I saw House on the Edge of the Park with my dad. That was fun. I spoke with Giovanni for a minute. Nice guy but he really hates the movies he was in especially Cannibal Ferox. But everyone is great in it. The twist is a little questionable but has -debatably- the best shot in the balls scene in cinema history. It was at this convention where I saw House and I bought a bootleg tape of Cannibal Holocaust before seeing it (this is way before an official DVD had come out) where I had Deodato and Robert Kerman autograph it.
My experience with Hess was mostly positive. I went to get his autograph but I didn't have any cash and said sorry as I walked away. But then my dad handed me $20 and I went back to his table and he was nice. I mentioned the nut shot in House and he gave me the eye but it could have been because of my age and his dad genes were kicking in or he just hated House? Either/or. Objectively speaking, Hitch Hike is the best film he was in, it's a superb road movie if not one of the very best road movies. But House is just so much more "fun" to watch.
CH was a devastating thing to behold but I loved it. It achieves the same sort of "you are there with them" vibe as Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Shining. It's a shame that Deodato seemed to have peaked too early in his career. After House on the Edge of the Park he never made anything nearly as entertaining or as effective as Cannibal Holocaust. The closest you get to that is Cut and Run which is an absurd train wreck jungle action horror picture that invokes The People's Temple mass suicide.
I love that you saw House with your dad. That’s one of those movies that you always kind of dread seeing with a parent,
especially if neither of you knows what the fuck is up, going into it. I think that you’re right about the twist being a bit of a wtf, but I was honestly so into it that it worked for me. And an amazing nut shot! There’s so much to love about that movie. Roots. Ricky dancing and not realizing that they’re laughing at him, the poker game where Hess gets everything back, the neighbor girl who comes to the door at the exact incorrect moment. Poor Cindy.
If there are people in the thread who haven’t seen it yet, go and grab a copy!
I think Deodato was one of those directors who has one brilliant film in them, and then maybe one other very solid picture, and then that’s it. Nothing ever quite comes together again in the way it did for those films where they were on fire and couldn’t do a thing wrong if they’d tried. This will sound sacreligious—it is—but sadly, in some regards, I put Tobe Hooper in the same category, though in Tobe’s case much of the fault has to go to the fact that he was being screwed left, right, and center by asshole executives.
TCM and CH having that feeling of ‘you are there’, that they’re somehow ‘real’—that’s so on the nose and what gives them so much power. They could be documentaries, they look and feel like the truth. Getting that feeling of verisimilitude into a fictional film isn’t an easy thing to do. Deodato blurs the line again when he uses the footage of war atrocities in the ‘Road to Hell’ within CH; we watch, assume it’s real, are then told that it’s fake, but of course it‘s actually fucking real—he jumps that line so many times and so adeptly that you’re completely sold on whatever it is that he shows you next. He’s almost showing off. It’s great.
I think it’s also partly why they’re such important movies for people who really love the genre. You can‘t help but respond to them. I‘m sure someone will say that they saw one of the two, or both, and found them laughable or that they looked fake or what have you, but it‘s a hard perspective for me to understand.
Jealous that you got to meet these guys in person. Did you get a chance to speak to Robert Kerman at all? He seems like he was a nice dude as well, if something of a sad guy. There’s a interview with him up at the Rialto Report that’s pretty fascinating. He sounded as though he loved making movies with the Italians (even though he did not want to kill animals and was very angry with Deodato) because at least here were a group of people who routinely gave him a chance to do real acting.
I would love to talk about Hitch Hike, but I’m guessing I’ve sperged enough for the day. It IS the best road movie. Two Lane Blacktop is the normie answer, but Hitch Hike is always tops. Just a ridiculously good movie. The first time I saw it was on this shitty VSoM tape that ended with Franco and Corrine driving off into the sunset—imagine my shock when I saw the real thing!
