User Reviews

Jamie and Karen(Brad Armacost and Christina Noonan) are biking across Kentucky, deciding to camp exactly where the park ranger warns them not to. Karen is up for anything, Jamie himself is more cautious and attempts to talk her out of the notion of hiking deep into the backwoods. A playful couple, always kidding each other around(she often pokes fun at him because she's more of an adventurer, a tough gal who can better rough the elements than her softie squeeze), they run across a girl suffocating as her helpless father, shotgun in tow, looks on. Thankfully, Jamie is a doctor from Detroit.

After performing an emergency tracheotomy on his daughter, backwoods hick Eben(Dick Kreusser) invites Jamie(and Karen) for a little grub, a special thanks for saving Beth(Leslie Denise). Eben has a retarded son named William(Jack O'Hara) who drools at the mouth, likes to kill animals, and peep on Karen when she's swimming naked in the local watering hole..oh, he's just "misunderstood" is all.

Coon hunting, moonshine in mason jars, chicken heads, and a lil ditty the name of "Shake 'em Down" all should appeal to fans of "redneck cinema" as poor savage William is clearly aroused by Karen(he views her in various stages of undress)and is certain to make his move on her eventually as Eben informs Jamie of his boy's past behavior in regards to snapping the neck of his deceased wife. William is the perfect embodiment of a wilderness freak of nature, with no teeth, who hisses, screeches and gargles, in overalls, covered in filth, bad hygiene, the works. The finale erupts in chaos as William makes a nuisance of himself, nearly choking Karen over a necklace, shot by Jamie out of fear for her life. This causes Eben to suffer a heart attack, with William going berserk. The result being a fight for survival between Karen and William in the woods as night falls. Neat trap involving fish hooks, with shots to the face by a stone, and the effective use of a flare all add some potency to an otherwise snoozer except for the hicksploit elements certain to please fans of this sort of thing. Noonan is a very attractive woman and seemed fine showing her nude body at times when asked to. She holds her own against William who is essentially an animal disguised in human dress. The final scene is just too much, involving an accelerated behavioral change in Jamie for the worst, certain to earn more than it's share of laughs. If I'm honest, though, regarding the plot, not a lot happens until the end, and I think backwoods horror fans might be more than a bit disappointed.

Could've been better, but this off-the-beaten trek through the Kentucky wilderness wasn't all that bad. The odd thing about this ultra-cheap, b-grade fare was how it actually went about setting up the whole situation, as the horrific nature and possibilities waiting to break out don't really come to play until the hour mark when it turns in to a fairly routine backwoods survival story. But before that it's slow winding with its focus on a city couple (a doctor and his girlfriend) when they save a young girl from chocking, as her father (a perfect performance by Jack Kreusser) watched on. In gratitude the father invites them back for supper and to spend the night on his property, but unknowingly to them he keeps in his back-shed his geek son (an illustratively deranged Jack O'Hara) that likes to bite heads off chickens. Don't us all. Strangely this where an interesting rapport is created as the drama at hand follows the welcoming hospitality and communication between the father (who likes coon hunting and moonshine) and the young doctor. Their first encounter with the wacko son builds up a bit of tension and would show the fascination that draws him to the young lady (the very capable Christine Noonan). This progression of differing values comes to a loggerhead and the material does a good job in developing the characters. It might not be multi-facet and in depth, but does more than just scrape the surface. I hate to say it, though I was more captivated by the how the opening gradually folded out that when it came to breaking out the chaos, it felt a little lacking. However the tactical set-up of the climax is a nasty surprise, and the shock ending is a bit of a doozer.

Dean Crow directs with a resourceful touch for such a budget and enthusiasm, where he skips the blood and gore (which can be disappointing) in the favour for building up suspense. Yep that's true… suspense. He slowly milks it out. Sure it doesn't always come off, but I couldn't help but give credit for trying something a little different with the material. The backdrop is beautifully projected, even though it doesn't have any sort of impact, but when it came to the night sequences with the nightlife sounds it pitched up some atmospheric patches.

I have to admit that this fascinatingly awful movie (the version we screened was the US release, BACKWOODS) was actually quite watchable, the most amusing aspect being that one of the peanut gallery here remarked that it was better than DELIVERANCE because it had four scenes female nudity instead of Ned Beatty getting punked. "What EVER, dude" was all I could manage as a reply.

