The 15th video nasty ends on an intriguing shot. A child alone in the woods playing with a hatchet. Earlier in the film she was kidnapped and her mother was butchered in front of her. Now her kidnapper is dead and she's all alone, with only this blunt tool for company. Is the film suggesting she'll grow up to be a murderer too? That violence is cyclical and it's ripple effects far reaching? You might think that from the description given, but if you watch the entirety of this piece of shit you'll probably want to slap me for suggesting this film has even an inkling of a brain.
2 couples (Peter, Joanne, Ingrid and Craig) are heading off into the woods of .....we never find..... for a hiking holiday. The scenery is glorious, the air is sweet and the spring water is clear and cold. Until it's all splashed with bloody viscera. Someone is hunting down the holiday makers in the area and no one knows why. Artists painting the scenery are knifed through their canvasses, honeymooners are beaten to a pulp, men lose their limbs and get thrown off waterfalls while woman are hunted and gutted like hogs. One man in a wheelchair who's somehow made it to the top of the mountain is even decapitated before he can begin to take in the view. Finally, in a twist on slasher movie tropes, only Peter and Ingrid are left and to survive they have to become as vicious as the killer himself.
Every single aspect of Don't Go In The Woods.....alone! is inept. It's a blend of Friday The 13th, The Burning and Just Before Dawn and not a patch on any of them. The bad guy looks like the laughable love child of the cast of The Hills Have Eyes and Mad Max 2. Honestly, you'll burst out laughing at him. The acting is putrid, the sound is tinny, the editing was seemingly done by a chimp with a scissors, the vast majority of the kills - the fucking Raison D'etre of a slasher movie ffs are so shoddily shot you can barely see what's happening and the gore consists of red paint splashed on trees and clay. It's all hilarious. It's a perfect film to get drunk to. Weird overdubbed accent - do a shot. Confusing editing - do a shot. What the hell is going on? - do a shot. It's hard to imagine anyone getting any enjoyment out of this one sober.
There's one scene though where Joanne is butchered that's rather intense and it's no doubt this scene that got the film in trouble with the BBFC and the DPP. Looking at it now it's pretty tame (the film has a 15 certificate these days) but back in the early 80's it was strong stuff. A shrieking woman alone in a cabin being slashed to bits in a prolonged attack by a machete wielding maniac was always going to ring bells in a political climate terrified of video violence. It's effect is of course blunted by how badly it's all staged but context never mattered during the video nasty witch hunt.
Would I recommend this one? Yeah, but only so you could laugh at it's godawfulness. Plus it's lack of sexual violence and real life animal cruelty make it more palatable than some of the other nasties.
Did it deserve it's video nasty status? No, but I can see why it fell afoul of the DPP.
Next up? THE DRILLER KILLER. The film who's artwork started all this nasty madness. And the film that unleashed director Abel Ferrera on the world
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