Don't Go Near the Park (1979) User Reviews

Nonsensical and tedious

[Groverdox · 3/10 · 20 December 2017]

"Don't Go Near the Park" is one of the most bizarrely incompetent movies I have ever seen. I've watched it twice now, and still don't really know what it's about. There's something in there about cavemen being cursed to never die but continue to age. The only way the cavemen can stave off this awesome decrepitude is to eat the guts of children. They also hang out in a park, I think, which sort-of-explains the title. (?)

Other than that I can't really make head nor tail of this movie. There are a few scenes where people's guts are ripped open, however unconvincingly. Why do they just do it with their hands? Wouldn't it take incredible strength to rip through the stomach muscles to access the gut?

There is an attempted rape scene where a girl has her shirt ripped open and then makes a van crash.

Also Linnea Quigley shows up in one of her earliest roles. She shows her breast.

There's also a curly-haired kid, whose presence in the movie I didn't understand, and a guy named Cowboy.

Can anything be made of all this?

I'm not the asinine type of film viewer who needs everything to make sense. Some of my favourite movies make no sense and I love them for it. But "Don't Go Near the Park" has another fatal flaw: it's boring.

No, really, don't go near it.

[ThrownMuse · 2/10 · 8 March 2007]

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.

Silly and trashy, but somehow entertaining

[The_Void · 4/10 · 15 May 2006]

You have to give this film a little bit of credit for the fact that it doesn't religiously follow the same old slasher plot line; but then most of this credit has to be taken away when you consider how rubbish the film is. Don't Go Near the Park is one of the films included on the Video Nasty list, but unfortunately this is one of the films that really isn't all that gory. The film features a few bloody scenes (one that turns up before the credits), but they all look so fake that they're impossible to really take seriously. The plot, which opens centuries in the past, takes influence from the vampire sub-genre, and follows a pair of siblings who find themselves doomed to walk the Earth for all eternity after abusing their tribe's tradition for eternal youth. They are given one chance to break this curse, however, as they must sacrifice a virgin (who is also a descendant from the tribe) in return for their souls at a certain point during the lunar cycle. This leads the male of the duo to marry the first young woman he bumps into, and this means that their daughter is the one who must be sacrificed...

Of course, this plot is silly and is never going to lead to a great film; but I really do think that if this had better production values, it could have been a decent little flick. The script includes some good ideas, and the plot doesn't play out exactly as you'd expect it to; although it does suffer from a load of ridiculous happenings and coincidences. The acting is rubbish, and sees Tamara Taylor give a very irritating performance in the lead role. Aldo Ray and Meeno Peluce are ineffective in their roles, and the only standout performance in the film comes from Linnea Quigley, although her part doesn't allow her do much, and is only memorable because she would go on to make quite an impression in several other eighties horror films. The title of the movie gives you the notion that the film is another exploitation flick along the same lines of The Last House on the Left or Don't Go in the Woods, and I can see this leading to annoyance for people who weren't expecting a fantasy horror movie. On the whole, this really isn't a very good film - but it's more imaginative than a lot of its ilk, and while I won't see it again; I've got to admit that I did rather enjoy watching it.

Possibly the greatest badfilm of all time

[DocEmmettBrown · 3 June 2003]

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.

A Truly Great Motion Picture ...

[Theo Robertson · 1/10 · 10 October 2004]

... If all you look for in a motion picture is people getting their stomachs ripped open and their hearts eaten !

Hey you don't honestly think I was gonna give DON'T GO NEAR THE PARK a good write up do you ? How on earth can anyone enjoy a movie which comes in a video box with a blood drenched man guzzling a human heart on its cover ? And before you ask It wasn't me who chose this from the video store many years ago

The story ( for want of a better word ) starts with a supernatural being who looks like David Copperfield feasting upon human hearts centuries ago . Cut to the present day he seduces a young blonde who then gives birth to a daughter called Bondi . Not only is he a terrible gourmet but he seems to have an obessesion with Australian beaches . Bondi leaves home due to her mother's jealousy due to her father's love :

" Gold . You never f***in' gave me gold "

which seems to give the movie an angle of teenage angst . Of course this is obviously coincidental because it's safe to say that no one working on this production will have ever heard of a sophisticated word like angst , I mean a script that has lines like " If you want to be my brother stop feeling me up . Brothers don't feel up sisters " is not very sophisticated

Strange that all the reviewers on this page have never gone into detail about the plot of DON'T GO NEAR THE PARK and from memory I'm having a lot of problems trying to remember what the plot was . I could tell you what happens but I don't want to spoil your enjoyment* and just like in an overblown James Bond movie lots of things may happen in the narrative but that doesn't necessarly mean the film has a plot , more of a rambling set of scenes with someone getting killed every few minutes

* That's a joke by the way . There's nothing to enjoy about this crap

DON'T GO NEAR THE DVD (Unless you want a good laugh!)

