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Review by Ben Bussey

Okay. At least 600 words on a movie about man-eating sharks that swim in the sand instead of the sea. I can do this. Of course I can. Never mind that it basically requires no review as the title, DVD cover and trailer tell you all you need to know. Never mind that it retreads the exact same territory that countless low budget creature features have over the decades. Never mind that it’s designed to be essentially critic-proof, as it wears its outright stupidity as a badge of honour; accuse it of being inane, uninventive, lazy, badly written, badly directed, badly shot, badly acted and sporting pathetic special effects, and those responsible will no doubt laugh, cheer and insist that was entirely the point, smiling down from their ivory tower of ironic detachment.

Sigh. Breathe. Breathe.

Alright, here’s the thing. Being a bit ironic will only float you so far. True, this kind of monster movie is not an especially demanding proposition, but certain criteria must be met: good monsters, attractive locations, similarly attractive and (where possible) endearing performers, a sense of humour, and decent set-pieces. And, particularly if it’s a DTV deal like this one, a hefty side order of gratuitous gore and nudity wouldn’t go amiss either.

So, just how much of this does Sand Sharks deliver, I hear you ask? Well… tempted as I am to score it a big fat zero, that might be a little harsh. The creature design isn’t completely awful, the sandy beaches are pleasant enough, and the cast aren’t necessarily the worst-looking, least-likeable ensemble you’ll ever come across. But as for everything else… yeesh. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: just because a film is knowingly shit doesn’t keep it from being actually shit. And so it is with Sand Sharks.

We have the classic ensemble of also-rans: Corin Nemec, AKA the one from Stargate SG-1 who wasn’t Daniel Jackson; Vanessa Lee Evigan, daughter of Greg (My Two Dads) and less bankable sister of Brianna (Sorority Row, Burning Bright); Brooke Hogan, by-product of Hulkamania. With a line-up as (ahem) star-studded as that, it’s no wonder everything else is cut-price, particularly once we reach the climactic super-awesome beach party which has all of twenty people in attendance. And of course the budget isn’t there for too much creature action, so the gaps are filled in with… gulp… plot and dialogue. And all the while, because it’s clearly intended for the SyFy Channel, nobody gets to swear, nobody gets laid, nobody even comes close to getting naked. Sure, there’s a smidgeon of blood and guts, but otherwise it’s all so safe and sanitary they could show this at church camp. They even go so far as to have a brief moment when a girl is about to remove her bikini top, before a sand shark jumps up and chows down (and that non-money shot even appears in the trailer below). Obviously this is meant to be a little joke, but it just leaves the viewer wondering what the point is.

It doesn’t matter how closely you imitate key scenes and lines from Jaws, saying shit like “You’re gonna need a bigger beach.” It doesn’t matter that Brooke Hogan makes a Roger Corman reference (Sand Sharks is of course being distributed by Corman’s AWP), in-between spouting marine biological blather in such a manner as to make Denise Richards in The World Is Not Enough suddenly seem entirely credible as a nuclear physicist. It doesn’t matter how hard Corin Nemec tries to channel Bruce Campbell. Sometimes a shit, stupid film is just a shit, stupid film, no matter how hard they ram the tongue into the cheek. That’s over 600 words now, isn’t it…?

Chelsea Films release Sand Sharks to Region 2 DVD from 9th January 2012. Happy New Fucking Year.

Review by Ben Bussey

Sex, mental illness, Japan: these are at the heart of both these films. I should stress straight away that, while I’ve chosen to review the films together, they are not being sold together; they are from neither the same filmmakers nor the same distributor, and were made almost two decades apart. However, given how close they are in concept and theme, Tokyo Decadence and Guilty of Romance make for an appropriate double bill. That said, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend watching them back to back, unless you relish the prospect of spending around four hours being numbed by the sight of emotionally bankrupt individuals degrading themselves in the desperate search for something resembling feeling. A thought-provoking evening’s entertainment, for sure, but not likely to leave you in a particularly sunny state of mind.