THE PLOT: An annoying young urbanite cutesy yuppie liberal couple sets off for a biking/hiking tour of the Kentucky mountains (with their doctor's bag & some sort of game about telling people they are brother/sister, which is kind of kinky to say the least) and promptly wind up enjoying supper with a backwoods cracker who makes his own moonshine, carries a breech loader shotgun everywhere and thinks he's Tom Waits, growling out the movie's theme "song" with the same kind of gusto. Seems ole' Eben has had a spate of bad luck at his stereotypical cracker/hick/hillbilly chicken farm, losing his wife to tragedy, having his son suffer a developmentally disabling accident and his daughter breaking her neck, oops. The yuppies are too polite to tell the cracker to go punt off and hang around long enough for William the Geek to decide he likes the purdy lady's hair more than biting the heads off the mechanical chickens credited in the film's closing reel of talent names (there's a resume I'd like to read -- "Responsible for the mechanical chicken effects on Dean Crow's BACKWOODS, 1987").

William predictably runs amok, Eben conveniently dies, the annoying doctor boyfriend inexplicably disappears, there is a showdown of survival skills that our pretty heroine wins by default for just having seen a couple episodes of "MacGuyver" or "The Fishin' Musician", perhaps both, and the inconclusive twist ending (now how does the guy end up in the Geek Shack, again??) is just infuriating enough to make you forget that eighty nine minutes of pretty much nothing have just idled by, but gosh darnit it wasn't boring once you get down to brass tacks. There is indeed abundant female nudity (though star Ms. Noonan's film career begins and ends with this epic tale, too bad because she had some spunk to her & a non-traditional feminine beauty that is hard to deny when she's all naked like that), it's always fun + politically acceptable to laugh at stupid white redneck trash haha, and ole' Eben can spin a mighty interesting story when he's tossing back a mason jar of real Mountain Dew. All he needs is some guy with an accordion and he could go on tour with a Tom Waits revival band.

I guess that's the movie's big insight: The term "Mountain Dew" was originally hillbilly slang for moonshine before becoming the name for a disgusting soft drink I'll never be able to ingest again without thinking of this movie. Beyond that, a great line about how "Women in these parts warm the bed", and some hints as to how to make a death trap out of fishing hooks (plus bring some nice take-out when staying at a hillbilly chicken farm overnight) the movie doesn't seem to have had a real artistic need to have been made, raising the interesting question of what the point of it is :-) . We don't learn anything about the people involved and since William the Geek is a slavering sub-human rather than an evil villain ala the guys in DELIVERANCE the film comes down to a behavior study -- Here is how yuppies behave when on vacation, here is how hillbillies behave when the have company over for dinner, and here is how geeks behave when purdy ladies start getting undressed on the front lawn & going for ill-advised but fun to watch naked swims.

That the movie is well made and doesn't try to accomplish more than it's budget allowed is more impressive than anything depicted on screen; Here is a stupid exploitation film that knows it's place, nice and safely tucked away down in the gutter for anybody who wants a peek, the rest of us can just go about our lives without missing anything too novel. And that's what a Geek Show is once you think about it. How fitting!

4/10

A movie about two backpackers who cross paths with a hillbilly man, Evan, after saving his daughter from a life-threatening injury in the woods. Evan invites them both to stay at his house for a few days. While the woman is swimming naked in a nearby lake, she spots a bearded man drooling and staring at her through the trees. After running back to Evan's house, we learn that the bearded man is actually Evan's severely mentally disabled son, William.

I really so badly for William. He had severe mental development issues and this movie treats him like a monster. He clearly showed remorse when he lashed out. He just didn't know his own strength. It was sort of an "Of Mice and Men" situation, only if Lenny were more feral.

After the protagonists murder both Evan AND (accidentally) the little girl they saved at the beginning, William is PISSED. He has every right to be... his father and younger sister were just killed. The movie's final 20 minutes devolve into an overlong final girl chase where the real antagonist ends up winning. Poor guy. I was rooting for you, William.