[DistantJ · 1/10 · 2 June 2006]

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.

Goodness me...

[dockbennett · 3/10 · 26 April 2003]

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. :(

Mind-bogglingly bad.

[gridoon · 1/10 · 14 September 2003]

Watching a movie like "Don't Go Near the Park" is enough to make you stop watching movies altogether. Badly put together, with huge narrative gaps, and incompetently directed, this was obviously the work of people who didn't have a clue about making movies. It's a pity nobody told them "Don't go near the camera!". It must be said, however, that there are two or three gruesome scenes of cannibalism that might interest gore fans. 0 out of 4 stars - but it could also be 0 out of 10.

So bad it's... still bad.

[Coventry · 2/10 · 13 December 2004]

If you were, like me, expecting to see another numb-nuts 80's slasher, you'll soon find out that you're mistaken (I should start reading the back of the VHS-covers!). Before the credits even start to role, you're already treated to an utterly gore butchering sequence and a demented prologue. The screenwriter (probably a flipping drug-addict) thought up a story about two siblings that were cursed 12.000 years ago. In order to keep their youthful appearance and to save their souls, they have to feed on human flesh. If that isn't enough, the male half of the two has to find a girlfriend, get her pregnant and sacrifice the virgin daughter to the Zodiacs…or something. Granted, the plot is pretty retarded but it's stuffed with cheesy gore and the script is unintentionally hilarious. There's no tension whatsoever and you're about to forget the whole thing as soon as you finished watching it. If you're a sucker for painfully bad 80's flicks, this is a must.

Don't Go Near The VCR

[Red-Barracuda · 6/10 · 2 February 2006]

Don't Go Near The Park concerns a prehistoric couple who are doomed to eternal dying by their tribe's matriarch. Their crime was incest and cannibalism. So, somewhat strangely, they are informed that they will age 10 years for every year unless, wait for it, they feast on human flesh. I feel that this punishment will not show these errant cannibals the error of their ways. And so it proves. 12,000 years later these aforementioned maniacs are living by a park in the U.S.A. where they are tasked with slaughtering a virgin of their tribe when the twin stars of the wolf flank the moon. By doing so, the curse will be lifted. To be perfectly honest, they aren't looking too bad for people who are 120,000 years old. They set about disembowelling random unfortunates in order regain their youth. Gar, the male half of this psychotic magical caveman duo, decides to attain a bride in order to impregnate her and eat their offspring at the exact moment of zodiac re-alignment. His technique for acquiring a wife is unorthodox to say the least – he stalks a woman and surprises her as she is coming out of the shower. Naturally, she does not suspect that he is a crazed psychopath and allows him to stay in her spare room. Shortly afterwards he stares at her in a highly creepy manner, she takes her clothes off and they are married a minute later.

Gar prefers his daughter, Bondi, to his wife, "she's better than you, you bitch" he points out. But the bad atmosphere at home leads Bondi to hitch a ride with a van full of sex offenders. They try to have their way with Bondi but, fortunately, she has a magical red amulet - a present from her father - which makes the brakes of the van fail. Bondi is teleported out just before the van of perverts veers off a bridge and results in a hilariously enormous explosion.

Bondi finds her way to a farmhouse where Gar's prehistoric partner, Tra, lives with a bubble-permed midget and a ponce called Cowboy. The midget subsequently discovers that the park nearby is cursed and is inhabited by a couple of magic cannibals, one of which is Tra, his guardian. On returning to the house Tra frightens off the midget and Bondi – the midget suffering a tragic two metre fall from a tree into a stack of hay. Bondi runs into the park where she is scared by a dog, she falls over and rolls very slowly down a grassy hill into the cave where Gar and Tra live. Bondi then encounters her dad Gar, fully kitted out in prehistoric gear, i.e. P.E. shorts and New Romantic make-up. He is joined by Tra and they show off by firing laser beams from their eyes and displaying the power to create fire with a wave of their hands. Skills that would've been worth using earlier on in the film if truth be told but what do I know. Anyway, things come to a conclusion shortly afterwards, I won't spoil the fun by giving away the monumental events that take place.

Don't Go Near The Park was on the Video Nasty list and certainly has this to thank for anyone having an interest in it nowadays. It is a very bad movie. The acting is terrible. The music appears to have been taken from a batch of different soundtracks from other films and pasted in randomly. The editing is extraordinary – it is the worst I can recall having seen – scenes cut into each other suddenly, occasionally before a sentence has ended. Everything about it is bad. But this is not to be taken as a criticism, as it is heroically bad. I would far rather watch a deranged bad film such as this than a tediously mediocre one. One for Bad Movie Night!

We will survive.

[lastliberal · 5/10 · 10 October 2008]

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.

The 1970s in a Very Strange Nutshell!

[Atomic_Brain · 10/10 · 18 December 2019]

Don't Go Near The Park is not an easy film to like. The shoddy cinematography, crummy sound and overall amateur acting make this most unusual horror film off-putting to most. (I can also take or leave the music score, which seems overbearing.) Yet, if you can get past the home video look of the piece, and read between the lines of the muffled and confusing dialogue, what you find is really an amazing script in the service of some seriously antisocial agenda. The script takes place in various time periods, from "prehistoric" to recent to modern day, and conveys plot points with a curious sense of telescoping time periods which is intriguing, if a bit confusing. In many ways, it is a time travel story hitched haphazardly to a garden-variety horror plot. Even better, the surreal plot takes great care to step on some sacred taboos, and does so with an abandon which is either revolting or charming, depending on your mind set. Park crosses the line of good taste so often, this just had to be deliberate. The gore in Park is strong but cartoony, yet even this is made "special" by its main target. Other special effects range from the comical to the surreal, with our favorite being laser beam death rays which emanate from the villains for no apparent reason. The transformation scenes are also quite amazing in their sheer simplicity, and there is a shot of our heroine falling into a cosmic void of some sort which is very, very cool. Speaking of which, the heroine of the piece is the delightful Tammy Taylor, who plays one of the cutest teens ever committed to celluloid; indeed, with her baby-doll face and voluptuous body, Ms Taylor comes across as an excellent example of another icon of the 1970s - the precocious pubescent (re: Brooke Shields in Pretty Baby, Phoebe Cates in Paradise, etc.) Here is another area in which Park stomps all over another taboo, and does so in a gleeful, reckless manner which is disarming. There is a scene featuring Taylor which is so stark and seedy, it is jaw-dropping. The breathtaking finnale features the villains finally being dragged down to hell for their misdeeds, where eternity is spent devouring one another ad nauseum. Yikes! Park even offers a wonderfully grim and ironic shock ending, of the kind some of horror buffs love. The (literally) fantastic screenplay is a prime example of 1970s cinematic excess, and as that late, great decade was all about cinematic excess, this accolade is not to be taken lightly. Long live Bondi!

Indubitably the strangest of the "video nasties"

[drownsoda90 · 6/10 · 12 August 2019]

"Don't Go Near the Park" follows a pair of siblings (one male, one female) who have been roving the earth for 12,000 years after their mother cursed them in ancient times. To avoid aging, they feast on the entrails of youth in order to absorb their lifeforce. Once the moratorium on the curse has lifted, the brother mates with a woman and gives birth to a daughter intended as a virgin sacrifice that will give he and his sister immortality.

This utter oddity was helmed by a 19-year-old filmmaker, which, even considering the film's shortcomings (and there are many), is rather impressive. "Don't Go Near the Park" blends elements of vampires and zombie films with cannibal horror and fantasy; it's a heady, odd concoction that is unlike anything I've seen.