I feel I should also confess right away that Tokyo Decadence has been sitting on my shelf for a couple of months now; it was released back-to-back with The Cheerleaders/Revenge of the Cheerleaders (now there’s some strange bedfellows) as the first releases of new Arrow sub-label Arrowdrome Erotic. At first I told myself the reason I put off writing it up was that I didn’t think it was entirely appropriate for Brutal As Hell; not an argument that holds up, I admit, given that I went ahead and reviewed the decidedly non-horror Cheerleaders movies. No, the truth of it is I avoided writing it up because I was intimidated. Yes, I said it. We hardened, unfeeling web critics can still be colossal fannies on occasion. I was intimidated because Tokyo Decadence is a hard film to surmise; straightforward in narrative terms, but more complex on a psychological level. Then, on sitting down to watch Guilty of Romance, I couldn’t help but note the many similarities between the two films. As well as both being made in Japan and centring on young women in the sex trade, both films defy genre boundaries and easy explanation. However, I can confidently declare this much about both: they may focus heavily on sex, but I would not class either of them as erotic films. The sex here is compulsive, cold, hard, emotionless, with very little pleasure involved.

Tokyo Decadence AKA Topâzu (1992) was written and directed by Ryū Murakami, adapted from his own novel (and if you needed further evidence that this is not going to be a happy tale, Murakami also wrote the source novel of Audition). Miho Nikaido stars as Ai, a young woman who works as an S&M prostitute. Taking an almost fly-on-the-wall approach, the film follows Ai through a series of jobs in which either she or the client is humiliated. The big question, however, is quite how and why someone as extraordinarily shy, naïve and insecure as Ai got into this line of work; but as much as she is employed to fill some kind of void for her clients, it becomes clear that Ai has quite a void of her own in need of filling (stop sniggering at the back).

Very much an arthouse film, Tokyo Decadence unfolds at a languid pace, shot mostly in long takes with minimal dialogue and music, subsequently leaving the S&M content as the main focal point. Little surprise, then, that the film has a chequered past with censors worldwide: one of the earliest NC-17s in the US, it was banned outright in Australia and South Korea, and had around twenty minutes trimmed (presumably by the distributors) before being first submitted to the BBFC. Now granted an uncut UK release for the first time, it’s not hard to see why the prudes were not amused given the presence of dildos, erotic asphyxiation, piss-drinking and so on. Given how little there is in the way of plot, we can imagine how easily the censors could dismiss such scenes as ‘decontextualised depravity’ and claim this as justification for their censorship, much in the way the BBFC recently justified banning The Bunny Game. Such an argument would, of course, be very lazy indeed; just because Murakami doesn’t spell things out for us in black and white doesn’t mean there’s nothing going on between the lines. It’s not the easiest film to read, I’ll grant you, but it’s definitely saying something about the potentially destructive power of desire; kind of like Hellraiser, but without all the murder, regenerated corpses and extradimensional sadomasochists. Oh, and in case there was ever any doubt that censors are harsher on independent arthouse films than they are on mainstream studio output, it’s worth noting that Tokyo Decadence was released in the same year that the global box office was dominated by Basic Instinct.

By contrast with Murakami’s film, Shion Sono’s Guilty of Romance AKA Koi no tsumi (2011), while still not exactly laugh-a-minute stuff, is not quite so dour an affair. Aesthetically it’s far more stylised, with a bold colour scheme and prominent use of piano-based classical music; there is a thick, dark streak of humour underlying proceedings; there are moments, however brief, in which the participants do seem to be taking actual satisfaction from their debauched behaviour. (And, if I may be entirely candid, I pity anyone who can take no pleasure from the sight of Megumi Kagurazaka in states of undress. I am a feeble, predictable straight male who crumbles at the sight of women’s breasts, and hers are astonishing.) Factor in the framing device of a murder mystery – the action intermittently flashing forward to police officers investigating the gruesome homicide of an initially unidentified woman – and the result is a considerably more accessible, conventionally plot-driven film than Tokyo Decadence. Even so, it’s still liable to push the panic buttons of the prudish.

Izumi (Kagurazaka) is the image of a dutiful housewife, wed to successful novelist Yukio (Kanj Tsuda) who specialises in romantic fiction yet is emotionally detached in everyday life. Working away from home, he leaves at the same time every morning and gets back at the same time every night, and given how fastidiously Izumi ensures his slippers and tea are ready it’s apparent he has beaten this routine into her, figuratively or literally. Anxious to get out, Izumi timidly persuades Yukio to let her take part-time work, which she finds at a supermarket deli handing out free samples of sausage (told you there was humour). Here she is approached and offered work by a woman who claims to be a modelling agent; either through naïveté or a desperation for any kind of a new life experience, Izumi accepts, and inevitably the work turns out to be in porn. But as she tumbles further down the rabbit hole of her new double life, Izumi encounters Mitsuko (Makoto Togashi), a woman leading quite the double life of her own as both a prostitute and a literature professor. Mitsuko takes Izumi under her wing and teaches her the trade, kind of like a Yoda or Mr Miyagi in clear heels. But – if this really needs to be said – Mitsuko clearly has major issues, and is lining Izumi up for something more than just selling her body.

