If Wrong Turn had been made two decades earlier, on a shoestring budget, with an unattractive cast and by a crew possessing almost zero talent, it would have looked a whole heap like Don't Go In The Woods.
A drooling savage is butchering backpackers for no apparent reason, and seems to have been doing so for quite some time. Only when a couple of exhausted and bloodied teens stumble from the wilderness babbling about a demented lunatic in the woods does a dimwitted sheriff notice that there is a problem in his county and gather some men together to catch the killer.
Featuring truly awful direction, shockingly bad acting, absolutely no gratuitous nudity (probably a good thing, since this film is a babe-free zone),several miserable attempts at humour, and some dreadful migraine-inducing synthesizer music, Don't Go In The Woods is a mess of a movie. However, the inclusion of plenty of cheesy gore prevents the film from being an entirely worthless viewing experience and fans of really bad horror might get a few laughs from its general ineptitude.
So-bad, they're-almost-good moments include the beheading of a wheelchair bound sightseer, the killing of the world's ugliest couple (that woman was a whole lot scarier than the bearded mountain man),and the accidental skewering of a backpacker by the film's hero.
To be fair, director James Bryan almost manages to capture a couple of effective chase scenes, but any tension he achieves is soon lost by either a spectacularly bad bit of acting from one of his talentless cast or an ill-timed comedic moment.
Don't Go In The Woods, unbelievably one of the Video Nasties banned in the UK during the 80s, is one recommended to rabid slasher fans, lovers of truly awful low-budget B-movies, and masochists only.
Don't Go in the Woods
1981
Action / Comedy / Horror / Thriller
Don't Go in the Woods
1981
Action / Comedy / Horror / Thriller
Plot summary
Four young campers, Craig, Peter, Ingrid and Joanie, back-pack through the mountains for a relaxing weekend in the wilderness. They are out camping in broad daylight, while someone else is killing tourists in the woods. Craig warns the others not to go into the woods alone. The hillsides are crawling with fat women huffing up hillsides, nerdy bird-watchers, and young couples. Most of whom meet gruesome ends at the hands of a deranged and growling back-woodsman with a sharp spike - who announces his presence by shaking the nearest branch and whooping. The 'happy' campers don't see a man and his wife being chucked off a cliff whilst they splash about in the river below. They enter a forest which becomes denser and darker as they progress. Peter and Ingrid fear that they are lost. Something large suddenly comes lunging forward with a gleaming machete. Craig slips dead to the ground as the machete cuts him up. Peter and the others flee screaming into the forest. The rest of the day and terrifying night is spent running and hiding from the maniac murderer who is constantly in pursuit. Meanwhile the local sheriff and his deputy decide they should start to investigate some of those disappearances.
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A gory whacko-in-the-woods stinker.
The biggest load of 80's slasher-nonsense ever filmed!
Sigh! Yet AGAIN there's something or someone evil lurking in the woods surrounding a godforsaken town and everyone who dares entering the area will sadistically experience this. Although random people get slaughtered constantly in between, the plot mainly centers on four incredibly annoying campers. "Don't Go in the Woods Alone" features every negative horror cliché you can possibly think of. Stereotypical characters, dark and muddled cinematography, no continuity at all, tame murders, an uninspired villain and irredeemably bad music that appears to be composed by a six-year-old kid on his very first keyboard. I'm pretty sure there never was a script to work with, as the characters just spawn random words that make little to no sense. Heck, there probably even wasn't a director! The big, fat and totally incompetent town sheriff provides the film with a handful of unintended chuckles, but it's generally a truly sad and pathetic piece of junk that easily deserves to be labeled as the absolute WORST 80's slasher out there. This is the type of crap that gives the genre a bad name, for Christ's sake! All still remaining copies should be collected into one big pile and burned!
Infamously bad - but entertaining!
Hikers in the Utah mountains are being sliced 'n' diced by a hulking woodland viking! Who will be left standing??
This little low-budget wilderness killer flick is best known as one of the cheapest and most unintentionally funny entries in the genre. There's no denying that this is a tremendously flawed movie - it's mainly a series of goofy hikers and campers being killed by an even goofier villain. The acting is shabby, the gore is crude, and the 'tension' music score sounds like someone banging their head on a synthesizer. But as poorly executed as the movie is it's certainly not boring!
Don't Go in the Woods is one of those horror cheapies that's so bad you just have to laugh at it. Remember this is the same movie in which a guy in a wheelchair is 'climbing' the mountain - of course he gets to the top only to be whacked. In another great scene Peter waves at a hunter whom he thinks is reacting to him, but the hunter is actually reacting to the killer who is behind Peter! And just wait for that clunky hoot of a theme song in the ending credits!
Don't Go in the Woods may just be the Plan 9 from Outer Space of slasher films. While it's one bad film, it's not without its silly amusements. Don't take it seriously.
* 1/2 out of ****