Video Nasty #27
Don't Go In The Woods
1981
EVERYONE HAS NIGHTMARES ABOUT THE UGLIEST WAY TO DIE.
Alternate Titles: Although sometimes referred to as Don't Go In The Woods...Alone!, the final word and ellipsis appear to be nothing more than a semi-tagline mistaken for part of the title. It was released in Australia as The Forest 2, although the films are unrelated.
Running time: 81:28 NTSC
Running time: 81:28 NTSC
Directed by James Bryan
Written by Garth Eliassen
Produced by James Bryan, Suzette & Roberto Gomez
Starring: Jack McClelland, Mary Gail Artz, James P. Hayden, Angie Brown, Ken Carter, David Barth, and Tom Drury
Music by H. Kingsley Thurber
Body Count: 16
Region 1 DVD from Code Red is out of print, but available if you're willing to pay for it. (I should state that I have never even seen a copy of this release, the one in my collection is the 1986 Video Treasures VHS release.)
BBFC Status
Why it's a Nasty: Excessive and exaggerated sequences of gore.
What was cut: Nothing. Don't Go In The Woods was never submitted to the BBFC before it was released to home media.
Current UK status: Don't Go In The Woods was passed uncut with a 15(!) certificate on February 7th, 2007.
Don't Go In The Woods was successfully prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act, making it one of the DPP39.
So it's been a few years since I've received an ominous package from that benevolent videovore previously referred to in these pages as El Presidente. I still haven't...but I recently got a package that made me think of his bloodstained Nasties of years hence.
The package was a bubble mailer (for those who don't ship, that's a brown manila envelope reinforced with bubblewrap), which told me right off that I wasn't dealing with a serious tapehead. What I pulled out made me want to cry: the VHS slipcover had been stripped of its' top flap, then slit vertically down one corner, and roughly grafted onto an oversize black clamshell case with some kind of wide pseudo-Scotch tape with melting adhesive that had already stained the inside of the cardboard.
This tape's been torture murdered, I thought.
Fortunately, that wasn't actually the case. The box may be a lost cause, but the tape plays like a dream. It's in incredible shape for an '86 VHS, especially an EP release from a budget video house. It's also the perfect format in which to enjoy this gem of a slasher, which is long on personality and short on story.
Somewhere in the Rockies, A girl runs through the woods from an unseen pursuer. She falls in a creek bed, the water turning red as she screams. A man is enjoying the scenery near the same small river. He is hit in the face with something, has his arm chopped off (the blood spurting rapidly from the stump), and dies. Something in these woods isn't keen on having visitors.
Peter (Jack McClelland), Ingrid (Mary Gail Artz) and Joanie (Angie Brown) listen to the camping advice of Craig (James P. Hayden), who comes off as a total knowitall windbag, as the four make their way to a cabin deep in the wilderness. Peter isn't much for all this nature stuff, which gets him some chiding from the other three, especially Craig, who should take a look at himself and his ridiculous hat before he starts passing judgment. Meanwhile, more people die in exceptionally gory fashion at the hands of the unseen maniac stalking these woods: a middle-aged photographer, his heavyset wife, and a young female landscape painter who is repeatedly knifed and gouts rich red blood all over her canvas, which she clutches to herself as she falls in slow motion. She's left her young daughter bouncing in a sling hung from a tree...a sling we see empty after the painter has been dispatched. What fate has befallen this innocent child? Will our heroes survive the woods?
The slasher film as we know it today was entering its golden age in 1981, and James Bryan's Don't Go In The Woods is a superb example of how ingenuity, resourcefulness and courage can result in poorly made, but enjoyable, splatter movies. The film stock was a batch of leftover ends purchased for $400. The blood was barbecue sauce and red food coloring. The murder victims were mostly crew members and friends of the director. The score by H. Kingsley Thurber, which runs non-stop and is both goofy and annoying, was partially recycled from another Video Nasty, 1975's Frozen Scream, which Bryan had also worked on as a cameraman. What little story there was is about the same as every forest-set slasher since Twitch Of The Death Nerve: teenagers go to the woods for some freedom, find bloody death and terror. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
The cast were mostly first-timers, and for most of them it was their only turn before the camera. Popular Texas radio DJ Ken Carter is among the only-timers of Don't Go In The Woods, giving and amusing portrayal of a fat, lazy sheriff who doesn't necessarily believe that people keep disappearing in the woods around his little corner of the world. Mary Gail Artz counts this as her only on-screen credit, but the same year handled casting duties for Halloween II at the beginning of a long, still-going career in film and TV. The rest of the cast does what they came to do: act scared and die badly.
There are a few odd moments that detract from the film, most glaringly a sequence where Craig is telling a ghost story but is never seen. The director has stated that he shot Craig for the sequence, but the film was ruined and unusable, which results in the scene showing only Peter, Joanie and Ingrid listening and reacting to Craig. The opening murder sequence is also somewhat stilted, with no actions from the killer shown, only bloody water and screaming from the actress, making it the oddest and worst-executed death scene of any Nasty I've watched so far.