I’m not sure if I’m at a significant disadvantage having to date never seen any of Shion Sono’s other films, but he’s a filmmaker I’ve long since heard good things about; I understand this is the final part of his ‘hate’ trilogy, following from Love Exposure and Cold Fish. It doesn’t seem unfair to assume that Murakami’s film may have influenced Sono’s work here, but we certainly couldn’t class it as a rip-off. Many reviews have also noted echoes of Belle De Jour, which are readily apparent. However, considering the film as a product of 2011, it’s also easy to relate it to the likes of A Serbian Film and Red White and Blue; it’s not that I assume either to have necessarily been a direct influence, but rather that in common with those films Guilty of Romance seems symptomatic of a new breed of extreme psychosexual melodrama, wherein the ferocity and joylessness of the onscreen sexual activity results in scenes more unnerving than most screen violence.

I’ll admit, I do find it difficult to discern quite what the overriding message of either Tokyo Decadence or Guilty of Romance really is. In a curious way, neither film is too far removed from the kind of early exploitation that Doris Wishman pioneered; films which purport to be cautionary tales demonstrating the terrible consequences of sin, whilst gleefully displaying as much sinful behaviour as possible. We meet both Ai and Izumi on slippery slopes, and the implication is that neither of them have any hope of getting back up again. Are we then to interpret these films as condemning open female sexuality, and by association reaffirming the patriarchal order? Or are these instead films of a feminist leaning, highlighting how women are demonised within this patriarchy? Or, as an IMDb reviewer says of Guilty of Romance, are they simply “a constant male masturbation fantasy with a few literature references tossed in to justify it?” Neither film presents easy answers, but each raises questions worth pondering. Once again, an appropriate double bill in thematic terms, but be warned that watching them back to back could potentially have a seriously detrimental effect on your libido.

Tokyo Decadence is available now on DVD from Arrowdrome Erotic; Guilty of Romance is released to DVD and Blu-Ray on November 28th from Eureka. (Note that the Guilty of Romance Blu-Ray also features the original cut, some 30 minutes longer than the cut reviewed here.)

Review by Ben Bussey

An hour and a half of non-stop trailers might not sound like the most entertaining way to spend an evening. However, when the trailers in question are for some of the most ridiculous looking films you’ve ever seen (or, more likely, never seen), plumbing the far reaches of Z-grade horror, ultraviolence, sexploitation, blaxploitaton, hicksploitation, rape revenge, chop-socky and more besides, some of us might just take a second glance. And so, Nucleus Films gives us the Grindhouse Trailer Classics, a series of DVDs featuring nothing but the best/worst trailers from the best/worst era for the best/worst schlock cinema the world has ever seen. The series has now reached Volume 3, but don’t worry if, like myself, you haven’t seen the first two; I get the feeling there isn’t much in the way of narrative continuity here. Smirk.

Nostalgia is a curious impulse, especially when it’s for an era that you didn’t actually live through yourself. I get that there’s a great deal of nostalgia for a cinema experience that is now lost; Marc kind of touched on it recently in his tribute to New York’s 42nd Street. For myself, being a child of the 1980s – i.e. the home video era – I never had the dubious pleasure of the grindhouse experience, and it seems that with each decade that passes entertainment becomes that bit more oriented toward an individual experience, as opposed to the shared experience that grindhouse cinema offered. I get the impression that this sense of unholy communion is the key thing that the new grindhouse revival is trying to achieve, or at least in part. Still, while the the likes of Run! Bitch Run!, Hobo With A Shotgun, and of course Planet Terror and Death Proof have gone to pains to recapture the vibe of that bygone age, I don’t think any of them have been entirely successful. Perhaps it’s impossible to do so; perhaps the grindhouse experience is (or was) contingent on being in an actual grindhouse environment, and that to attempt to recreate that atmosphere in the digital age, in the multiplex or more likely the living room, is ultimately an exercise in futility.

