David Hess 1936-2011

He was something of a renaissance man, whose career began in music, and though it never totally left that arena, also took him to some very different places. In the end, David Hess, who passed away suddenly of a heart attack last month at the age of 75, will be remembered by millions of movie fans worldwide as an icon of exploitation cinema. An odd fate for a guy who used to write songs for Elvis...

Hess was born to a Jewish family in New York City during the depths of the Depression. From a very early age, he had already found his first calling. Songwriting came naturally to him, and he also enjoyed performing, as well. At age 19, using the Anglicized name "David Hill", he actually took a stab at recording a brand-new song called "All Shook Up", which wound up a #1 hit the following year for Elvis Presley.

Unbowed, Hess took his songwriting talents to Shalimar Music, where he would be a successful composer through the rest of the 1950s and into the 1960s. Ironically, he would compose a number of songs for Presley himself during this period, as well as the likes of Sal Mineo, Andy Williams, Pat Boone and others. Most notable was the novelty hit "Speedy Gonzalez," which Boone took to #6 in the U.S. and #2 in the U.K., selling six million copies worldwide. By the end of the 1960s, Hess had recorded two hit folk albums and found himself the head A&R man at Mercury Records.

Few could have predicted that during his tenure at Mercury, this successful songwriter, producer and recording artist would suddenly branch off into a very different area of show business. In 1972, he was asked to star in the debut film of a young director by the name of Wes Craven. That film was The Last House on the Left, which would become one of the most notorious pieces of exploitation cinema ever made.

It started out as a musical collaboration, as Hess was called upon to pen the soundtrack for the film. This he did, and songs like "The Road Leads to Nowhere" can be heard throughout the film, with Hess himself on vocals. But it would be as the brutal, sadistic, yet disturbingly charismatic Krug Stillo that Hess would make his greatest contribution to the movie, and become forever known to connoisseurs of the darker side of horror.

The leader of a band of vicious outlaws, Krug is one of the most terrifying psychopaths of '70s cinema, and that's really saying a lot. Hess is a natural in his first screen appearance, seeming to exude the perfect pitch of unadulterated sleaze and lowbrow humor that makes the character unforgettable. One wonders why it took so long for Hess to step in front of a camera. Last House is a flawed film, yet Hess' performance remains one of the best things about it.

Hess would continue to write music of all kinds for years to come, but his career was now set on a different path. The role of Krug opened the door to other lead parts in films like Pasquale Festa Campanile's Hitchhike and Ruggero Deodato's The House on the Edge of the Park. These were unrelentingly dark, grim pictures, in which Hess played unrelentingly dark, grim roles very reminiscent of Krug. Not to besmirch the man in death, but he seemed to have a knack for playing the consummate dirtbag, and it served him well in picture after picture.

He continued to act through the '80s, appearing in Craven's Swamp Thing as well as a slew of Italian exploitation flicks, and even tried his hand at directing. Both his acting and musical careers slowed down a bit in the 1990s, but in more recent years Hess had once again become very active. He recorded a few more albums and started popping up again in horror films like Zombie Nation and Smash Cut. Reminiscent of what he did on Last House on the Left, he even worked on some music tracks for a horror film, namely Eli Roth's 2003 breakout, Cabin Fever.

The iconic roles of his earlier years had gained Hess a whole legion of new, younger fans, many of whom he began connecting with at the conventions at which he started to become a fixture. His career was experiencing a bit of a revival, and ironically he had recently signed on to appear in the sequel to The House on the Edge of the Park, when he died on October 8.

A musician, an actor, a director, a producer--David Hess was all these things, but horror fans will remember him for playing some of the screen's most infamous lowlifes, particularly the implacable Krug Stillo. It's always the villains who get all the glory in horror, and Hess was one of the best.

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The Many Faces of David Hess

* Thanks to Marilyn Merlot for this week's "The Many Faces of..." suggestion! Feel free to send me yours...

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TRAILER TRASH: David Hess Edition!

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Retro Review: House on the Edge of the Park (1980)

I'm always thrilled to come across a '70s/early '80s exploitation horror flick with which I was totally unfamiliar. This was one of them, until it was brought to my attention by the delightful Vault dweller Marilyn Merlot--who, like me, shares an admiration for the work of one David Hess.

My first reaction when reading about the film was, how the heck had I gone so long without ever seeing or hearing of this? That thought was further magnified after actually seeing it. This is a film that is entirely of its time. No film like this could ever be made today, for a variety of reasons. And although I have some issues with it, more thematically than artistically, I can't deny its effectiveness.

