The Forest

The Forest. Directed by Don Jones. Starring Gary Kent.

Review By Mike Hauss

For this film being one of the worst films ever made, it’s actually not too laborious to sit through! I was shocked at how quickly the viewing experience was over. Then it slowly dawned on me, that when I review films, I always make notes. Sometimes these notes are rather extensive and it takes a ninety minute film, more like two hours or more, to get through, with all the stops and starts to jot things down. This god-awful flick never needed to be paused to make notes, because it was so inept... most of the movie is spent following people walking through the woods and nothing really ever happens between the few kills in it, and the plot is amazingly stupid and simple!

I am the Wicker Chair man!

Two married couples decide to go camping in the woods, but decide to leave at different times, in a little battle of the sexes, when the men think, that the women can’t survive camping without them. The girls, Teddi and Sharon arrive first and the men, Steve and Charlie, who are to follow them up before dark, are halted in their attempt, while a radiator is repaired. The girls make camp, waiting for the guys, but darkness falls first and as it does, they are visited by a mother and her two children, not of flesh and blood, but, ghost? Sharon freaks out and runs from the camp. A man wielding a knife accosts Teddi, and when she pleads for him not to hurt her, he says, “I don’t want to hurt you… but, I’m starving- I haven’t had anything to eat for days.”

Clan of the Cannibal King

The men arrive right at dusk and start out to find the girls, but become lost and wander to a cave where the man who killed Teddi, is sitting, in his large wicker chair in the middle of nowhere... he offers them a bit to eat and a place to stop to wait for the rain to stop. The same ghost children who  had appeared before the girls, also visit the men, but quickly disappear, and when asked if the children belonged to the man, he says they used to be his kids. After trying a bit of the meat roasting on an open flame, which unbeknownst to Steve is his wife Teddi, Steve has a strange sensation come over him as he chops down on Leg-o-Teddi. The cannibal king in his chair recounts to the men, how he became a loser in the middle of nowhere, and why it’s great to be king. Something to do with his wife fucking every guy in the local area, and he too stupid to realize she was screwing around on him, until he comes home early from work, to find her in bed with the man repairing the fridge. When he asks her why? She calls him damn near impotent, and she says that she got something from the other men, that he could never give her… P L E A S U R E! He does not reveal to the men, that he had strangled his wife and for good measure, smashed her fucking head into the night stand killing her off, and that he planted the face of the refrigerator repairman's face into an old, rusty saw.

Broke Back Mountain: Deliverance Style!

Charlie and Steve fall asleep and the cannibal king, instead of killing them for food, wakes them politely the next morning so they could be on their way. They find the camp the girls set up, but, the girls are nowhere to be found, so they set out scouring the area for them. After not find any trace of the girls, its decided that Charlie should head back to find help, while Steve waits for the girls. Just a few minutes into his trek for help, Charlie falls, injuring his leg, and sheds tears like a fucking baby, or an actor seeing his career flashing before him, as he makes like forty feet in a few hours span. The kids try and warn Sharon of their father and help her survive, but poor Steve is attacked by the Cannibal king and dies after a valiant struggle. As Charlie blubbers away in the woods, his wife Sharon is set on by the cannibal and if not for the ghost kids (the ghost kids killed themselves because they had to live in a cave), threatening to go away forever, leaving him alone, she would also have been killed. The Cannibal king eventually spies Charlie sobbing in the forest and goes in for the kill, but, Sharon saves the day after Cannibal king had in a tussle with the prone Charlie, dropped his knife. As grabs the knife, she attacks the cannibal king, he thinks it’s his wife attacking as Sharon plants his blade into his throat. The reunited couple fall into each other’s arms, sobbing of course!

*Sob!* There goes my fucking acting career!

The continuity issues abound throughout this film, and most of the dialogue, seems as if it was recorded in an echo chamber. All the acting is hideous, except, Gary Kent, who doesn’t turn in a bad job, even while delivering some cheesy lines. My guess, would be, that the director saw the box office returns of the film Friday the 13^th, and figured what the hell, I can make a horror film in the woods, just as good. Wrong! The scenery is not bad to look at  (filmed at Sequoia National park) and the cinematography is also at times, well handled, when not over shadowed by the continuity issues. 

Now its confession time! I have to admit, that i own multiple copies of this film on various media. I know it's bad, but, i cant help myself from watching it again every few years. I guess to a point it mirrors my life story, a story of a man lost in the wilderness, whose life is full of continuity issues and bad dialogue!

ON AMAZON PRIME