However, we can say this of our neo-grindhouse pioneers Joseph Guzman, Jason Eisner and co: they have made films that most agree play considerably better with a large audience, preferably a raucous and intoxicated one. They are not intended to be viewed with the same critical scrutiny as other kinds of film; the audience is expected to cast aside all sense of good taste and mainstream sensibility, and indulge ourselves on a sensual, lustful, visceral level.

Hmm. Did I just go off on a self-indulgent pseudo-academic tangent there? Quite possibly. Come on, you can’t exactly expect a conventional review here; this is a compilation of obscure 70s film trailers we’re talking about. Anyway, I should hope you get my basic point; grindhouse expects us to abandon our intellectual faculties and sink into a frenzied, horny, bloodthirsty mob mentality, if only for a little while. So it is with Grindhouse Trailer Classics 3. Indeed, the fact that it’s quite literally an extended montage of nudity, violence, absurdity and distastefulness makes it even easier to adopt the preferred mindset. And if for your viewing experience you can get a roomful of likeminded individuals under the influence of your preferred illicit substances, then all the better.

I won’t delve too deeply into the specifics of the trailers; with a great many of these, most of the entertainment value comes from the surprise laugh you get when the inevitably absurd title and/or concept is revealed. Some titles are less obscure than others, such the Pam Grier vehicle Black Mama White Mama, Ivan Reitman’s Cannibal Girls (released by Nucleus earlier in the year and reviewed here), and the British proto-slasher Beware My Brethren (which is refered to here as Beware of the Brethren, and was also released to DVD this year as The Fiend; once again, see my review here). There are also more than a few familiar faces: besides the aforementioned Ms Grier (and inevitably her frequent co-star Sid Haig) we have Peter Fonda, Robert Shaw, Martin Landau, Ursula Andress, and perhaps most surprisingly Veronica Lake in what turned out to be her final role. But as a general rule of thumb, the more obscure the film, the more entertaining the trailer; those are the ones with the most horrendous dialogue, obvious dubbing and imagery so ridiculous you can’t quite believe what you’re seeing. All of it looks as messy, scratchy and discoloured as I should think it possibly can on DVD; I’d say it’s safe to assume no digital remastering took place.

The main question that may come to mind about Grindhouse Trailer Classics is whether or not people will be willing to part with cash for a DVD of nothing but trailers, when nowadays such things can easily be found on Youtube. Of course, it’s unlikely Nucleus would be releasing a third volume if the first two hadn’t sold. And as I’m one of those old-fashioned types who has no intention of getting a Kindle, prefers CDs to iTunes, and refuses to download films, I’m glad to see physical artefacts of this kind are still being produced. They make for a nice little time capsule and, given that we find the contents so bizarre barely four decades after they were produced, who knows what future generations will make of them? Now there’s an idea. Buy Grindhouse Trailer Classics 3, bury it in the back garden, leave instructions for your grandkids to dig it up, and if by good fortune you’re still around then, watch their reaction. Wouldn’t that make for a healthy family bonding experience?

Also featuring an introduction and interview with Kim Newman, offering his personal reflections on the grindhouse era, Nucleus Films release Grindhouse Trailer Classics 3 to DVD on 5th December.

Review by Stephanie Scaife

Deadly Blessing was a weird one for me because, despite being directed by Wes Craven and starring Sharon Stone (in her first speaking role no less), I’d never heard of it before sitting down to watch this new DVD release from our good friends at Arrow Video. Turns out there was good reason for me never having seen or heard of this film, being that it is entirely forgettable to the point where I didn’t have the time to do the review immediately after watching it the first time and ended up having to go back and re-watch it again a couple of weeks later due to the fact that I honestly couldn’t really remember what had happened. It’s one of those horror films that you come across with depressing frequency: it is neither good enough to like nor bad enough to hate, it merely exists.

Sandwiched in-between The Hills Have Eyes and Swamp Thing, Deadly Blessing is a strange but lacklustre film that becomes increasingly befuddled as it plods along to its ending. The plot centres around a religious cult known as the Hittites led by Isaiah Schmidt, played with relish and a complete lack of subtlety by Ernest Borgnine, who was actually nominated for the Razzie for Worst Supporting Actor for this role (unfortunately losing out to Steve Forrest for his role in Mommie Dearest). We’re told fairly early on in the film that the Hittites “make the Amish look like Swingers,” just to let you know just how damned uptight and crazy these people are.

 Jim Schmidt was born into the Hitties but has apparently been shunned after marrying city girl Martha and getting himself a tractor, yet he still lives right next door so they are able hurl abuse at him and call Martha an “incubus” at every given opportunity. Then after Jim’s mysterious death two of Martha’s friends, Lana (Sharon Stone) and Vicky (Susan Buckner), come to stay with her to help her through her grieving process and attempt to talk her into moving away from the crazy religious weirdos, who increasingly step up their harassment of Martha and her friends after an incident involving Michael Berryman turning up dead in Martha’s “forbidden place”, or barn as it’s more commonly known. Even after the unexplained deaths, the fact that snakes are dropped into bath tubs, spiders are dropped into mouths and there are even what I think to be zombie chickens (!), Martha resolutely refuses to move. Her friends decide to stick around too, because they must be having so much fun after all. Vicky even develops a relationship with Jim’s brother John (Jeff East), a practising Hittite who seems more than a little keen to be lured over to the dark side by this pretty blonde who insists on jogging bra-less, despite already being betrothed to Melissa (Colleen Riley).

There’s also something weird going on with Martha’s other neighbours; a young artist named Faith (Lisa Hartman) and her Spooky mother Louisa (Lois Nettleton). Faith brings Martha a lot eggs and is also the brunt of just as much “incubus” abuse against her by the Hittites, most of the time it’s not really clear why, but I guess that’s irrelevant especially by the time we get to the bonkers yet surprisingly unsurprising ending. This is due to its constant and heavy sign posting throughout the entire movie. To say more would be a major plot spoiler, and it really is a bizarre choice on behalf of the writers, but it was also the only real part of the film that I hadn’t forgotten, which says something I guess. So at least Deadly Blessings can lay claim to an unforgettable ending along with its creative use of Rod Stewart on the soundtrack, which was honestly more terrifying than any of the set pieces, which are actually decidedly quite mild and unscary. Bringing me to the main flaw in Deadly Blessing – it isn’t scary. Not at all.

Another slightly odd choice from Arrow Video, as it’s far from a cult classic despite its credentials and daft ending, and not a film I’d be in a rush to recommend. However there is some fun to be had here, primarily in the shape of Ernest Borgnine and a scare scene involving chickens, but really the entire thing is sort of just incoherent and forgettable. Even the usual Arrow Package of extras and fun stuff is lacking here as the disc includes an interview and introduction by Michael Berryman, an interview with one of the screenwriters, Glenn M. Benest and a trailer.

Arrow’s Region 0 DVD of Deadly Blessing is in original 1.78:1 Anamorphic Aspect Ration with original mono 1.0 audio and is released in the UK on November 28th.

Review by Ben Bussey.

Finally, it’s the film that David Lean never got to complete… ahem, I mean, it’s the film within a film from Joseph Guzman’s Run! Bitch Run!, brought to life as a complete feature in its own right, Machete style. It has yet to get a US release owing to what I gather is a pretty major legal battle, but it’s been readily available in the UK since April. So, revelling in my British superiority like a baddie in a Mel Gibson movie, I picked it up and checked it out. Well, okay, I did so at Marc’s behest; he’s a big fan of Run! Bitch Run!, having given the film – and I quote – his “thumbs up my ass stamp of approval for showing some balls and taking some real chances.”  (Read his full review here.) This colourful language is somewhat appropriate, given the nature of the film in question. Still, while I can see where Marc’s coming from, I’d be lying if I said Run! Bitch Run! worked quite so well for me. With its core premise of a convent school girl turning to an avenging angel following the murder of her friend and her own torture and rape at the hands of drug-pushing pimp low-lives, it’s clearly out to tick all the boxes for a rough and ready grindhouse/exploitation movie. The problem, as Marc mentions in his review, is that it seems to owe more to Rodriguez and Tarantino’s Grindhouse than the original 70s sleazefests that inspired it, and for me it just came off a bit too contrived.

As for Nude Nuns with Big Guns: the key problem is, it’s ultimately little more than a direct retread of its predecessor. But then, dependent on your point of view, that needn’t be a problem at all. If you’re in the pro-Run! Bitch Run! camp, then you might be up for it; if you’re not, then you won’t. But even if you come to Nude Nuns with Big Guns without having seen Run! Bitch Run!, you needn’t worry as it won’t take you long to get to grips with things. Where Guzman’s last film had a schoolgirl in an Elle Driver-esque nurse’s uniform, his latest has a nun out for bloody satisfaction against brutal bikers and corrupt clergymen. That aside, it’s pretty much business as usual.

