DON’T GO IN THE WOODS (1981)
Article 4993 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 11-19-2015
Directed by James Bryan
Featuring Jack McLelland, Mary Gail Artz, James P. Hayden
Country: USA
What it is: Budget slasher

People go in the woods… and die.

According to the trivia section in IMDB, director James Bryan intended for the movie to have a “tongue in cheek” quality. I was rather surprised by this, not necessarily because I found the movie to be more serious than comic, but rather because I was surprised that there was a vision at all. The movie struck me as a low-budget attempt at a slasher film that’s main intention seemed to be as crude as possible. Yes, I did notice the overt comic moments (such as a tasteless scene of a man struggling with a wheelchair and a scene involving two middle-aged lovers), but I found these to be the most tiresome parts of the movie. Given the fact that the two (decidedly unattractive) middle-aged lovers were named Cherry and Dick, I should have figured out that the director spent much of his career dabbling in porn. There does seem to be the hint of a plot here, but most of the movie is just people in the woods being killed. It isn’t really scary, and the editing looks like it was done at random; the sound is pretty crummy also. Those interested in crude low-budget exploitation might appreciate this one best; the rest of us will probably want to look elsewhere.