Search - Don't Go Near the Park on DVD

"Hey baby, you want to take a walk on the wild side?"

cookieman108 | Inside the jar... | 05/16/2006

(2 out of 5 stars)

"What's that? You've never heard of the psuedo cannibal horror film Don't Go Near the Park (1981) aka Sanctuary for Evil aka Curse of the Living Dead? Well, neither did I, and after watching it last night I now know why...because it stunk something awful...produced, co-written, and directed by Lawrence D. Foldes (Young Warriors, Nightforce), the film features an early appearance by scream queen Linnea Quigley (Savage Streets, Silent Night, Deadly Night, The Return of the Living Dead), along with Aldo Ray (The Green Berets, Psychic Killer, Biohazard). Also appearing is Tamara Taylor (Life Stinks), Meeno Peluce (The Amityville Horror), Chris Riley, Barbara Monker, and Crackers Phinn, who obviously angered a god in a previous life to be saddled with the name "Crackers".

As the film begins we're treated to a bit of text stating that `while the film you are about to see is fiction, it's based on actual occurrences which happened over the centuries'...yeah, whatever...seems some 12,000 years ago some prehistoric witchy woman placed an evil whammy on two cannibals named Gar (Phinn) and Tra (Monker) because of their penchant for eating the entrails of others in their quest for eternal youth. The curse entails them aging ten years for every year, but never actually dying, and thereby having to continually consume the entrails of others to stay young until such a time when the stars are in a certain alignment to which they then can perform some sort of sacrifice, freeing themselves (the amount of stupidity within the first ten minutes of this film is overwhelming). Fast forward 11,984 years and we see Gar, who's now named Mark, dressed like a low rent secret service agent, accosting some kid in a field and eating his guts. Shortly after he begins stalking a blonde (Quigley) he sees on the street and to make a long and pointless story short, the two get married and have a daughter, which they name Bondi (Taylor). Flash forward a number of years to Bondi's sixteenth birthday party...after a falling out between Bondi's parents (seems Mark dotes on his daughter and not on his wife at all), Bondi runs away, and gets picked up by three lecherous skeevs in a boogie van with red shag interior. After a bit of mauling on their part, the van crashes in a fiery blaze due to unseen forces, and all die except Bondi, who stumbles around in the woods eventually holing up in a dilapidated ranch occupied by a couple of runaways and a creepy old baboochka named Patty (who is, in reality, Tra, from the beginning of the movie). Things soon come to a head as Bondi, who's now `of age', is supposed to be a part of the ritual to lift the 12,000-year-old curse...I think...

What a mess...between the Neanderthal flashbacks and zombie dream sequences I think there was a glimmer of a plot somewhere in this movie, but I was hard pressed to find it...I did learn a number things while watching this film, though...

1. If you're the spawn of a 12,000 plus year old evil entity, you're more likely to get a goony, mystical amulet for your sixteen birthday rather than a car.
2. Ford boogie vans from the 1970s explode spectacularly when they crash, indicating perhaps they run on a nitroglycerine based fuel.
3. Never accept a ride from three, skeevy guys in a late model Ford Boogie van with a red shag interior.
4. If you rent a room to someone, it's perfectly acceptable to rummage through their belongings when they're out.
5. Linnea Quigley doesn't seem to mind appearing nekkid in a movie even though said nekkidness has absolutely nothing to do with the actual story.
6. People from 12,000 years ago sported similar hairstyles to those popular in the early 1980s, along with having a remarkable grasp of the English language.
7. Aldo Ray could use the term `psychoactive' within a sentence (that's not to say he knew what it meant).
8. If you're making a cheapie horror film, you can save a lot of money and pad out the running time by showing a lengthy sequence more than once.

Perhaps the worst aspect of this film, besides the aimlessly meandering plot, was the disjointed dialog. Whoever wrote the script obviously had some experience with the English language, but certainly not enough to understand how normal people converse with each other, and this isn't helped any by the terribly shoddy acting, inept direction, and an inappropriate, and often annoying, musical score. Characters of seeming relevance appear and disappear, and some are never even properly identified (Quigley is in about a third of the film, but we never learn her character's name). There's a number of `What the hell?' moments throughout the film, but the most memorable was near the end as Gar and Tra, during a heated disagreement, begin shooting laser beams from their eyeballs...up until this point there was little indication they had any real special powers other than eating guts, so this was straight out of left field. Aldo Ray is in the movie for all of ten minutes or so, and the only point to his character, as far as I could tell, was to dump exposition into our laps. You see, he was a writer (I think), and he was researching the strange goings on over the years (apparently the stuff that happened some 12,000 years ago occurred in the area where the ranch is located, the same ranch the runaways now call home). There are about three or four gory sequences, ones that will make the uninitiated squeamish, but probably won't appeal a whole lot to the hardcore gore hound. We do see guts being torn open, but the actual feasting on entrails is more or less alluded to in terms of how it was shot (we usually see someone pretending to chew on something hidden in their hands). The make up isn't that great and the special effects less than special, but it did feel like there was some effort in this area, hampered obviously by a meager budget. There were a couple of funny moments in the film (I'm unsure if they were intentional or not), the funniest being the twist ending, which involved the runaways, after getting kicked out of the ranch, deciding to celebrate their homelessness by heading to a nearby playground. As far as what follows, well, you'll just have to see for yourself...(I'd recommend having a good amount of booze on hand, as it will make the movie go down a whole lot easier)

I have to give Dark Sky Films a lot of credit, as they tend to put a whole lot of effort into their releases whether the film warrants it or not (Don't Go Near the Park falls into the latter category, in my opinion)...the picture quality, presented in anamorphic widescreen (1.85:1), looks sharp, and the Dolby Digital 2.0 mono audio comes through cleanly. There are a number of extras including a commentary track with writer/producer/director Lawrence D. Foldes and actress Linnea Quigley, extended and deleted scenes, a featurette titled Grue!! Gore Outtakes, a photo gallery, English and Spanish theatrical trailers for the film, a television spot, and English subtitles.

Cookieman108
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No, but really ... DON'T!

K. K. Woofter | Montreal, QC Canada | 11/10/2006

(1 out of 5 stars)

"A few weeks ago, I read the reviews below, and thought, "Yeah, yeah, you guys just don't appreciate the act of savouring every rotten morsel of a wonderfully bad flick." Now, I look to those reviewers as my new gurus. I must learn to trust these wise Amazon connoisseurs of B-movie good-badness. They were so right! This film was beyond bad, not good-bad, but bad-bad ... no, BOMB-bad, a negative 11 on a scale of 1-10. There were three potentially hilarious things about it (they would have been hilarious had the rest of the flick not filled me with that helpless, numbing anger I feel when I'm on a really bad date). First, there is the fact that the daughter, Bondi (okay, so maybe there are four hilarious things), is never onscreen with the mother who hates her. Would it not make dramatic sense to give them at least one scene of dialogue together? (I suspect that their scenes were shot years apart ... maybe even 12,000 years apart.) Second, Bondi decides that it's cool to accept a ride from three young dudes in a van with painted windows. Um ... ? Third, and you've heard this before if you read the reviews below, that van went up in flames faster than the Hindenberg. The Hindenberg ... I think I'll end on that note."