The House on the Edge of the Park
The House on the Edge of the Park is a 1980 film from Italy, directed by Ruggero Deodato, running 94 minutes. reelscum files it under video nasty and roughie.
- Year
- 1980 · 1980s films
- Country
- Italy
- Runtime
- 94 min
- Director
- Ruggero Deodato
- Updated
- 30 Oct 2026
- Obscurity
- cult (39/100)
- Banned in
- UK
Defined in the glossary: Video nasty, Roughie
A prosecuted DPP video nasty, released with nearly 12 minutes cut in 2002 and not passed uncut in Britain until 2022.
Deodato points Last House at a dinner party. Grubby, mean, effective.
Made right after Cannibal Holocaust, Ruggero Deodato's home-invasion picture takes the Last House on the Left setup and drops it into a plush villa full of rich people who should have kept the door shut. David Hess, the original Last House villain, plays another leering brute who talks his way into a dinner party and turns the evening into a siege. Britain banned it as a DPP video nasty and hauled it into court, which was the intention as much as an accident. It is ugly on purpose, sleazy and cruel, with Hess frightening and Riz Ortolani's lovely score sitting incongruously on top. A class-revenge twist arrives late to complicate your disgust. Deodato shoots the squalor with a control the material has no right to, and it sticks to you.
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The cycle in depth
- Banned, cut and confiscated
A Fulci print flown out of the country, an Australian rating that just means no, and a German court that filed The Evil Dead under criminal violence. Three states, three machines for making a film disappear.
- The Exorcist was banned on video in Britain by one censor
The Exorcist passed uncut for British cinemas in 1974, then had no legal UK video release from 1988 to 1999 because one censor would not certify the tape.
On these lists
- Nastiest of the nasties
The tapes the DPP put on its seize-on-sight list. Prosecuting them in a country with ferries to France was the best advertising any of them ever got.
Filed alongside
Contamination
Alien via Rome, with exploding chests and a Goblin score doing heavy lifting.
The Immoral Mr. Teas
Historically pivotal, formally inert. Watch ten minutes and read about the rest.
Vixen!
The one that made the money and triggered the obscenity fight.
Killer Nun
Anita Ekberg, morphine, and a plot that gives up around the hour mark.
Supervixens
Meyer's biggest hit of the decade, and his cartoon violence at its most cartoonish.
Cannibal Apocalypse
Vietnam veterans as cannibals. Sillier and kinder than the jungle cycle.
Eaten Alive!
Lenzi recycling other films' footage into a Jonestown story. Grim work.
Anthropophagus
Almost entirely people walking around an island. Then two minutes of infamy.
The Driller Killer
Abel Ferrara's debut. More interesting as a document of downtown New York.
Lorna
Meyer stops joking. The one where the sun goes behind a cloud.
The New York Ripper
Genuinely nasty and hard to defend. The killer quacks. It doesn't help.
SS Experiment Camp
A DPP video nasty far better known for its poster than for anything in the film.