DON'T GO IN THE WOODS Avast, ye maties! Crapitude ahoy! My, how memory plays tricks. I saw this movie about eight years ago, and ever since, I've remembered the killer turning out to be a gibbering caveman with lines like "Ooga booga!" and "Unga bunga!" Sitting through this horrible again (ha, can any of you claim to have seen this one more than once?), I find that the killer's dialogue is actually more pirate-like than caveman-like, with lines like "Ahhr!" and "Ahhr! Ahhr!" The title pretty much says it all – hikers (and a whole lot of expendable cast members who show up only to be killed, most of whom don't even get any lines before meeting their fate) are stalked by a slasher in the woods. There is MAYBE a shade more plot to this than there is to most of these awful movies, mostly in the second half when the Sheriff's office gets involved, but what's that saying about polishing turds? It doesn't work. Besides, the same plot has at least four scenes where people are running from the killer, stop for a rest, hear something behind them, and start running again. Gore is plentiful but bright and hokey. The murder scenes are, as you might expect, not suspenseful or frightening in the least, sometimes rather baffling, actually (like when the killer takes the time to remove the wheel-blocks from a van which he proceeds to tip over. Uh, why exactly did he remove the wheel-blocks, then?). DGITW has a sense of humor, though most of it sucks. For example: the newlyweds are named "Dick" and "Cherry", ha ha. Or take that "wacky" music (complete with a train whistle) that shows up whenever the goofier victims-to-be show up. (there is one, just one, cool melody in the synth score, but it's done to death by film's end) But, I'll give it one gag that had me laughing my ass off - after showing the Herculean trek of a guy in a wheelchair up a loooong mountain path, over roots and stumps, once even falling over, we see the guy take a brief break to catch his breath, and whump! Off goes his head, bouncing down the path from whence he came. And, of course, not all the humor is intentional, like the hilariously inept apologies that come from the hikers when they mistakenly kill an innocent, thinking they were attacking the killer. Or even the climax, which I guess was supposed to be disturbing (Behold, the common man's descent into savagery!), but just turned out silly and giggle-provoking. Dialogue is expectedly moronic ("Come out of there, you jerk you!" "Ahhr!"), and acting, about on a par. I don't know why actress Angie Brown has a box around her name in the CLOSING credits (well after any attention drawn to the name would do any good; besides, this was her only movie at the time, and would be her last for seven more years, and I have no idea what benefit the filmmakers thought they would reap by pointing this out), closing credits which feature a true classic of awful horror-movie songwriging ("Don't go in the woods tonight, or you probably will get killed!"). At least Mary Gail Artz was pretty cute, and still working in movies, as a casting director. Filmed in the Great Annoying Theocracy of Utah, where most horror is banned anyway, so what the hell do they know about actually MAKING a horror movie? Lots of pretty scenery, as is often the case with on-the-cheap rural slasher movies like this. It's been suggested before (Homer? Pig?) that a lot of these movies might become not-bad if only the thirty or so minutes of unnecessary woods footage was removed. I disagree; I think a lot of these movies might become not-bad if only the sixty or so minutes of unnecessary slasher footage was removed. Also known as Don't Go In The Woods...Alone. To be avoided in either case. BACK TO THE D's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE