Delivers Shocks To The Maximum ... Pushes The Limits Of Acceptability

Alex (David Hess) is a darkly, sinister thug driving around New York City at night when he spots a young woman (Karoline Mardeck) driving alongside him. He follows the woman to a nearby park where he cuts her off, gets out of his car, and runs into hers where he throws her into the back seat and proceeds to savagely rape her before strangling her to death. He takes her locket as a trophy to another one of his many killings.Some time later, Alex is with his working-class friend Ricky (Giovanni Lombardo Radice), both of whom work in a local mechanic garage which is closing up for the evening. Alex is planning to go 'boogying' at a local disco and Ricky is tagging along. Suddenly, a large Cadillac vehicle pulls into the underground garage which contains a young, well-dressed yuppie couple named Tom (Cristian Borromeo) and his girlfriend Lisa (Annie Belle) where they ask for assistance for their car's motor is making strange sounds. Alex refuses to help them saying that the garage is closed, and continues to refuse assistance even after Tom offers him money. But the slow-witted Ricky decides to help the couple and upon checking under the hood, finds a loose wire on the alternator and fixes it. Grateful, Tom tells Alex and Ricky that they are driving to a friend's house in New Jersey for a party, and Alex asks them if he and Ricky could tag along, and Tom agrees. Before closing up the garage for the night, Alex stops by his locker which is filled with various knives he uses to kill people. Alex picks out just one; a straight-edged razor, before closing up and getting into Tom and Lisa's car with Ricky for the drive to New Jersey.A little later, the four arrive at a large villa situated next to a large, dark, empty park where they are welcomed by the home's owner Gloria (Lorraine De Selle), and are introduced to her friends Glenda (Marie Claude Joseph), and Howard (Gabriele Di Giulio). But minutes after Alex and Ricky's arrival, there are signs of tension as it becomes obvious that the rich people are looking for kicks, as are Alex and Ricky. It first starts when Ricky is forced to make a fool of himself when Gloria asks him to do a striptease to some disco music, while he is further humiliated by forced to drink some hard liquor with each move he makes. But Alex stops Ricky before he can take it all off.While Tom, Howard, and Glenda play a card game of poker with Ricky, which is obviously rigged, Lisa begins sexually teasing Alex with her come-ons, and goes further to invite him to an upstairs bathroom to shower with her, only to push him away. As Alex grows more frustrated and angry, he later sees that the hosts are cheating at playing cards with Ricky. Finally, Alex pulls out the razor he has, and a fight breaks out between him and Howard. Alex throws Howard outside the back door where he endures a vicious beating and thrown into the backyard swimming pool, and further urinated upon by the laughing Alex, who drags Howard back inside and ties him to a piano leg, while he proclaims that he is running the party now.At this point, the movie descends into an unrelenting catalogue of abuse and humiliation as Alex and Ricky further beat on their hosts-turned-hostages with Alex slashing Tom's face with the razor, and beating his face into the poker table. Ricky holds the others at bay with a wine bottle and Alex corners Gloria and sexually fondles her. Lisa runs to an upstairs bedroom where she tries to escape, but Alex catches her and proceeds to rape her.Afterwards, Alex further humiliates Lisa and Glenda when the front doorbell rings. Forcing Gloria to answer, the visitor is revealed to be Cindy (Brigitte Petronio), a local teenage girl asking Gloria for what is going on with the party since the loud music is gone and most of the lights in the house are turned off. Alex grabs Cindy, while Gloria takes advantage of this to try to escape. Ricky, still holding the broken wine bottle, runs after her. Ricky finally catches up with Gloria on the perimeter of the grounds where she appeals to the dangerous, but dull-witted man, to let her go. Appealing to the woman's sensitive nature, Ricky shows Gloria that he means her no harm by throwing away the wine bottle. For no clear reason, Gloria responds to his suttle nature by stripping off her clothes and seducing him!Meanwhile back at the house, Alex cuts Cindy's blouse off with the razor while singing. Ricky takes Gloria back to the house where she makes him promise not to let Alex hurt her. Alex then forces Cindy to strip off her clothes, and proceeds to savagely slash her nude body with his razor over and over again. At this point, Ricky makes the astonishing observation that things are getting a little out of hand and attempts to stop Alex. Upset at being betrayed by his friend, Alex turns against Ricky and slashes his abdomen wide open, and then breaks down at what a mess he made of Ricky.Taking advantage of this distraction, the blooded and battered Tom runs into the nearby study and pulls out a 9mm pistol out from a desk drawer... and the tables are instantly turned. Tom shoots Alex a few times, and includes a fatal wound to his groin which throws Alex back out the glass back door and into the back yard. Gloria and the other women untie Howard, and the five hosts descend upon the fatally wounded Alex lying on the ground.It immediately becomes apparent to Alex (and the viewers) that this whole thing was a set up by the hosts to lure Alex and Ricky to their house to kill them. Tom removes the locket Alex is wearing and reveals the reason for all this: the woman that Alex raped and murdered in the opening scene was Tom's older sister and Tom wanted revenge, so he and Lisa wanted to lure them to Gloria's house and taunt them so they can kill them and make it look like self defense. Tom kicks the fatally wounded Alex into the backyard swimming pool as he and the rest of his friends, with the exception of Gloria, take turns shooting Alex, who trashes weakly in the water, before a final shot to the head by Howard finishes him for good.Returning to the house, Howard wants to shoot Ricky still lying wounded on the floor, but Gloria stops him saying they they will instead turn him into the police. Meanwhile, Glenda tends to the wounded Cindy. Tom and Lisa go into the study where they talk about this plan of revenge they had and if they went too far for it to work. Tom says that despite some mistakes and inconsistencies, that it worked out for the best, and then picks up the phone to call the police.

Orig. title:

House on the Edge of the Park

Genre: Horror, Drama, Thriller

Directed by: Ruggero Deodato

Starring: David Hess (Alex), Annie Belle (Lisa), Christian Borromeo (Tom), Giovanni Lombardo Radice (Ricky), Marie Claude Joseph (Glenda), Gabriele Di Giulio (Howard)

Screenplay: Gianfranco Clerici, Vincenzo Mannino

Country: Italy

Year: 1980

Score: 57 %