky is bleeding out, and Alex is at gun point, and Tom drops the bomb...the girl at the beginning of the movie was his sister, and this whole night was a set-up on their part. Wow...so taking in this shocking piece of information, let us reassess everything we have just seen. As a precursor to the revenge of the rape of one girl, six people allow themselves to be beaten, humiliated and sexually assaulted. Some may say that's a little nonsensical or counterproductive. They could be right. Or we just imagine that they are hardcore yuppies who know that two dead street guys in their palatial house would spell one thing to the police: self-defense during break-in. These guys really fight hard for their cause.

Well, after all the havoc he's caused, it's only right that Alex gets a quick, painless execution shot to the forehead, right? Nah, these guys are hardcore remember? So after no less than three bullets to the torso, the youngsters do the unthinkable...BULLET TO THE DICK! This is my absolute favourite sequence in the movie. Because immediately the film cuts to Alex's face in slow-mo, from the moment of impact throughout the recognition of pain, and the effects of this on face and voice are tremendously heightened by the dragging pace. It is true, that as well as being very creative and effective, this sequence is easy to laugh about. I wonder if that is a trick by Deodato, that after such ceaseless aggression and intimidation by Alex, we are finally in a position to laugh at him, to mock him. It carries out upon the audience the same mental switch of dominance that the characters themselves feel.

So after the brutal shot to the shlong, Alex falls back into the swimming pool, and Howard stalks the water's edge, finding himself in a position Alex was in earlier, in which he continually kicked Howard back into the water, and pissed on his head. Howard drags Alex out of the water, offering help. Alex, finally looking like the child he acts, gazes up at his rescuer, wrapping his arms around his neck. He is finally helpless. Howard then throws him back into the pool, where Tom and Lisa take turns in shooting him finally dead, leaving his body floating on the water. I really like the ending of House on the Edge of the Park for the dauntless way in which it reaps what it sows. David Hess' sinister onscreen presence often allows little room for sympathy (except for the beautiful Remorse sequence in Last House), but with Alex he boldly tapped into a vulnerability that we somehow felt was always there, waiting to be provoked, which he responds to with cynicism and violence.

ON THE LIST: Cannibal Ferox (1981)

Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust set a whole flesh-eating trend in motion back in the early '80s, being one of six titles on the Video Nasty list to feature the word 'cannibal'. Many quite correct allusions have been drawn between Holocaust and Ferox, with a particularly blinding one that is handled totally incorrectly in the latter. But there are also some quite major differences between the two that make Ferox a viewing experience dissimilar to Holocaust.

Ferox starts off, as Holocaust does, in New York City, on a bright sunny day, following a funky lookin' cat with a funky disco soundtrack. He goes to an apartment looking for his smack dealer Mike, only to be confronted by two other, dodgier lookin' fellas, also looking for Mike as he owes them $100,000. They shoot the guy dead in the apartment. Then we cut to Paraguay, where siblings Rudy (Danilo Mattei) and Gloria (Lorraine de Selle) begin to believe they have made a mistake by bringing their 'insecure' friend Pat (Zora Kerova) on their vacation with them. Well, hardly a vacation. Gloria is writing her PhD anthropology dissertation, and intends to prove that 'cannibalism as an organised practise of human society does not and never has existed.' This should already strike the average viewer as a bit of a long shot, so why an anthropologist would believe this enough to trek out into the wilderness is perhaps a little beyond us. But we'll go with the flow.

After Pat has taken part in a very metaphorical 'shower' with the local authority, the trio pack their things onto a rickety ferry (including an abysmally parked Jeep) and are off into the jungle. Genius Rudy manages to sink the Jeep in muddy bogs twice in no more than two minutes, the second time rendering the vehicle useless. So they abandon the expensive mobile quite happily and continue on foot. In the jungle they very soon come across their first live native, nonchalantly noshing on bugs, and then their first dead native, with one impaled and a second wedged between a tree and a giant spiked ball. In a crucially different way to the young film crew in Holocaust, the friends show disgust and horror at their findings, and immediately try to help the two victims, despite the futility. These three are seemingly decent human beings, with all their moral and sympathetic tendencies in order.

Then, somewhat unexpectedly, they run into two American guys, Joe (Walter Lucchini) and Mike (Giovanni Lombardo Radice). Joe is injured and traumatised, and Mike is a tough-talking cokehead, with a pouch of his poison hanging around his neck. This little trinket immediately draws Pat's interest. Well, it's a safe bet that this cokehead Mike is the same dealer Mike those guys in NY were after. Mike tells a tale of horror: he, Joe and their Portugese guide were captured and tortured by a local tribe, who apparently took enough of a disliking to the guide to castrate him and eat his genitals. They supposedly got away with the help of two locals - the very ones the trio found dead earlier. But immediately we know something's not right. Joe is visibly distressed, and keeps interrupting Mike's storytelling, insisting that 'that's enough' and 'they don't wanna hear that.'