Mainstream movie critics (Ebert, Maltin, and other know-nothing clowns) deride Don't Go In The Woods as a miserable failure, but remember my old saying: "If Ebert hated it, it's probably good." And good this one is. It's fun, it's gory, and...well, that's about it, but that's enough for me. I'm still not sure how this one ended up being successfully prosecuted, especially since when finally submitted for classification in the UK it ended up getting a 15 and not an 18 as most Nasties have received when finally approved for British consumption. The ultra-bloody murder of the painter alone has more gore than Halloween, Friday The 13th and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre combined. Even bad movie lovers like me have come down on this picture for supposedly bad effects, but I'm not sure they were watching the same movie I was. Or maybe I'm easy to please. Either way, there's no denying that the title tune is a classic:
The package was a bubble mailer (for those who don't ship, that's a brown manila envelope reinforced with bubblewrap), which told me right off that I wasn't dealing with a serious tapehead. What I pulled out made me want to cry: the VHS slipcover had been stripped of its' top flap, then slit vertically down one corner, and roughly grafted onto an oversize black clamshell case with some kind of wide pseudo-Scotch tape with melting adhesive that had already stained the inside of the cardboard.
This tape's been torture murdered, I thought.
Fortunately, that wasn't actually the case. The box may be a lost cause, but the tape plays like a dream. It's in incredible shape for an '86 VHS, especially an EP release from a budget video house. It's also the perfect format in which to enjoy this gem of a slasher, which is long on personality and short on story.
Somewhere in the Rockies, A girl runs through the woods from an unseen pursuer. She falls in a creek bed, the water turning red as she screams. A man is enjoying the scenery near the same small river. He is hit in the face with something, has his arm chopped off (the blood spurting rapidly from the stump), and dies. Something in these woods isn't keen on having visitors.
Peter (Jack McClelland), Ingrid (Mary Gail Artz) and Joanie (Angie Brown) listen to the camping advice of Craig (James P. Hayden), who comes off as a total knowitall windbag, as the four make their way to a cabin deep in the wilderness. Peter isn't much for all this nature stuff, which gets him some chiding from the other three, especially Craig, who should take a look at himself and his ridiculous hat before he starts passing judgment. Meanwhile, more people die in exceptionally gory fashion at the hands of the unseen maniac stalking these woods: a middle-aged photographer, his heavyset wife, and a young female landscape painter who is repeatedly knifed and gouts rich red blood all over her canvas, which she clutches to herself as she falls in slow motion. She's left her young daughter bouncing in a sling hung from a tree...a sling we see empty after the painter has been dispatched. What fate has befallen this innocent child? Will our heroes survive the woods?
The slasher film as we know it today was entering its golden age in 1981, and James Bryan's Don't Go In The Woods is a superb example of how ingenuity, resourcefulness and courage can result in poorly made, but enjoyable, splatter movies. The film stock was a batch of leftover ends purchased for $400. The blood was barbecue sauce and red food coloring. The murder victims were mostly crew members and friends of the director. The score by H. Kingsley Thurber, which runs non-stop and is both goofy and annoying, was partially recycled from another Video Nasty, 1975's Frozen Scream, which Bryan had also worked on as a cameraman. What little story there was is about the same as every forest-set slasher since Twitch Of The Death Nerve: teenagers go to the woods for some freedom, find bloody death and terror. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
The cast were mostly first-timers, and for most of them it was their only turn before the camera. Popular Texas radio DJ Ken Carter is among the only-timers of Don't Go In The Woods, giving and amusing portrayal of a fat, lazy sheriff who doesn't necessarily believe that people keep disappearing in the woods around his little corner of the world. Mary Gail Artz counts this as her only on-screen credit, but the same year handled casting duties for Halloween II at the beginning of a long, still-going career in film and TV. The rest of the cast does what they came to do: act scared and die badly.
There are a few odd moments that detract from the film, most glaringly a sequence where Craig is telling a ghost story but is never seen. The director has stated that he shot Craig for the sequence, but the film was ruined and unusable, which results in the scene showing only Peter, Joanie and Ingrid listening and reacting to Craig. The opening murder sequence is also somewhat stilted, with no actions from the killer shown, only bloody water and screaming from the actress, making it the oddest and worst-executed death scene of any Nasty I've watched so far.
Mainstream movie critics (Ebert, Maltin, and other know-nothing clowns) deride Don't Go In The Woods as a miserable failure, but remember my old saying: "If Ebert hated it, it's probably good." And good this one is. It's fun, it's gory, and...well, that's about it, but that's enough for me. I'm still not sure how this one ended up being successfully prosecuted, especially since when finally submitted for classification in the UK it ended up getting a 15 and not an 18 as most Nasties have received when finally approved for British consumption. The ultra-bloody murder of the painter alone has more gore than Halloween, Friday The 13th and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre combined. Even bad movie lovers like me have come down on this picture for supposedly bad effects, but I'm not sure they were watching the same movie I was. Or maybe I'm easy to please. Either way, there's no denying that the title tune is a classic:
Word.
So that's it. Get yourself a copy of this one (maybe borrow one before purchasing, you may not like it as much as I did), give it a watch, have some fun and maybe a scare or two. I'll be sure to stay out of these particular woods. And I won't go in any alone. Because my name's Justin. JustinCase.
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