Backwoods

A low budget gem with surprisingly good actors and a plot that leaves you wondering who the real bad guy is. It's a shame that Dick Kreusser hasn't had many roles because his acting was the star of the show.

Scares 3/10 Tension 7/10 Gore 4/10 Nudity 10/10 Entertainment 10/10

Plot 5/10 Characters 5/10 Pacing 4/10 Music 3/10 Cinematography 5/10

Final score 5.8/10

"Backwoods", or "Geek" (as I know it) is one of those films in the same sub-genre as Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Deliverance, Midnight, Just Before Dawn...you get my drift. It reminded me very much of "Just Before Dawn", as some of the scenes are very similar.

I won't go into a detailed description of the plot as I'm sure you will get an idea of it from the other reviews here.

The film gets off to a slow start, although the atmosphere is rather creepy. There is very little gore at all, which is a shame because it would have enhanced things greatly. When things do get going (in the last quarter of the film) is when it is most rewarding - the scenes are tense, disturbing and very well done. The film also makes you think a bit and by the end, the message I got was that ultimately humans stand alone and must protect themselves at all costs.

If you love films such as Just Before Dawn, Midnight, Deliverance, and so on, I would recommend giving this a watch. The pay-off is in the ending but sadly you have to suffer a bit of boredom to get to it.

Backwoods (1987)

** (out of 4)

By-the-numbers slasher has a couple from the city deciding to go to Kentucky for some camping. They're warned not to go down one path but of course they do and before long they meet an elder man. What the couple doesn't know is that the old man has a retarded and deranged son.

BACKWOODS is a film that I'm guessing went straight-to-video back in the day. There's no question that it didn't have too much money on its budget and if you're expecting a classy production then forget it. With that said, if you're a fan of slasher movies and need to see them all then I must admit that this here is much better than several of the slashers out there that had a bigger budget and better cast.

As it stands this here is a pretty routine movie. The two idiots don't listen to the warnings and before long they're dealing with a maniac redneck. The VHS cover bragged about this being as frightening as DELIVERANCE but of course that's certainly not true. This film wants to be like that masterpiece but also appeal to horror fans but the lack of any real gore and the lack of killings will keep it pretty much forgotten to most people.

The performances are pretty much what you'd expect but I did enjoy Dean Crow's direction. I thought he did a good job with the atmosphere and the setting was very good as well. BACKWOODS isn't a masterpiece, a good film or even a very memorable one but it's mildly entertaining for what it is.

Karen (Christine Noonan), the female protagonist from backwoods slasher Geek, has got to be one of the most irritating horror movie heroines I've ever seen, totally deserving of the suffering she endures: she completely ignores a helpful park ranger's advice by choosing to camp in an area shunned by locals (they're not going there for a reason, you silly bint!); she refuses to listen to reason from her boyfriend Jamie (Brad Armacost), forcing him to accept an invitation to dinner from redneck Eben (Dick Kreusser), despite the fact that, moments earlier, he had held a loaded shotgun to Jamie's head; she skinny dips alone at a remote lake, without questioning the wisdom of such an act; and she not only insists that Jamie goes 'coon hunting with Eben, leaving herself at the mercy of Eben's drooling retard of a son William, but she decides that then would be a good time to strip off, giving William an eyeful of her nekkid bod.

William, whose hobby is biting the heads off small critters (especially chickens), rather unsurprisingly wigs out at the sight of Karen's tatas, and tries to attack her, at which point the film offers up some reasonable thrills followed by a neat finale in which Karen sets up a nasty trap involving fish-hooks and a bag full of rocks. Unfortunately, this comes very late in the day, after lots of dull wandering around the woods, and a drawn out scene in Eben's cabin in which Jamie and his hillbilly host get drunk on moonshine. If it wasn't for Karen's occasional nudity to alleviate the boredom, getting to the (unbelievably silly) end of Geek would be tougher than a three day hike through the backwoods of Kentucky.

3.5 out of 10, rounded up to 4 for IMDb.

If you like b-movies from the 80s then you might enjoy this. Two campers are terrorized by a geek, an insane man that bites the heads off chickens. This movie (Backwoods) is also known as 'Geek' in the U.K. Its a straight to video film with a cast of unknowns, but they play their roles well. I liked the overall creepy atmosphere of the film and the last 30 minutes were very entertaining. One thing that bugged me about this movie was not knowing what really happened to Beth,the little girl. Karen is shown sporting a shotgun and shoots toward William when he is dragging her beaten boyfriend away with Beth in toe and Karen blindly fires at the trio but we never see beth again but i assume Karen shot her by mistake. Other then this tiny plot hole i liked this movie. 6/10