At first everybody gets along just fine, but the next morning Gloria is missing, and is eventually found in one of those hole-in-the-ground traps. In there with her is a pig. Mike remorselessly butchers the poor creature with a knife, much to Gloria's horror. He is increasingly aggressive, and quite obviously a raging coke fiend. Meanwhile, Rudy and Joe have ventured to the tribe's village looking for Gloria, and come across the charred remains of what is believed to be the Portugese guide. But again, Joe acts shifty, and begs that they go back. Something's definitely not right. Especially seeing as the elderly and youths of the tribe who remain after the supposed ordeal with Mike and Joe, do not seem threatening in the slightest, but actually very afraid of the now five-strong group.


Joe's injury becomes infected and he quickly turns sickly and delirious. In his fever, he confesses to Rudy and Gloria what really happened to them, or rather what they caused. Turns out the fellas came to the jungle to prospect emeralds, and take advantage of local coke supplies, but when a week of work turned out not a single gem, Mike got sniffed out of his head and castrated, tortured and killed the guide. I guess here would be a good point to talk about Lombardo Radice. Due to his use of pseudonym John Morghen, I didn't realise while watching the movie that it was none other than simple-minded Ricky from Deodato's House on the Edge of the Park, making this a reunion between Lombardo Radice and De Selle. Ricky was a rather pitiful character, whose childish trust found him almost coerced into cruelty. Mike needs to such motivation. He seems to think solely in terms of violence, which he proves once the tables have turned, and he is still yelling death threats at the natives.

Poor Joe dies, and Gloria and Rudy decide that the tribe will seek retribution from all of them, not just their aggressors (which seems stupid and illogical, but apparently true), and when they find Pat and Mike have run away with all their equipment and supplies, decide now's the time to make a run for it. But they are caught, reunited with the also captive Pat and Mike, and given front row seats to the matinee performance of Mike's Comeuppance. Unfortunately they don't seem to have anticipated this performance as highly as we have and it is met with mixed to negative reviews. I, however, enjoyed it immensely. It's fair to say that after Mike's shenanigans, a good old revenge castration was in order. But rather than let him bleed out, they take the time to cauterise the wound.How thoughtful. Until my partner pointed out: his urethra is now sealed off too. His bladder's gonna blow up like a blueberry! Ouch.


The group are then taken to another village for the suffering to continue. The girls are shoved down a hole, Rudy is shot and killed with a poisoned dart, and Mike has more to come...obviously! Whilst down the hole, Pat is well and truly freaking out, while Gloria is perhaps not freaking out enough. She suggests they sing to demonstrate their unity and courage, but also theorises with words what Cannibal Holocaust did with images: the tribes only became cannibalistic when threatened by outside forces, so who were the real barbarians? This was a very well illustrated idea in Holocaust, but it feels both too soon and too simple for such a message just a year after Deodato's movie.

I have just realised that my Video Nasty reviews are rather in-depth, and analyse most movies from beginning to end. Perhaps this is a good format, but perhaps a little long winded - I want you to be left with some things unexpected. So I'll now move on to the film's ending. We have one survivor, Gloria, who is seen being presented with her PhD, looking rather forlorn. It is revealed that her dissertation ended up covering the entire truth of cannibalism, presumably on the basis of what she said earlier to Pat. This revelation is somewhat destructive: Gloria's own brother was killed during the expedition, yet she feels it's better to lie to her parents (supposedly) about her brother's fate in order to save the tribe an undeserved reputation. For the greater good, maybe that's a good thing. But from a grieving parent's perspective, that's pretty shitty.

Cannibal Ferox must be compared with Cannibal Holocaust. One striking thing about Ferox is that the actual on-screen violence is far more scarce. The aftermath, like severed penises and skewered breasts, is shown, but the piercings and severings not so much. In fact, there is more infamous animal violence visible than simulated human violence. Ferox for some reason carries on Holocaust's detested tradition of live animal killings on-screen, but the majority of it is actually inflicted on animals by other animals. It's obviously set-up nature is no less disturbing, and we even get a brand new Turtle Death, which plays out in a very similar way to Holocaust. But I've already been there, done it and regretted it, so I actually averted my gaze when it came.

It is filmed and narrated in a typical movie style, with an invisible camera crew following a bunch of characters from all angles who can't see them. It's far more of an action picture than Holocaust as it lacks the documentary-style realism. That may be one reason why it's not so effective. It may also be that we've seen a very similar scenario before, and done better. It's an entertaining enough watch for something of its genre, but far more put-together than Holocaust. The dialogue is rather scripted, the incidents similarly. The one thing that struck me as unexpected was actually the appearance of Mike and Joe early on. It feels lacking in a sense of dread and cruelty which was so prevalent in Holocaust. It is cleaner and far more produced, and feels rather like it was riding on the back of Holocaust's infamy. But it is good, and must be credited for its horror star cast.