To say that the plot is far-fetched would be a gross understatement-it's absolutely insane, but it does stick true to its own logic on most levels. The film ended up on the BBFC's "video nasty" list and was successfully prosecuted for obscenity due to its gore sequences, which almost exclusively consist of gross-out disembowelments in which people have their innard torn open by the hands of the flesh-feasting siblings. Some of these scenes are still disturbing to this day, bright-red blood aside. The production values here are low and the whole thing feels very TV-movie-esque, but this quality lends a certain charm. The acting is subpar and the special effects quite silly (there are some laser scenes and aging montages in the finale that are dated and silly), while the editing is choppy and leaves something to be desired. Aldo Ray has a minor role as a random writer who takes one of the main characters-a young orphan-under his wing, while horror favorite Linnea Quigley appears briefly as the mother of the virgin sacrifice (her character storms out of the house off-screen, exclusively through voice-over, in an incredibly silly scene).

Even despite its shortcomings, I found myself enjoying "Don't Go Near the Park" immensely. Low production values aside, the filmmakers here managed to do some interesting things, and the zany plot is truly one-of-a-kind. For fans of offbeat B or Z-grade cinema, there is plenty of fun (and entrails!) to be had here. 6/10.

Wow, this is bad

[sean7 · 1/10 · 1 February 2001]

The language that I need to use to describe this film is unprintable. All I can say is DO NOT WATCH THIS FILM under any circumstances. If someone threatens to kill you if you don't watch this film, choose death(and keep some dignity). I've never died, but it can't be worse than watching this. I personally, am scarred for life.

You've never seen a movie like THIS before

[lazarillo · 30 June 2006]

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.

don't go near this DVD

[trashgang · 2/10 · 8 April 2009]

Another one from the video nasties list. Again brutally cut but was that necessary? This is a strange movie, it's about longevity and how to get it. 12000 years ago a brother and his sister were condemned to perpetual dying but never death. a young virgin must be sacrificed to get salvation. So suddenly we are in present days with that brother killing people to eat there entrails, cannibalism in other words. But it's all shown in the worst effects you can get, especially the face turning older or younger, it's stop motion done. but it works in some way. The mother is played by Linnea Quigley, here in her 5th movie. She gives a good performance. Then the movie turns out that the child of Linnea is the chosen virgin she get's an amulet from her father coming from 12000 years ago, she runs from home getting in the park. But it's all so cheaply done, the score doesn't work, the editing is weird. And the child is played by Tamara Taylor, she only played in 5 movies this her first and nothing is know about her age. So they had to cut the love scene's and rape scene's she had to make. Even the scene's with Linnea and her brother were cut, in the cut version you see her undress, when she is almost on naked they cut to another scene, the full uncut shows her full frontal naked. The version I have (anchor bay) it's all left in, and don't worry, you are missing nothing, it's strange that this one has been cut, the zombies at the end are laughable too. A weird movie and hard to find uncut.

horrible!

[acana_15 · 1/10 · 26 November 2001]

i thought this movies really really sucked! it was a good thing i was in a laughing mood because all i could do was laugh at the horrible effects. there was no plot and no lines at all, i mean please! i have seen movies from the 80's and ALL of them had beeter visual effects then this! hello Nightmare on elm street movies....from the 80's with much better effects! i wouldn't recommend this movie to my worst enemy

Baffling

[maisyskinner · 3/10 · 10 October 2021]

A prehistoric couple are doomed to live forever and age rapidly unless they find virgins to eat. At least that's what I think this movie is about.

Don't Go Near the Park is part sci-fi, part horror, and part exploitation movie and none of the elements ever completely gel into anything that makes a lick of sense. There's certainly enough gory cannibalistic murders to keep the horror fans happy, but the tone is often so light and silly that you can't take anything about the film seriously. Acting is all terrible, but some of the makeup effects are decent and it's certainly never predictable. Worth a watch for an early performance by scream queen Linnea Quigley.

Directed by a teenager, the inexperience shows.

[Stevieboy666 · 4/10 · 17 April 2021]

Wacky supernatural horror movie that starts off 12,000 years ago then is set in modern day Los Angeles, and concerns a couple of cannibalistic vampires who need to eat children's intestines to maintain their own youth. Quite potty really!

