Too much of everything

Load of rubbish!!

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

This hodgepodge of ideas was hard to follow, largely in part to the inept editing. There was some decent gore, and bits of topless nudity, with the latter often being teased but not shown. I will say though, I was crushing on the lead actress. She portrays that adorable naivety that I find oh-so-irresistible - on the flip side, It's that same quality that almost gets her character 'deflowered', but thankfully she escapes relatively unscathed. Also, I really like the kid in this movie. The 70s wasn't shy about portraying kids genuinely in movies, ie. letting them curse, like WE all kid as kids (well, at least I did). In closing, even though this movie couldn't decide on a tone, I found myself rooting for the afore mentioned cute babe and potty mouthed kid, which makes this not a total loss.

"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.

Don't Go Near the Park (1982) * 1/2 (out of 4) Insane plot dealing with a couple people from 12,000 years ago who finds themselves living in the present day. How can they do this? Well, it turns out that they're cannibals and eating on young flesh can keep them young. The male cannibal has a 16-year-old daughter who runs away from home and into the arms of the other cannibal and while all of this is going on she manages to fall in love. There are about ten other sub-plots going on in this thing and none of them ever make a bit of sense. DON'T GO NEAR THE PARK has the reputation of being one of the worst films ever made, which I think is a bit too harsh because this thing certainly reaches a "so bad it's good" level and in its own weird way the thing is somewhat entertaining. It remains entertaining because 86% of the time you're just sitting there scratching your head and trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Nothing in regards to the story ever makes a bit of sense and new things just keep happening and even they don't mix with what you've already seen. Just check out the sequence where the male cannibal shows up at a woman's house (played by a young Linnea Quigley) and walks in on her in the shower. Without any questions and without putting any clothes on, she shows the man to the room for rent and the next few scenes she's under his spell, they're married and have a kid coming. There are some pretty campy and funny moments in the film including a scene where the daughter is being attacked by a couple hippies and the van crashes off a bridge but you can clearly see a rope pulling it off the bridge. The performances are all rather bad, although Quigley is certainly cute and the top-billed Aldo Ray just appears in a couple scenes. The director at least was smart enough to know people wanted nudity and gore and the film delivers that. The special gore effects are all rather obvious as our cannibals rip open the stomachs of people and start chomping. The effect is easy to spot but at least there's some red stuff. I rarely comment on deleted scenes on a DVD but the ones here are a must see because they contain even more gore and there's even a full-frontal nude shot of Quigley, which you have to really wonder why they didn't use in the film. There are even more subplots thrown in as well as a scene with the daughter and her lover making out in a wooden tub! So, with all of this stuff going on you can tell that this is a bad movie but at the same time it certainly ranks as one of the strangest.

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. :(