Voices of Desire (1972)

I should probably clear up straight away that Voices of Desire is in no way a 'Nasty', and is just barely a horror film. My review of it has ended up on Video Nasty for the same reason I was led to track down this barely-known softcore skinflick in the first place: The Sandra Cassell Mystery. Probably the most puzzling figure to be part of Wes Craven's Last House On The Left crew, was beautiful young Sandra Cassell (or Peabody), who played Mari Collingwood. She was glorious to look at, and a very good actress. But her post-Last House career is shrouded by different sources giving very different stories. In David Szulkin's book about the movie, which contains her only known interview, she stated that she only made one other movie after Last House (though its production year is unknown) entitled The Seven Deadly Sins, with the untraceable Horse Killer, and Filthiest Show In Town preceding in 1971. This apparently concludes the acting career of Cassell, except for two soap operas and a handful of commercials, before she went on to television production and acting coaching.

However, the world wide wonder of the Internet, offered a few alternatives. Her IMDb page became somewhat plagued by a poster who claimed to be a member of Cassell's family, and vehemently insisted that she only ever made Last House on the Left. They also passionately decried that she didn't make 'porn', and that that was a different Sandra Cassell. This dispute apparently forced Wikipedia to recognise the difference of the two women, one being a porn actress, the other being just an actress. However, her current Wiki page spells her name Cassel, yet the movies in which she used this pseudonym credit her as Cassell. Well, there is no record of a porn actress named Sandra Cassell, spelt with one or two Ls, and yet there are a couple of titles now credited to the one and only Ms Cassell, which could be the key to the confusion.

From 1970 to 1976, Sandra is accredited to: The Model Hunters, Love-In '72, The Last House On The Left, Voices of Desire, Filthiest Show in Town, Legacy of Satan, Teenage Hitch-Hikers, and Massage Parlor Hookers. It's true, these titles do have a certain undercurrent of sex and horror to them. Despite my copious reading, I have only actually seen two of these movies. However, research suggests that Cassell's career consisted mainly of softcore sex films. That is, plenty of sex scenes, but no actual penetration is shown. So for all we know, it's all just faked. But then, given the nature of the industry - and certainly it seemed plausible with Voices of Desire - it could be that the movies were acted and filmed pornographically, and then penetration shots edited out or reframed for a 'regular' audience.

So, on to Voices of Desire itself, which is by no means porn. If it is, then so is Basic Instinct, Last Tango in Paris, etc. Not to really compare Voices of Desire to either of these titles in terms of quality. It quite magically captures a tiny little window in a funky era, and the picture quality and sound are rather minimal. You can only begin to guess the kind of budget and equipment they had for this shoestring flick as you watch, but there is something so delightfully reminiscent about those sorts of elements. We are introduced to Anna (Cassell), who sheepishly makes her way into a detective's office, to tell of an ordeal she has experienced, which is told in flashbacks:

See? That's most definitely Mari Collingwood!

She receives a call at a telephone booth in the city one day, and hears eery voices calling her name. This seems to set off some kind of weird possession. Later, at home, she is suddenly overcome by a nymphomaniacal force, which first manipulates her hands (in a sort of pre-Evil Dead haunted hand thing), and then her whole body, at which point she gives herself over to absolute pleasure...a fruit bowl. This scene is somewhat hilarious, and quite lengthy, but credit to her: Cassell comes up with far more imaginative things to do sexually with fruit than I could ever think of!

 The possession leads her to a creepy mansion, where she is repeatedly seduced by a gang of ghoulish looking hosts. Not to say there's only men - there are women also eager to get it on with their mesmerized captive. There are several sex scenes involving Cassell, who appears totally nude and not in the least bit hesitant. She looks like she's genuinely enjoying herself as she frolics between two men. There is also a scene or two between another girl being held in the mansion and a guy. This is the scene which looks totally pornographic, except for any explicit penetration. Perhaps these two actors were regular hardcore performers, where Cassell stuck to the softcore stuff. Anyway, that's the basic plot of Voices of Desire. A couple of escape attempts are made, but Anna is ultimately overcome by her possessed hands, and the range of pale gaunt lovers on offer.

There's another guy underneath her, by the way.

At the end, we flash back to the present, where Anna is regaling her romps to the detective. His explanation is far from helpful. It's to the effect of "Oh yeah, there was a massive muder/suicide thing up in that very house some twenty years ago. You obviously heard about that and just imagined the rest", just without the sarcasm. Defeated, Anna wanders back out into the city, where she is deafened by the voices once again. The final shot is of the door to the house being thrown open, with all her lovers there waiting for her. Literally the last shot, there aren't even any closing credits. Perhaps there were once, but they got lost on the way between a handful of drive-in theatres, and the attic some guy must have eventually pulled the movie from when it was converted to a DVD format (which, by the way, is one of those homemade style DVD releases. Don't bother searching in HMV.)

Sandra Cassell is cute and very appealing as a leading lady, and here is credited as Liyda Cassell. Voices of Desire was directed by the late legend of soft- and hardcore Chuck Vincent, whose work I am yet to familiarise myself with, but this movie most definitely has style, to the point where you may even refer to it as 'arty' in a very guerrilla way. By today's vomit-inducing standards, Voices of Desire is most certainly not porn, and it probably takes more of a sentimental person like myself to enjoy it. It is far more appealing to see lovers enjoying and embracing each other's bodies than abusing and objectifying them. This is a fun, relatively sexy, delight from the long lost annals of psychedelia.