La malédiction du fond des temps

Our discomposed little comic-book horror tale begins in a cave thousands of years ago, as an old hag curses her evil son and daughter. Flash to modern times(okay, the late 70s...whatever), and the ancient siblings prowl the land looking for children to slaughter as a sinister means of self-preservation.

Performances are true-to-type crap, adding deepened injury to the already suffering DON'T GO NEAR THE PARK, a sloppy bottom feeder of a film which does manage to chalk-up a few lively moments(some pretty nasty gore, specifically), as well as a laughably overenthusiastic non-ending which leaves this lemon wide-open for a sequel you'd better believe you'll never live to see.

A failure, certainly, but a failure that a few may find endearing in a disowned hungry kitten sort of way. Female lead Tammy Taylor appeared in the amazing MALIBU HIGH the same year, and co-star Meeno Peluce later starred on TV's VOYAGERS with the ill-fated Jon-Erik Hexum.

4/10

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.

"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.

I have a certain prejudice for this cheapie because it was the only film i saw at a drive-in. I was a kid and i saw this small ad for the film showing at the drive-in and i asked my dad if he could take me the following night to see it. This is in Austin,Texas on Saturday, July 3. During that afternoon we took a boat ride close to where Hippie Hollow is. Hippie Hollow is a retreat where nudists hang out. Imagine my shock as a young boy seeing nudists in boats and getting a distant view of completely nude women! As we finished our trip i had convinced my dad to take me. He told a friend who accompanied us, "Last night we watched WOLFEN on HBO. This movie had a head come off...,i don't see how DON'T GO NEAR THE PARK could be any worse". That evening my dad saw one of the worst films he ever saw! I was bored,so i strolled along the pavement for a few minutes. Before, i was worried i was going to be scarred. When i got back to my dad's truck, he asked, "Are you scarred?" I replied i wasn't and when i asked him the same thing,he retorted "Nope". Afterwards,i was greatly disappointed. As few of you who've seen the film know, it is an ultra low-budget,unsavory schlock fest. However, as i approached adulthood,i had a dream this was showing on my local station in the daytime! This made me want to take a look at this film again. It was a nightmare to find and i only saw a videocassette of this in a Kingsville videostore! I rented it and saw it at a friend's house. I was caught off-guard that Lineau Quigly was in it! Last year i looked for an Amazon copy and they didn't have one. For some reason i stumbled on another site and it had a rare DVD! I purchased it. I now have this childhood memory on DVD!

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.