The late 70's and early 80's saw a slew of Don't movies, a number of which found themselves branded as "Video Nasties" in the UK and banned, this being one. This is one seriously bad movie, oh where to begin? Am earthquake effect is achieved by shaking the camera around. The young man and woman from 10,000 BC look very 20th Century, but what's more white Europeans were not in California 12,000 years ago! The acting, special effects, lighting, plot logic are all awful. Aldo Ray gets top billing but only has a small role. So what is good about it? Well for a start it's an early (but not the first) Linnea Quigley appearance, with full frontal nudity. There is plenty of gory gut munching though the effects look very cheap. Despite the badness the movie does shock, kids being ripped open, plus a nasty attempted rape in a van scene, make it at times uncomfortable viewing. Some zombies are even thrown into the mix for good measure. The film is utter trash but for those who love bad movies, Video Nasties or Linnea Quigley then it's worth seeing. Director Lawrence D Foldes was only 19 at the time so I can't be too harsh on this effort.

Really bad

[hellholehorror · 2/10 · 16 November 2022]

There is one thing that I will take away from this movie and that is that you can stay young by eating young virgin's livers, interesting? There is little else really. The film is made really badly. There is nothing whatsoever that will make you sit up and pay attention. The story about 12,000 year old siblings is beyond anything anyone would think was good. It was like it was written by a 12 year old. This is best stayed away from. The gore is really fake and the inept direction is horrible to sit through. It's outdated and that is the best I can say about it really. Such a disappointing film.

It's got nothing to do with your Vorsprung Durch Technic, you know.

[BA_Harrison · 6/10 · 3 September 2009]

These days, a visit to the local park might involve dodging drunks, knife wielding hoodies, drug addicts, or paedophiles, but at least there aren't 12,000 year old cannibals waiting in the bushes to snack on your guts!

In trashy schlock horror Don't Go Near the Park, that's what is waiting for people who choose to ignore local superstition and wander into the wooded area that is home to immortal brother and sister, Gar (Crackers Phinn) and Tra (Barbara Bain). Cursed by their mother to suffer endless death but never die (?), these prehistoric siblings must eat the internal organs of their victims to survive, until the day when two Wolf stars are in perfect alignment and the sacrifice of a virgin descended from their tribe breaks the curse and grants them both eternal life.

To ensure that they have a virgin of the correct stock handy when the time comes, Gar hooks up with a tasty blonde (Linnea Quigley), gets married, and knocks her up (all seemingly within the space of ten minutes): 16 years later, and it is Gar's daughter, Bondi (played by jail-bait cutie Tamara Taylor), who is to be sacrificed. When Bondi runs away from home, however, it looks as though she may escape this terrible fate—if only she didn't decide on the local park as her hiding place...

This amazingly dumb plot is brought to life by a director, Lawrence D. Foldes, who is so inept behind the camera, it's a miracle that he took the lens cap off whilst filming, and a cast who make the acting in my son's nativity play look positively professional by comparison. That said, by some miracle, Don't Go Near the Park actually proves to be rather entertaining.

There are plenty of unintentional laughs to be had at the expense of the pitiful dialogue. shoddy costumes, and dreadful effects, and the cheesy gore makes the film fun for those who enjoy their splatter (it was sufficiently bloody to win it a place on the official Video Nasties list). The film is also notable for Quigley's early role as Bondi's mother, which sees her actually trying to act (as well, of course, taking a shower when called upon). Further welcome nudity is supplied by young Tamara Taylor, who seems to get felt up by almost everyone, including Gar, some wannabe rapist teens, and an eight year old kid.

The film ends in a suitably ridiculous manner, with Gar's sacrificial ritual going haywire, laser beams shooting from his eyes, zombies rising from the dead, and a twist ending that suggests that Bondi will carry on her family's entrails-eating tradition.

Entertaining for all the wrong reasons, I rate Don't Go Near the Park an unbelievably generous 6/10.

A park with a high casualty rate of losing your insides.

[lost-in-limbo · 4/10 · 6 September 2008]

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.

A wonderfully wretched Grade Z horror gore schlock howler

[Woodyanders · 8/10 · 2 November 2006]

Since I'm a hardcore aficionado of Grade Z garbage I must confess I was really looking forward to this notoriously lousy piece of absolute grindhouse horror splatter trash. I just recently snagged a copy of this brain-numbing bilge on DVD and dared to give it a stare. WOW! This sure ain't your garden variety bad flick. Instead, it's a very special and oddly endearing sort of unbelievably bad flick.