There's something about films of this era that will always draw me in. It is my favorite era for motion pictures, horror or otherwise, with the 1930s being a close second. There's a rawness to movies like House by the Edge of the Park that is unmatched in horror of any other era.

So let's talk about this gem of an exploitation picture. This was the film that Ruggero Deodato made right before shooting the infamous Cannibal Holocaust--even though it was officially released in Italy nine months after Cannibal Holocaust. And perhaps it's the close proximity to that quintessentially controversial movie that causes House by the Edge of the Park to get a bit overlooked when it comes to amazingly offensive cinema.

Make no mistake, this is not a movie for everyone. Much like CH, it took a full five years for it to be released in the U.S. Banned in Singapore, Finland, the U.K., Canada and Norway; denied ratings classification in Australia and also released unrated in America. One of Britain's notorious "video nasties". Chock full of rape, torture and sadism.

I cannot deny that this movie enthralled me. I found it distasteful at times, but nevertheless I was fascinated by it, and also cannot deny that it is a fine little piece of filmmaking, for what it is. But there can be no question that it was designed to titillate, and to do so using some very questionable means. More than most of the movies today that get labeled "torture porn", this is a movie I would certainly classify as such.

The main problem I have with it is in the depiction of rape. This is the kind of story in which the rape victims actually start to "enjoy" themselves and give in willingly to their rapists. In other words, at times it feels like some guy's warped sexual fantasy, and I found it pretty damn uncomfortable in parts. There's a certain hypocrisy here, in much the same way that Deodato does it in CH--on the surface he's condemning the callousness of these characters, but truth be told, he wants you to get off on watching what they do.

It walks a dangerous moral line, that's for sure. And yet, I'd rather have a horror flick like this which challenges me and makes me uncomfortable than most of the cookie-cutter, soul-numbing drek we get spoonfed these days.

I'm going on the record that I love David Hess. Loved him in Last House on the Left, and love him here. I'll be honest--there isn't much difference between Krug and his character here. It might as well be the same exact character, in fact. But there's something about Hess' acting style that makes me want to keep my eyes on him any time he's on screen.

It's a broad style of acting, with overdone emotions and histrionics, almost like something out of the hammy method-influenced generation of actors of the 1950s and early '60s. He feels like an anachronism, an actor plucked out of an earlier era, which is ironic given the intense and graphic nature of the material he appears in. He's funny and terrifying at the same time.

The story is a straight-up home invasion nightmare that makes The Strangers look like What About Bob. With a script from Gianfranco Clerici and Vincenzo Mannino--the men responsible for CH, in addition to Lucio Fulci's Don't Torture a Duckling and The New York Ripper--you'd better believe this is some raw and unflinching stuff.

And yet just as with CH, we get a jarringly contrasting score from Riz Ortolani that on the surface feels like it in no way belongs with a film like this, but which actually makes it that much more disturbing. I'm thinking specifically of the sing-songy, nursery rhyme-style "Cindy" theme. It takes a twisted mind to pair up this music with this movie. That said, I could've done without "Much More", Ortolani's cheesy attempt at disco. I mean really, I expect more from the guy who composed the Oscar-nominated standard "More" for Mondo Cane...

While I'm not sure what it says about me, I admittedly eat stuff like this up. Maybe it's because it disturbs me--maybe I find it somehow cathartic to deal with material like this in a relatively safe way. It definitely disturbed the hell out of the Mrs., who, even though she only caught bits and pieces of it, found herself questioning why I would even take an interest in watching. It's the kind of movie that definitely provokes strong emotion.

Stepping back from it, I can certainly see how people would have problems with it. Much of the movie is simply one tense, gut-wrenching rape or near-rape after another. And when you watch a rape scene in which the supposed victim begins to "get into it", there's no denying it leaves a bad taste in your mouth. And yet, I somehow relish the power the movie has to provoke strong emotion, even if that emotion is disgust. Maybe it's the wrestling background in me, but I'm much more impressed by a movie that can stir up strong feelings than one which leaves me completely apathetic.

House by the Edge of the Park is typical of the nihilistic grindhouse cinema of its time, in which brutal violence is met with brutal violence, sex and brutality are merged, and in the end we're just left with an overall sense of hopelessness in humanity. If that's your bag, check it out. But don't say I didn't warn you!

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