Don't Go Near the Park (AKA Sanctuary for Evil, Curse of the Living Dead, Nightstalker)

Dir: Lawrence D. Foldes

1981

**

Many of the notorious ‘video nasties’ of the late 1970s are either terrible or not as nasty as they’re reputations suggest. Some are bona fide classics and examples of independent film making at it’s finest.  Lawrence D. Foldes’ Don’t Go Near The Park however, is individual in just how stupid a film could be. It isn’t a ‘video nasty’, it is ‘video ridiculous’, far more offensive to an audience’s intelligence than the rest of the video nasties put together. That said, like any runt of the litter, I kind of feel protective of it, it’s so stupid it is almost compelling, like it didn’t know any better, so I don’t feel I can be too critical of it so as not to hurt its feelings. The story goes a little something like this: A brother and sister are cursed by the queen of their village for eternity after eating the youth of their tribe in the quest of eternal youth. Fair enough that they are punished but the curse is a little strange: they are forever doomed to walk the earth in perpetual suffering in which they age one year every ten years and must resort to further flesh-eating to become young again. Take that. The brother Gar and sister Tra (played by cardboard cut-outs Crackers Phinn (not real name) and Barbara Monker) live like this for some time, 1200 years in fact and we join them in 1980s Los Angeles when Gar finally decides he’s had enough. He leaves the park and marries a sexy young lady (an early appearance by popular 80's horror scream queen Linnea Quigley) and has a daughter who he names Bondi (Tamara Taylor). Of course Gar and Tra plan on devouring Bondi's precious innocent virginal flesh when she turns 16 in order to achieve complete everlasting eternal life. Bondi, however, isn’t having any of it and fights her ancient aunt and protects the local kids from her hunger. It all gets rather confusing after that. There is a scene where Bondi is bundled into a van and raped by a gang of men (because all men are potential rapists in horror films) when a magical amulet she is wearing makes the van speed off the road and explode in a magnificent fireball. It’s a shocking scene but it is hilariously bad. There is nudity, insest, the worst zombies of all time and a scene that sees one of the baddies shoot lazors out of their eyes. It also boasts some some of the worst camera work, editing and music I have ever sat through. It is a rather boring film but somehow the bizarre story keeps your attention, I didn’t enjoy it but I never once thought about turning it off. Rather weirdly, I sort of found it endearing. It was sad to see Aldo Ray in the headlining role, at this point he was talking any job that came along to pay his medical bills and he was clearly in the middle of his hard-drinking days and was visibly drunk in every scene. The gore wasn’t great but again, I can’t help but give the special effects people ten out of ten for effort – they didn’t win the race but it is the taking part that counts. I think the only thing that would have made Don’t Go Near The Park worse would have been a huge budget if I’m being honest, as it is it is vaguely innocent and somewhat charming because of it. Don’t get me wrong, it is a terrible film, it is just that it is impossible to hate. Would I watch it again? No, I would rather eat my own arm but that said, sometimes a truly awful film is better than a sub-standard mediocre one.