Let's start with the lovably preposterous premise: Prehistoric cult members Gar (some hopelessly wooden stiff acting under the incredible pseudonym of Crackers Phinn) and Tra (the equally woeful Barbara Monker) are banished from their tribe for cannibalizing little kids in order to gain eternal youth. Prior to getting the boot the wizened old crone queen puts a curse on the pernicious pair: they are forever doomed to walk the earth in perpetual suffering in which they age one year every ten years and must resort to further flesh-eating to become young again. Fortunately in the early 80's in Los Angeles Gar leaves the park the two have been living in and marries a hot, but snippy young lady (an early appearance by popular 80's horror scream queen Linnea Quigley, who looks awful cute, but can't act for spit) and has a daughter who he names Bondi (the adorable Tamara Taylor). Naturally, something sinister is afoot here: Both Gar and Tra plan on devouring Bondi's precious innocent virginal flesh when she turns 16 in order to achieve complete everlasting eternal life.

Boy, now that's what I call an absurdly complex, convoluted and rather confusing story! Besides the gloriously gonzo narrative, this choice chunk of prime tasty celluloid cheese further boasts dreadful direction by Lawrence D. Foldes, muddy, shaky, vertigo-inducing cinematography by William De Diego, cruddy make-up effects, tacky excessive gore, choppy editing, a rancid score by Chris Ledesma, a threadbare, barely coherent and rambling script, sluggish pacing, a stupid shock surprise ending, and uniformly dismal acting from a pitiful cast (Meeno Peluce wins the grand thespic booby prize as an obnoxiously hearty young kid runaway while poor Aldo Ray is wasted in a nothing minor part as a writer), all of which are exceptionally atrocious. The film's single most jaw-dropping sequence occurs when Bondi gets abducted by three degenerate rapists in a van, but is saved by a magical amulet given to her by her father which causes the van to go off a bridge and explode! Another stupendous moment has Gar and Tra shooting crummy laser beams out of their eyes. And let's not forget the pathetic handful of moaning rot-faced zombies who pop up for the stirring conclusion. As an added bonus, both Linnea Quigley and Tamara Taylor have nude scenes. This sublimely shoddy stinker is a real must-see for devout fans of deliciously down'n'dirty dimestore dreck cinema.

More like an episode of some horrible TV show...

[emperordalek · 1/10 · 13 November 2019]

I actually had high hopes for this one, and for one reason only: one of the grind house/drive in channels on YouTube featured a VERY frightening trailer for it. Seriously, I want to see THAT movie!

Unfortunately, I found it immediately on YouTube, and instead of THAT movie, I got...this. Instead of a horror movie, it's more like a bad late 70's TV movie about runaways, an ancient curse, and a dad who is way too invested, with SOME horror in it. And not much at that.

I'm not going to bother going into the plot, since many others have already done so, except to ask: how many people did these two have to kill over 12,000 years if they're aging 100 years for every year they live? Or am I just incapable of doing the math? More likely the writer was...

Speaking of which, it says something that the writer of this movie also plays a role...as one of those three guys in the van. Fitting, really.

While there's so much that's bad - the acting, the plot, the special effects - the award goes to the music, which more than anything else makes this movie sound like an episode of some horrible 70's TV show. If you cut out all the curse bits and left the footage with Meeno intact, you might mistake it for an episode of CHiPs.

Oh, Meeno. Why did you have to go and be the only good thing about this movie?

Heed My Warning!

[Notsoboo · 19 February 2003]

I read the warnings online. Despite them, I stupidly went out and rented this piece of garbage. Wow. I've been let-down by a movie before, but never by a movie I had no expectations for anyway. This was just bad. First of all, the intro takes place "12,000 years ago"... which would make the characters 10,000 years older than Christ, but they speak VERY good American English... wow. THAT'S an impressive feat, almost as impressive as going on a 12,000 year-long murdering spree and not being caught once. Another impressive feat would have to be the awesome special effects they used to show aging... which were the exact same effects used in The Wolf Man almost 40 years prior to this. Incredible. [sarcasm]

Yes folks, this movie includes it all: bad acting, stupid effects, weak plot, and best of all, two 12,000 year old murderers, everything. The only thing this movie has going for it, in my opinion, is that it's hard to find.