| Product: |
Don't Go In The Woods (DVD) |
| Date: |
28.10.06 (244 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Pretty much without a redeeming feature
Disadvantages: Oh, where to start?
I have a distinct childhood memory from when I was maybe five years old. My dad was saying goodnight, and as he left my bedroom he said something like ‘And don’t stay up reading comics.’ Until he said that, it had never occurred to me to stay up reading comics. But once he had, it was irresistible. I stayed up and read comics. Got a proper bollocking for it too.
Where’s all this going? you ask, with a hint of annoyance. Well. Until 1985 there was no video censorship in this country. But a glut of extremely violent video releases in the early 80s whipped up a storm of think-of-the-children controversy in the right wing press. The government introduced video ratings. It also arbitrarily banned 39 films – the legendary ‘video nasties’. While some of them are actually pretty good (The Evil Dead, most famously), the vast majority are rubbish. They’d have vanished without trace years ago if it hadn’t been for the fact that the government told us we couldn’t watch them. But being on the nasties list instantly elevates a film to ‘gotta see it’ status, even if it sounds absolutely wretched. (You see? That first paragraph was an analogy!) I seriously doubt that *anyone* would *ever* conceivably have wanted to see Don’t Go In The Woods if it hadn’t been banned. It’s one of the worst films I’ve ever seen, and that’s really saying something. Even the title’s grammatically incorrect.
It’s set in some woods in America. Lots of people decide to go into the woods for various reasons; this turns out to be a bad idea. Something’s lurking there. Something with a billhook. Something that likes to chop people to pieces!
This really is as inept a film as you’re likely to see. The plot is unbelievably derivative (the film was made in 1982) – backwoods psychos are a commonplace in the stalk-and-slash genre. There are no surprises, no suspense, no shocks. The ‘monster’ is unbelievably disappointing, being nothing more than a man with a beard wearing furs. No explanation of why he’s living in the woods killing tourists is ever offered. The ending is dreadfully anticlimactic and none of the characters inspire any kind of empathy.
A big problem is the acting. It’s pretty obvious that the cast consists of non-professionals. They all behave in a self-conscience, over-emphatic way, looking a lot like people who don’t know how to act trying to imitate what they’ve seen on TV. You feel bad for them, really. Sometimes it’s funny (a fisherman’s reaction to having his arm sliced off is pretty hilarious). But usually it’s just annoying – the main characters are a particularly obnoxious group of backpackers, for instance. And I don’t want to be unkind, but the film employs some of the ugliest people I’ve ever seen. One word to the lady in the camper van: ‘rhinoplasty’.
It was obviously made for no money at all by a crew of rank amateurs. The camera wobbles in a quite disorientating way most of the time – while some films (Blair Witch, for instance) do this deliberately to unsettle the viewer, here it’s clearly being done by accident. The editing is terrible, having no sense of rhythm whatsoever (the key to any slasher movie is the editing – get that wrong and you’re doomed). The script is blandly abysmal beyond belief (“Peter, that could have been a fatal mistake, jumping off that log. There could have been a snake under there!”). Characters behave unbelievably stupidly for no reason because the filmmakers obviously couldn’t figure out how to advance the plot otherwise (why else, for instance, would the fat sheriff venture into a hut where he knows the killer may well be hiding shouting “Hello?”) Most of the incidental music sounds like something you’d get if you gave a twelve-year-old a synthesiser and said “make some spooky noises.” Astonishingly, the director, one James Bryan, made several other films, although none of their names are familiar.
Even the gore is rubbish. Most of the victims just get carved up a bit – this involves them being covered in what looks a lot like red food dye. The budget obviously didn’t stretch to realistic wound makeup. There’s one limb-lopping and a comedy decapitation involving a man in a wheelchair, but for the most part it’s pretty unimaginative. I’m completely flummoxed as to why this film was banned – the gore is so bland it could almost be a 15. There isn’t even any nudity, which is quite unusual for a film like this.
It’s not a case of it being so bad it’s funny, unfortunately. It’s just bad. The only bit that really raised a smile was the song that played over the closing credits (a ditty about the film’s killer with awful lyrics, sung to the tune of The Teddy Bear’s Picnic). This is the kind of film that makes me seriously question my viewing habits. At least it’s only about 80 minutes long.
Don’t Go In The Woods isn’t generally available in this country, although I believe a DVD version is available in America. But it’s the kind of film that might turn up on The Horror Channel sometime, so look out for it if you have cable. And avoid it. My copy – one of a bunch of video nasties I recently acquired, you lucky people you – is a DVD of a bad dupe of a very old VHS tape, which somehow makes it more watchable than I suspect it would otherwise be.
Yes, it’s rubbish. No, I don’t recommend it in the slightest. But I have seen it. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Baroness Thatcher!
Now I’m off to read comics until 3am. Then I’ll cry myself to sleep.
Summary: Possibly the lamest of all the video nasties.
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