Backwoods

It's a shame that this lovely site doesn't feature a poster image of this 'Geek', a.k.a Backwoods. The VHS copy I rented showed a mad-raving freak, waving around a butcher's hatchet. It attracts horror lovers and, in all honesty, I have to admit that the cover motivated me to rent it without knowing anything about it. Big mistake, of course! Backwoods stands as one of the lousiest pieces of trash I ever beheld…and that does mean something! This film is a bloodless 80's slasher and that's about the worst idea possible. The makers clearly intended to bring tension and dept instead of blood and gore but they failed miserably. After an hour of viewing, you still haven't seen any of the cast-members dying (unless you think decapitated chickens are gruesome). What other reasons do you have for seeing a slasher besides teen-butchering??? The heart-breaking story about a lone Kentucky farmer and his deranged son? The thrilling adventures of a young couple camping? The only aspect worth mentioning is the eerie opening/end credits song. The slowly sung and chilling lyrics give you the wrong impression that you're about to watch a good film. Check out 'Deliverance', 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre', 'Just before Dawn', 'The Hills have Eyes' or even Rick Roessler's 'Slaughterhouse' instead! Anything but this turkey!

Obscure horror made just after the slasher era but has the looks like an early eighties slasher even as it isn't really a slasher. It's a typical hillbilly flick. It's rather hard to find this flick only available on VHS. And still people do search it even as it isn't all that good, face it, being obsessed by long black hair.

The reason therefor lays in the fact that the first hour it's all about talking and characterisation. But I guess the director Dean Crow did knew about that fact and did put in some gratuitous full frontal nudity by one time actress Christine Noonan. It's only towards the end that this flick delivers the horror and even that doesn't look creepy at all. But the score used and the hissing of the geek (Jack O'Hara) gives it a special atmosphere. There aren't almost no effects used but when it does it is above mediocre for such kind of low budget flicks.

Made by an unknown director in an era where horror was not done is the reason why this is so extremely hard to find. Still, if you do like hillbilly horror then this is a must see. For the other 'geeks' if you can grab it watch it, you certainly will enjoy the ending but overall a bit lame.

Gore 0/5 Nudity 1/5 Effects 1/5 Story 2/5 Comedy 0/5

"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.

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.

A couple go camping in the woods. When they're advised not to go in a certain direction, obviously, they venture there. When they save a little girl's life, the girl's hillbilly father invites them to dine with him and stay in their tent on his land. The next morning they meet his son- who just happens to be feral and likes to do things like biting the heads off chickens (hence the title of the movie).

Geek! Is also known as Backwoods in some territories.

The actual character of the geek (or William as he's known to his father) is very scary and very unsettling. There are shades of The Hills Have Eyes with Geek! As William's father confides that he once tried to kill his son as he knew he was possibly psychopathic.

This is a slow burn of a film but livens up when Billy Boy enters the fray (with drool dribbling from his chin).

Not bad. And in a subgenre that is overpopulated, I've seen much worse.