Now, the title may immediately cause problems for the nitpickers among us. Despite the use of the plural ‘Nuns’ in the title, the action focuses on a single nun, Sister Sarah (Asun Ortega), and she certainly isn’t nude at all times. Which is not to say this film does not have female nudity in abundance; in common with its predecessor, hardly a minute passes without some bare flesh, and more or less every actress in the film bares all. A few of them wind up getting raped as well. Offensive enough for you? No? Well, a lot of this happens with the full knowledge and/or participation of priests, all of whom are as crooked as the day is long. They even have the nuns in a drug lab, making them work naked aside from their wimples. Still not offensive enough for you? Well, did I mention that one of the men responsible for a fair amount of the aforementioned raping is a very muscular black biker named Kick Stand?

Also, I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that Joseph Guzman was brought up Christian. It tends to be the case, doesn’t it, that those who take the most joy in defiling Christian iconography are those that were smothered by it when growing up, be they Aleister Crowley or Ken Russell. Me, I never had that experience; my upbringing was fairly relaxed and relatively secular, and while there’s plenty I could say against the church, such sentiments don’t resonate with me on so personal a level. Maybe that’s why I’m not quite so tickled by priests acting like mobsters, heading to the confessional saying “I could do with a good jerk-off story,” or by Sister Sarah blowing away a criminal priest by shooting him in the sign of the cross, or using rosary beads for garotting.

Yes, in case you hadn’t noticed, flagrant offensiveness is the name of the game, and it’s all done in so deliberate and pointed a manner that to criticize the film for being in poor taste would be to rather miss the point. So once you get past all that, is there more to appreciate from Nude Nuns with Big Guns? Well, once more there’s a massive debt to those figureheads of contemporary grindhouse, particularly Rodriguez. The opening title music is practically identical to Planet Terror; there’s a strip club named the Titty Flicker, the name emblazoned in a neon sign not too dissimilar to that of the Titty Twister; there are innumerable scenes lifted almost verbatim from Desperado, from a similar use of mariachi music, to moments of Sister Sarah’s fellow nun lover Angelina (Aycil Yeltan) standing in for Steve Buscemi in spreading the story of the avenging nun, and questioning whether her vengeance is truly holy. Hmm; it gives one pause for thought as to how Desperado would have gone down with audiences if Buscemi and Banderas had been lovers too.

The main thing I can say in favour of Guzman is that, while he’s clearly working on a shoestring, there’s no doubt he has a considerably better grasp on the craft of putting a film together than many working at his level; everything looks good, sounds good and makes sense, which certainly can’t always be said of microbudget horror/exploitation nowadays. When all’s said and done, Nude Nuns with Big Guns just wasn’t quite my cup of tea. But if you hate the church, love lipstick lesbianism, don’t object to sexual violence and like your movies with the smoky taste of south-of-the-border sleaze, there may well be fun to be had. I couldn’t say how long it will be before an official US release comes along, so if y’all Americans fancy tracking down the Region 2 DVD you might like to know that it features a trailer (not the one below), the original short film which formed the basis for the feature, plus the full length version of a ranting televangelist which appears in clip form in the movie.

Nude Nuns With Big Guns is available now on Region 2 DVD from Spirit Entertainment.

Review by Keri O’Shea

When a legendary genre film star passes away, fans often take that as an opportunity to revisit their most compelling work. It’s a mark of respect. It reminds us of how we came to know that name in the first place. Well, as much as this is often true, in my case, this was my first-ever viewing of The House on the Edge of the Park: not only had I waited a long time to see this movie, but I was coming to it under poignant circumstances which I know you’ll all understand. With the inimitable Mr. Hess introducing the film and featuring heavily in this DVD release’s extras, it was hard not to see this as a swansong release of sorts – but, what a swansong. David Hess, you excelled at your job. You will be missed.

