Don't Go in the Woods (1981 film)

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Don't Go in the Woods... Alone!
Theatrical poster
Directed by	James Bryan
Screenplay by	Garth Eliassen
Story by	Garth Eliassen
Produced by	James Bryan Suzette Gomez Roberto Gomez
Starring	Jack McClelland Mary Gail Artz James P. Hayden Angie Brown
Cinematography	Hank Zinman
Music by	H. Kingsley Thurber
Production company	JBF
Distributed by	Seymour Borde & Associates
Release date	November 20, 1981 (1981-11-20)
Running time	82 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$150,000[1]

Don't Go in the Woods... Alone! (also known as Don't Go in the Woods) is a 1981 American slasher film directed by James Bryan and written by Garth Eliassen. The film follows four campers who are confronted by a murderous woodsman slaying hikers on a wooded mountainside. It is one of the infamous "video nasties" that was banned in the United Kingdom in the 1980s.^[2]

Plot[]

A frightened woman named Alma is running down a small stream when an unseen assailant murders her. A bird watcher has his arm hacked off and murdered off screen. Four friends—Peter, Joanne, Ingrid and Craig—are trekking through nearby wilderness. Unbeknownst to them, another tourist is thrown over a waterfall (landing near some oblivious frolickers) and his mother is wounded, and dragged away. The four backpackers set up camp for the night. Elsewhere a pair of honeymooners named Dick and Cherry are attacked. Dick is murdered off screen when he exits the van to investigate a noise. Cherry, now paranoid, arms herself with a small bust. Dicks body is thrown against one of the windows and spits up blood on it. The killer rocks the van back and forth, sending it tumbling down a small hill where it catches on fire with Cherry still inside. The next day, the two couples continue their hike. Meanwhile, an artist painting a scenic view is stabbed to death, and her young daughter is kidnapped.

Two more campers are butchered. One has his throat slit and the other has her sleeping bag hung up from a tree and the killer stabs her to death with a spear. Off on his own, Peter witnesses a fisherman murdered with a bear trap to the head. The killer, who turns out to be a spear-wielding wild man adorned in furs and rags. Peter rushes off to warn his friends, but the maniac gets to them first, slicing Craig's arm off. Craig screams which attracts Ingrid to coming running to investigate. Joanne flees into the woods by herself. Ingrid finds the aftermath of the campsite of Craig and Joanne, and runs away. Peter finds Ingrid at another person's wrecked camp. The two come across the wild mans cabin and go inside. They find several sleeping bags hanging from the ceiling and junk littered across the floor. Peter accidentally triggers a trap which reveals the body of Craig wrapped in a plastic sheet. The two run away from the cabin. A hiker finds a stick covered in small metal objects and takes it. Peter and Ingrid hear the jingling of the stick and Peter kills him, mistaking him for the wild man. The killer tosses a sharpened stick into the hiker, killing him. He wounds Ingrid with two of the spears. Before he can finish her off, Peter grabs her hand and they escape. They walk several miles before finding a chairlift and seeing a small town, which they enter.

Irrational due to guilt over leaving Joanne behind, Peter escapes from the hospital he and Ingrid are brought to and returns to the woods. Joanne finds a campsite containing a dead body and flees in terror. She finds the wild mans cabin. Joanne encounters the wild man and attempts to escape through an open window but is hacked to death with a machete. A posse (which includes Ingrid) is formed by the police to hunt the maniac and look for Peter and Joanne. The sheriff finds the cabin, where he uncovers Joanne's body, leaving Peter even more distraught.

By nightfall the wild man claims another victim (a man in a wheelchair who is decapitated). Ingrid steals a machete and goes off to look for Peter who she finds by morning, along with the savage who they stab to death in a frenzy, only stopping when the search party arrives. As everyone clears out of the forest, the baby that was taken from the artist is shown alone in the wilderness playing with a hatchet.

Cast[]

• Jack McClelland as Peter
• Mary Gail Artz as Ingrid
• James P. Hayden as Craig
• Angie Brown as Joanie
• Ken Carter as Sheriff
• David Barth as Deputy Benson
• Larry Roupe as Store Owner
• Amy Martell as Artist's Child
• Tom Drury as Maniac
• Laura Trefts as Doctor Maggie

Production[]

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After the release of his earlier film Boogie Vision, director James Bryan decided on making a horror film set in the Rocky Mountains as his next project. The film was supposedly based on local rumors about a number of hitchhikers who had reportedly fallen victim to a suspected serial killer.^{[citation needed]}

The film was shot on a budget of $150,000^[1] in the summer of 1980, during the director's seven-year sojourn.^[3] It was shot in outdoor locations, partly in order to save money on the film's lighting.^[4] Parts of the film were shot in Brighton, Utah.^[5]

Release[]

Don't Go in the Woods was released regionally in the United States, opening in six theaters^[1] in the Salt Lake City area on November 20, 1981,^[6] and subsequently screening in Provo on November 27.^[1]

In the 1980s, the film was deemed a video nasty in the United Kingdom, and subsequently banned by issuance of the Video Recordings Act. Aside from an early rare video release, it was not available for rent or sale in the UK until 2007, when it was released uncut on DVD with a 15 certificate. It was classified as R18 in New Zealand for its violence. On 8 February 2015, Vinegar Syndrome re-released the film in a limited screening at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Yonkers, New York,^[7] and on March 10, 2015, they released the film for the first time on Blu-ray.^[8]

Critical reception[]

Linda Gross, a critic for the Los Angeles Times, called the film "a terrible turkey" and criticized the poor direction, screenplay and acting.^[9]

Paul Mavis, writing for DVD Talk, gave the film one-and-a-half stars out of five, calling it "a crappy little horror film made on a shoestring budget with people who really showed some grit in getting it done. That's fine, and more power to those people. But that doesn't make it good."^[10] Similarly, Dread Central, which awarded it two out of five, called it "a bad film", and also "an unpretentious bit of campy horror that's really just trying to have a good time."^[11] AllMovie wrote "This splatter hack-job was forged during the slasher gold rush of the early '80s, and though it's inept enough to inspire guffaws for those who find ineptness amusing, there's nothing to recommend for connoisseurs of horror."^[12] Don't Go in the Woods was also lambasted by DVD Verdict, which stated "Aside from one nasty bit with a bear trap and a sequence toward the end that faintly—and accidentally, believe me—recalls The Texas Chain Saw Massacre in its slow, dread-saturated buildup, director James Bryan's splatter film is an incoherent mess. An endless parade of victims keeps the fake blood squirting, but the murder sequences are so poorly staged that it's usually impossible to tell precisely what's happening. The most frightening thing about this alleged horror film, aside from its bad synthesizer soundtrack, is its pacing. Murder sequences are clumped together throughout the film, leaving a lot of flab in between."^[3]

References[]

Sources[]

• D'Arc, James V. (2010). When Hollywood Came to Town: A History of Moviemaking in Utah (1st ed.). Layton, Utah: Gibbs Smith. ISBN 978-1-423-60587-4.
• Thrower, Stephen (2007). Nightmare USA. London, England: FAB Press. ISBN 978-1-903-25446-2.

External links[]

• Don't Go into the Woods at the American Film Institute Catalog
• Don't Go into the Woods at AllMovie
• Don't Go in the Woods at IMDb
• Don't Go in the Woods at Rotten Tomatoes