Don't Go Near the Park (1981)

So much average

Just perfect...

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

This is one of those films you couldn't pay me to watch, and don't get me wrong I'm an avid horror fan. But this movie made absolutely no sense whatsoever. The plot basically is about a brother and sister who had a curse put on them centuries ago that let them live forever, but to appear young they have to eat the internal organs of people they find. In the 20th century the wooded park they live in is becoming more public and less secluded, so they try to put off killing and have a child for the sole purpose of sacrificing her to remain young. The child grows up and runs away from home, meeting a little boy who was abandoned by his mom and a college-aged young man. The three of them band together as outsiders and eventually try to stop the cannibalistic serial killer couple from killing again. Well, you can say one thing for it, it sure is disgusting at some parts. If you're one of those fans of the "hospital horror" genre where in films people remove the organs of other people, this film is full of that. The characters were just plain bizarre, and don't get me started on the ending. The cannibal shooting laser beams from her eyes... confusing. I really wouldn't watch this movie if I were you.

One of the infamous video nasties that were banned in Britain and released uncut two years ago.This was a strange film that took place over 12.000 years as Gar (Crackers Phinn) and Tra (Barbara Monker) we cursed until the wolves surround the moon again which 12 millenia. They then need to have a child and sacrifice her to get to heaven, or something like that.You can't look at this film as a piece of art, as it just goes in many different directs that don't make a lot of sense.The film claimed to introduce scream queen Linnea Quigley, but she had five previous films. Her whirlwind courtship and marriage to Gar ended as soon as she produced Bondi (Tamara Taylor).Add in some attempted rape, some almost incest, and some cannibalistic behavior by Gar and Tra, and you certainly have a nastie film.It ended as strangely as it began with some zombies and a shocker.It is an interesting piece of cinema history.

What to think? What to say? It's one of those. I couldn't keep my eyes off it, as there's something alluring about this ultra-disjointed and rough-around-the-edges schlock fest. It feels much older than it actually is. Maybe it's that elevator music that is the score? I don't care too much about it's bad rep, as you can't knock that it doesn't have it own sense of imagination (quite flip-out, boundless and senseless story-telling), however the execution is technically poor. Everything moves fast (too fast), as the story gets cluttered (as the time-line over the first half is rushed) with mangled and twisted ideas. It's a hard one to fathom. The exploitative script is interesting… to say the least. Some of the lines are amusingly laughable ("I'm sick of people trying to molest me" is said to a perverted young boy) and cracks out some very unlikely occurrences. All of this makes it quite an unpredictable smörgåsbord. Where else can you see two ancient cult siblings (a leaden Barbara Monker and… Crackers Phinn?) ripping open the stomachs of young kids and feeding on them to prevent premature ageing from a curse their mother bestowed on them for their cannibalism habits? Oh, that's an appetite. It's explicit, but primitive and clumsily staged. The FX effects for such a bare-bones production shouldn't really surprise how tatty they come across. The lumpy direction is unfocused and pacing can get sluggish. Towards the latter end there's an odd, abstract dream sequence that the female protagonist has that I liked how they presented it. The climax is spontaneously jaded and outlandishly baffling (with the best use of random laser eyes since 'The Dark (1979)"). Tacked on is a prolonged, surprise shock ending. Aldo Ray and Linda Quigley (two very watchable performers) also show up in minor parts. In the lead is an honest and more than capable Tamara Taylor.

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.