Hess excelled at what he did because he embodied menace so well. This is exactly what Annie summed up in her eulogy to Hess: the discrepancy between the nice guy she knew and that terrifying presence on-screen is quite something. In keeping with this, The House on the Edge of the Park is not a friendly work. It starts nasty, and it stays nasty, albeit without being a straightforward story of bad guys wreaking havoc. The film works so well due to its ambiguities. Immoral car mechanic Alex (Hess) knows how to have a good time, and he will have himself a good time utterly at the expense of his fellow man (or more likely, woman), treating them as collateral – whilst his best friend, the mentally-challenged Ricky (Giovanni Lombardo Radice) is always there for him, although he lacks the wicked sense of purpose of the more dominant of the two. When they get held up on their way to a night out by a late-night repair job, for a couple of moneyed people on their way to a house party on the right side of the tracks, they decide to go along. The rich pair are happy enough with this, and why? It’s because Alex is charming, charismatic, plausible – like a lot of the best crazies – whilst his friend Ricky is obviously harmless. But, wait – is there more to it than that? The idle rich they meet seem to treat them like a novelty act, encouraging Ricky to strip for their amusement, and teasing them both with the promise of sex. Who is exploiting who here? When a thwarted Alex suspects that their hosts are cheating Ricky at poker, tensions soon escalate. It’s time to shift the power balance, and Alex sees to that in a series of ways more psychologically gruelling than grisly – not that they’re any the weaker for that. Far from it.

Let’s make one thing very clear: this entire movie is underpinned by sex – typically sleazy, forced, thwarted, or dysfunctional in some way. Rape, a standard exploitation motif which is used so much less frequently these days, is a common occurrence throughout, and the juxtaposition of sex with fear and violence originally sent the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) into banning meltdown because the organisation felt that blurring sex and violence on-screen could blur them off-screen. Ack. It’s a question dealt with in detail in the extras on this release (see below) but, suffice to say, consensual sex is rare in The House on the Edge of the Park, and perhaps questionably so even then. Nudity is full and frequent accordingly, although for all the hot air about conflating sex with violence, bloody violence is actually rather low in the mix. This film works far more by intimidation. That’s where Hess comes in. Even without the revelatory first scenes which establish Hess as a Bad Man, I think I would have felt the same unease I did throughout the movie. I felt lots of things throughout, but anxiety was one of the strongest emotions, and I was definitely always waiting for something terrible to happen, regardless of how benign things appeared to be (at least on the surface). Hess exudes the sort of gravity from which you cannot avert your gaze.

One of the other things I felt – and something I initially felt uncomfortable with, in light of what actually happens in the film – was sympathy for the devil. It was difficult not to empathise with Alex, just as it was difficult not to empathise with another Alex from a certain movie called A Clockwork Orange. Neither of these are straightforward boogeymen. Hess’s character is brutal, but there’s a sort of joy to him, too. Thanks to the ambiguous behaviour of the party hosts, it’s impossible not to see that some of his behaviour is provoked (if not therefore justified). Ricky, also, can be cruel, but I was never unequivocally sure how much of that he was responsible for – either because of his obvious mental difficulties, or his relationship to Alex. In fact, if any character is truly brutalised here then to my mind it’s Ricky: certain scenes involving a certain young woman called Cindy might indeed be cruel, but Ricky is mistreated throughout and by everyone. The rich householders regard both guests as lesser beings, though, and the class elements of this film are hard to miss. Alex is switched on enough to see what’s going on in that respect, and happy to deliver some not-so subtle reminders to the “rich assholes” that he and Ricky now call the shots. Or do they? Can they? There’s that ambiguity again, as well as another reason you might empathise with the ‘villains’ of the piece.

Strong performances from all the cast, Deodato’s skilled filming and the mother of all incongruous soundtracks ( you will be singing ‘Sweetly, O Sweetly’ afterwards) help to make The House on the Edge of the Park what it is: pure exploitation gold, unafraid to plumb the depths of the human condition and layer outrage upon outrage for its viewers. It’s taken me this long to see it; I will definitely be watching this again.

This Shameless DVD is of very high quality, with bright colours, sharp definition and good audio, plus a host of extras. One of these is a twenty-minute interview segment featuring Hess and Deodato discussing the film, with some interesting thoughts about theme, morality, and the difference between filming in Europe and the US. (This is no puff piece, either, and both men talk openly about the personal differences they’d had during filming). Then there’s an extensive extra – not originally intended for release – featuring the patron saint of the British anti-censorship movement, Professor Martin Barker, speaking at the CineExcess festival about the types of data and analysis used to justify extensive cuts and bans. There’s then a right to reply for the BBFC; it’s a fairly academic extra, but interesting and relevant, especially now that the BBFC seem to be gearing up for another fight with horror audiences. In a separate segment, David Hess discusses the cuts made to The House on the Edge of the Park, before we’re shown a list of those cuts. The film’s theatrical trailer is also present on the disc. All in all this is an exhaustive, well put together release.

Shameless release The House on the Edge of the Park to DVD from 31st October.