Don't Go Near the Park

Wow... This site really does have every film possible. I found this film in a video rental place several years ago, and, in my usual fascination for unknown, Z-Grade looking films, rented it, and was fascinated by its badness. I remember thinking that it seemed to be the result of the editor throwing up all the little pieces of the film in the air, and randomly picking some up and putting them together. If he went to get the rest of the pieces, we could have ended up with another film entirely. I rented it again sometime later. I have never seen it since. I miss it. :(

Now I've seen my fair share of garbage over the years. Hell, I admit to actively seeking it out. But nothing prepared me for this little wonder.

Yeah, yeah, yeah I can hear you all say. We've seen Zombie Flesh Eaters 2, we've seen all of Ed Wood's little wonders, we've even sat through a Fred Olen Ray movie marathon. FORGET IT! You ain't seen this.

OK, let's start with the plot which is actually fairly complex for a film of this quality, it's also totally ludicrous. Incestuous, murdering cave siblings are cursed to live for eternity living off the flesh of the young until they can sacrifice a virginal descendant of the tribe when two stars with silly names come into alignment. In a whirlwind 10 minutes of celluloid the brother rents a room, marries the landlady, has a daughter with her who becomes a teenager and runs away from home due to turbulent family life. From there she meets two other runaways who coincidentally live with the sister of the cave pair. The kids rumble their game, zombies rise from the ground, laser beams are shot from eyes, and the two 'eternal' siblings are killed.

Got that? Right. It gets worse. Everything about this film goes way beyond amateur, from the 'old person' make up, to the Persian rug cavemen clothes, to the dissolve shot ageing FX. The lighting is abysmal; spot lights are shone straight into the set giving each shot an early silent film style ring of shadow around the edge of the shot. The acting is appalling, especially from the grimacing Crackers Phinn. The plot progresses at bizarre speeds, some scenes dragging on for way too long and other plot points zooming past at top speed.

Despite all of the above (or perhaps because of it) I love this movie. I really could bang on about it for days but I won't. If you ever find a copy (which isn't easy) you have to see it. I defy you to find anything worse in such a truly wonderful way (Invitation To Hell comes close).

Horror fans will also be interested to see a very early appearance by Linnea Quigley, who shows from an early age her willingness to take her top off.

Oh yeah, there's a 'shock' ending too.

Marvellous.

I caught this (though not the whole film) on The Horror Channel (UK), and last month it came out on DVD. I got myself a copy (since it was cheap) to mock review for my upcoming website.

This movie is regarded by some to be the "best bad movie of all time".

The plot? Well, it's an incoherent mess, but here goes... *deep breath* Two cannibal people, one male one female, from a crazy tribe of cannibals in the past got in trouble so an old lady who thinks she's in charge cursed them. The curse causes them to live forever as immortals but constantly age, but they can retain their youth by every certain number of years eating the insides of a virgin who happens to be the guy's daughter, or something like that. So the guy gets married and raises a daughter called Bonnie. And then she one day runs away to the park which is like abandoned and lives in this abandoned house with an old lady (who is obviously the female cannibal), a little kid who swears, and a guy who they call 'cowboy'. The two cannibals want to do some ritual on Bonnie and eat her guts. WHAT WILL SHE DO?!!

The film does feature Linnea Quigely in her first ever role, and yes, she gets her bits out. Though obviously not quite as much as in Return of the Living Dead! Most of the actors do a rubbish job, though, and the camera-work, directing and effects are all absurdly bad for it's time - after the first time I watched it I was stunned to find out it was an early 80's flick, it barely passes as an early 70's low budget horror! - and absurd pointless ideas just appear now and then which will just get you laughing.

Oh and did I mention the SUPER CANNIBAL LASER EYES? That's right, when somebody ticks them off they can use their SUPER CANNIBAL LASER EYES on them. Doesn't kill them. Just makes them hurt a little, apparently.

The whole thing feels like something some students might make, only I doubt even students would include SUPER CANNIBAL LASER EYES.

Top notch if you want to see a really bad movie and laugh. If on the other hand you are after a decent horror movie, I would recommend that you DON'T GO NEAR THE DVD.

If you are showering and a creepy man walks in on you and stares at you, instead of kicking him out and calling the cops, you should ask him if he needs a room to rent. Unfortunately, he'll probably end up marrying you so that you will bare his child and be the perfect mom so that he can sacrifice the kid as a virgin to stop a cannibal curse on himself and his sister which was placed 12,000 years ago. Or something. That's pretty much the plot of "Don't Go Near the Park." This is some of the worst writing in the genre. Dark Sky does a great job with packaging, as usual, but this is the first film they've re-released that is probably skippable, as it has little to no entertainment value.

The people who put down this movie must be the kind of people who when they were children would make fun of the retarded kid on the school playground. Of course, this movie is a dumb. Of course, it is laughably inept. It's not "so bad it's good"--it's not a good movie in any sense of the word--but there is something likable about it. Living in a time when movies may as well be written by corporate marketing directors and edited by a Hollywood test audience, it's nice to see a movie that is completely ridiculous, technically proficient in some ways but nevertheless looking like it was shot in someone's backyard with primitive special effects, amateurish acting, and Mom no doubt providing the catering. It was obviously a labor of love if not exactly a labor of competent film-making.

The plot is something about 12,000 year old brother and sister witches who have survived by cannibalizing young children, but cannot actually become young unless they have a kid and then--oh, who cares? Anyway, the brother chooses a young Linnea Quigley to be the bearer of his child. A comment here on Quigley: this is the kind of role she was meant to play--she provides some nudity (full-frontal, full-dorsal, lingering breast shot)and then exits stage left. Her nude scenes certainly add to the movie, but they are not cynically expected to carry the whole movie as was the case in a lot of the roles she did after she became a "scream queen". And maybe she can't act, but at least she tried in the early days before she adopted her intentional "bad acting" schtick.

The lead though is not Quigley but her "daughter" played by one Tamara Taylor, who never appeared in another movie but is pretty memorable in this one. She faces off against her old crone aunt and protects some other children from her (with the help of the obviously drunk headliner Aldo Ray). She's not a great actress by any means, but she fits THIS movie perfectly. Just as this movie at times resembles a deranged children's fairy tale with it bizarre storyline of witches and endangered youngsters before it suddenly launches into some unconvincing but very graphic gore(which got it put on the "video nasty" list in Britain), Taylor seems like a young, innocent girl but also has surprising and disturbing scenes like where she ends up in a van being pretty graphically groped by a group of would-be rapists(including, ironically enough, the director). This is followed by the most unintentionally funny scene in the movie where a protective amulet she is wearing causes the van to run off the road and explode in a near-nuclear fireball.

Is all this meant as a recommendation? Well, maybe not. But you have to admire the fact that something like this was ever made in the first place. There's never been another movie like this--and there probably never will be again.