Don't Go in the Woods (also known as Don't Go in the Woods... Alone!) is a 1981 slasher film directed by James Bryan and written by Garth Eliassen.
It is one of the infamous "Video Nasties" that was banned in the United Kingdom in the 1980s.
Plot
As something kills a hysterical woman, and a bird watcher, four friends (Peter, Joanne, Ingrid and Craig) trek through the wilderness. A tourist is thrown over a waterfall (landing near some oblivious frolickers) and his mother is wounded, and dragged away. The four backpackers set up camp for the night, and elsewhere a pair of honeymooners are attacked in their van and murdered. The next day, the two couples continue their hike, while an artist is stabbed to death, and her young daughter is taken.
Two more campers are butchered, and while off on his own, Peter witnesses a fisherman be murdered by the killer, a spear-wielding wild man adorned in furs and rags. Peter rushes off to warn his friends, who the maniac gets to first, spearing Craig, and sending Joanne fleeing into the woods. Peter finds Ingrid, and after the two stumble upon the wild man's cabin, they accidentally attack another hiker, thinking he was the savage. The killer finishes off the hiker, and wounds Ingrid, but she and Peter escape, and eventually reach civilization, and alert the authorities to the backwoods psychopath.
Irrational due to guilt over leaving Joanne behind, Peter escapes from the hospital he and Ingrid are brought to, and returns to the woods to look for her. Joanne finds a campsite containing a dead body, then the cabin, where the killer hacks her to death with a machete. A posse (which includes Ingrid) is formed to take out maniac, and look for Peter and Joanne. The sheriff finds the cabin, where he uncovers Joanne's body, which Peter sees, leaving him even more distraught.
By nightfall, the wild man claims another victim (a man in a wheelchair who is decapitated) and Ingrid steals a machete, and goes off on her own to look for Peter. In the morning, Peter and Ingrid find each other, and the savage, who they stab to death in a frenzy, only stopping when they notice the search party staring at them in shock. As everyone clears out of the forest, the baby that was taken from the artist is shown alone in the wilderness, playing with a hatchet.
Cast
- Jack McClelland as Peter
- Mary Gail Artz as Ingrid
- James P. Hayden as Craig
- Angie Brown as Joanne
- Ken Carter as Sheriff
- David Barth as Deputy Benson
- Larry Roupe as Store Owner
- Amy Martell as Artist's Child
- Tom Drury as Maniac
- Laura Trefts as Doctor Maggie
Production
After the release of his earlier film Boogie Vision, director James Bryan decided on making a horror film set in the Rocky Mountains as his next film project. The film was supposedly based on local rumors about a number of hitchhikers who had reportedly fallen victim to a suspected serial killer.
The film was shot on a budget of $20,000 in the summer of 1980 during the director's seven year sojourn. The film was shot in outdoor locations in order to save money on the film's lighting.
Release
Don't Go in the Woods was released in September 1981.
In the 1980s, the film was deemed as a video nasty in the United Kingdom, and subsequently banned by issuance of the Video Recordings Act. Aside from an early rare video release, it was not available for rent or sale since then in the UK until 2007, when it was released uncut on DVD with a 15 certificate. It was classified as R18 in New Zealand for its violence. On 8 February 2015 Vinegar Synrome, re-released the film in a limited screening in the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Yonkers, New York. On March 10, 2015 the publisher Vinegar Syndrome released the film first time on Blu Ray.
Critical reception
Don't Go in the Woods has been universally panned by critics.
DVD Talk gave the film one-and-a-half stars out of five, calling it "a crappy little horror film made on a shoestring budget with people who really showed some grit in getting it done. That's fine, and more power to those people. But that doesn't make it good". Similarly, Dread Central, which awarded it a 2/5, called it "a bad film", but also "an unpretentious bit of campy horror that's really just trying to have a good time". AllMovie wrote "This splatter hack-job was forged during the slasher gold rush of the early '80s, and though it's inept enough to inspire guffaws for those who find ineptness amusing, there's nothing to recommend for connoisseurs of horror". Don't Go in the Woods was also lambasted by DVD Verdict, which stated "Aside from one nasty bit with a bear trap and a sequence toward the end that faintlyâ€"and accidentally, believe meâ€"recalls The Texas Chain Saw Massacre in its slow, dread-saturated buildup, director James Bryan's splatter film is an incoherent mess. An endless parade of victims keeps the fake blood squirting, but the murder sequences are so poorly staged that it's usually impossible to tell precisely what's happening. The most frightening thing about this alleged horror film, aside from its bad synthesizer soundtrack, is its pacing. Murder sequences are clumped together throughout the film, leaving a lot of flab in between".
References
External links
- Don't Go in the Woods at the Internet Movie Database