The Forest

Review by 42nd Street Pete

1983, Directed by Don Jones, Starring Dean Russell, Gary Kent, Stafford Morgan, and Corky Pigeon. Released by Code Red.

Now here's an interesting no budgeter that actually ran on the grindhouse circuit before they all bit the dust. In fact, you can see the wear on the print as its starts and as the reels run out. Not that this is a bad thing, it's shows what wear & tear these films suffered as prints were shuffled from place to place.

I had never seen this film in a grindhouse. I asked an old movie going buddy of mine if he had come across it. He said it did wind up on the bottom half of a double bill. He said the audience crapped all over it, but it was the kind of film you had to talk back to. He also said that nobody actually got up and walked out on it.

After seeing it last night, I'd have to agree. After opening with a knife in the guts and a throat slashing, it bogs down for a while, then picks up steam. Two couples decide to go camping. Of course the guys car breaks down and their wives get there first. Camping by the river, the women are shaken up by the ghosts of two children. They are the dead offspring of a cannibalistic madman who killed his cheating wife and is now living in the deep woods.

The children actually point out to the killer where the two women are. The killer( Gary Kent in a pair of ripped jeans, a torn T-shirt and a baseball cap) confronts one of the women and brutally kills her, stabbing her repeatedly in the back as she crawls away. Guess the guys who did Chaos saw this scene as it looks like it was copied almost verbatim for that film.

This film has some real inappropriate music. When things should be subdued, there is a driving ,late 70's type rock score. The two husbands, when lost in the forest, bicker back & forth like they are married to each other rather than the women. This your standard ,no budget stalk & slash film. It's an 80's time capsule that has to be seen to be appreciated. You could never get something like this released today. Some of it's lame while a lot of it is really twisted. In one scene the two guys take shelter with the killer and are fed one guys wife. When asked what kind of meat it is, the killer replies "it was a doe".
Extras include audio commentary by director ,Don Jones and the cast & crew reminiscing about how much fun they had doing the film.