First up was Don't Go Near The Park. It should be titled Don't Go Near The Movie. Not that it needs another title, it has three others already, Curse of the Living Dead, Nightstalker, and Sanctuary for Evil. And it seems to be universally panned on the internet. Usually there are some random souls who feel that something is their favorite movie no matter what a horrible piece of shit it is. It's odd to feel some sort of concensus. Of course I haven't looked at all the reviews. Here are some that did not like the movie, The Horror Channel, The Punk Vault, Horror.com. Sperhauk said he read something good about it. He needs to find that guy and kick him in the nuts. One of the reviewers on IMDb had a fondness for the film because it was the only movie he'd seen in a drive in. That guy should kick himself in the nuts, and that wouldn't be half the feat that liking this movie would be. It's pretty much a sad mostly boring movie with Aldo Ray in a small part. There isn't much else to recommend unless you want to see Linnea Quigley naked when she was younger. And that's fine, she was a cutie back then. Not so good nowadays. She has some recent photos from a 2000 shoot on her site and she looks pretty hagged out. Greg said she was a crack whore. She looks it. Still, her very past cute looks couldn't save this movie. There's some murdering, some incredibility bad dialog, some dispicable characters, attempted teen rape, gut ripping and eating, and they still can't make a good movie out of all of that. The director, the talentless hack Lawrence D. Foldes, also co-wrote this mess. Give this a miss, and don't forget to kick Foldes in the nuts if you see him. I just don't get out that much and there are too many nuts to boot.
Give Anthropophagus a miss too. It's slightly better made than DGNTP, but it still sucks. It has 6 other titles listed on IMDb, so you know someone got fooled into seeing this twice. So, beware Athropophagous: The Beast (UK video title), Antropofago, Man Beast, The Grim Reaper, The Savage Island, The Zombie's Rage (USA reissue title). Some tourists show up at a Greek Island and find the town is empty but for one woman. Touring an empty Greek Island town isn't something you might actually experience. Kind of interesting and fairly nicely filmed. The lady leads our tourists about town. Back at the boat they rode in on, a guy gets sucked into the ocean. His head turns up in a bucket. It is one of the poorest of effects. Then the pregnant woman gets knocked on the head and dragged off by an unseen killer. After those cheap scares a woman wielding a big knife pops out of a wine barrel and stabs one of the men. She's pretty fucked up, in shock and all. That bit of a startle or two in the first hour don't make up for the tedium of the rest. The other thing that was sort of fun? The differences in the English subtitle track and the English dub audio track. On one track the friends of the tourists are English and on the other they are French. The other differences were not much funnier, but there were a lot of them. It's desperate, I know, we're grasping for straws here. Not much to carry us to the more exciting last thirty minutes which do pick up the pace and end with the killer eating his own guts. Now, that's comedy! The dvd box touts up the movie being a "Video Nasty" and banned in England. There is one scene where the killer strangles a pregnant woman, rips her unborn baby from her and takes a bite. More people on the internet liked this movie than the previous one. It gets a 5.1 on IMDb and DGNTP gets a barely deserved 3.0. Greg had read something about Anthropophagus that made him want to buy it. I think Greg owes someone a kick in the nuts. Joe D'Amato does seem to have a fair size cult following. He's an Italian gore film maker, and they have their own special stank cachet. As you know, not my cup of tea. I sadly find the background story, other people's comments, reviews and opinions of these films more interesting than the films themselves. Nor are many of these gore films rewatchable. That's a feature that weighs heavily in the judging. I compare Anthropophagus to something good like Dust Devil and the former lacks in every possible way. You can see pictures of the killer here. Here's The Duke's analysis of Anthropophagus, and his reasons for thinking that The Motherfucking Cinema of Kirsten Dunst is preferable to even the most inventive of Italian fare. I haven't even started to read it and I agree. I liked his review of The Village also. He swears alot. I like that.
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