**SPOILERS**Don't you just hate when a movie grabs you, shakes you around a little bit, then completely insults your intelligence to the point that you are sorely disappointed by it? "Backwoods" does just that. Jamie (Brad Armacost) and Karen (Christine Noonan) are cute boyfriend/girlfriend who are biking through the midwest. They stop to camp in a remote part of the forest, after being warned away by the stereotypical nerdy forest ranger (Gary Lott), and are watched by an unseen presence. They are awakened by Eben (Dick Kreusser) and his injured daughter, Beth (Leslie Denise). As doctor Jamie performs an emergency tracheotomy and saves Beth, weird Eben invites the pair back to his even more remote home, which is on a neat acre lot and looks a lot like a public park. Unfortunately, Jamie keeps tripping over the bodies of headless chickens, and Karen is full of herself for helping out these poor "Deliverance"-like characters. Eben is a little weird, believing a woman's place is not with a man, and he keeps drinking moonshine out of a mason jar. Suddenly, Eben's brain damaged son William (Jack O'Hara) appears, scaring Karen when she goes for one of those nude swims in an isolated lake, something everyone does when they go camping. Karen is chased by William back to Eben's house, where Eben promptly beats William. It turns out William was mauled by a dog as a toddler and ain't been right since. The dog had William by the head in his jaws, and William has been reciprocating over the years by biting the heads off of small woodland animals. How's that for Horror Movie Psychology 101? Karen and Jamie stay on to make sure Beth is okay, and William, all drool and hissing noises, gets stranger and stranger. It comes out that William killed Eben's second wife (Beth's mom), and is fixated on Karen because her hair is like that of William's mother (Eben's first wife). Up until this point, everything is above average. The small cast does a good job, and Crow's direction is very good considering an obviously small budget. Karen and Jamie fight and talk like a real couple. They are not two horny teenagers, like you might expect from films of this type. And then comes the climax. (SPOILER) Karen, not learning her lesson from the nude swim, feels the need to change her top in broad daylight in Eben's front yard, knowing full well that William must be lurking somewhere nearby. William attacks Karen. Eben and Jamie come arunnin' from their coon hunt, both drunk on moonshine. Jamie shoots William in the chest. William does not die. Eben has a fatal heart attack and William attacks Jamie, biting his neck. As William drags Jamie off into the woods, with Beth fighting her half-brother, Karen blindly fires the shotgun at the trio...William comes back out of the woods, sees Eben, and goes to him, trying to get his father to hit him for old time's sake. Karen, now sporting a large axe, approaches the distracted William...and...RUNS AWAY WITHOUT KILLING HIM. Later, after finding the nerdy ranger murdered, Karen is able to become MacGyver, making a booby trap for William out of fishing line and hooks. She is able to complete one of horror's most elaborate killer traps with no interference from the crazed William, who minutes before was right on her heels. William gets caught in the trap, seems to die, and the epilogue here involves a new crazy backwoodsman now biting the heads off chickens.

The first forty five minutes or an hour of this was pretty entertaining, despite a few awkward scenes here and there, but deciding that the viewers are a bunch of morons is a bad decision on the film makers' part. Also, once again, we get the mental deficient as the evil killer, thereby scapegoating an entire minority of people who can rarely speak for themselves to begin with. Plus, there is no supernatural connotations in the film, yet William survives a shotgun blast to the chest for no other reason than to make the film longer. "Backwoods" was also known as "Geek," a reference to William's character. He is called that by Jamie, the doctor with no bedside manner, and Karen, the woman dumb enough to run from a perfect opportunity to do away with a killer but smart enough to make a lethal weapon out of some tackle box items. The film almost had me, but thanks to the dumbing down of the climax, I cannot recommend "Backwoods."

80s exercise music introduces two bicycle riders roaming around Yogi Bear's camping grounds.

They encounter Ranger Strange first, who's got serial killer written all over him.

Off the beaten track and on foot, they trek through Anchorage terrain. Watch out for those bear traps and deliverance boys. Folks 'round these parts don't take too kindly to inner-city yuppies poking their noses around where it's not wanted.

The elitist couple from New York have escaped their parents watchful gaze for the weekend, and the moment they're alone, their incestual lips are locked, and they can't keep their hands off each other. If only their parents could see them now by this campfire and pitched tent. But they fit right in with all these backward yokels lurking out in the woods. Yes sir!

Wasting no time, they disrobe and explore each other's related bodies.

Disaster strikes early the next morning as Farmer Joe, Cotton Eye Joe's dad, target shoots his own daughter, then takes the incestual two hostage and leads 'em deep into the woods where Leatherface's cousins dwell.

Am I confusing this movie with 'Luther the Geek?'

"I didn't know the south had bears," claims the inner-city incestual sister who proves she's from NY with her lack of history and geography. Don't go to the Smoky Mountains, lady.

The Michael Rooker Henry lookalike, Farmer Joe, Cotton Eye Joe's father, who's drinking mountain dew fermented pickled vinegar water, has Karl Childers voice, argh-har.

The incestual couple spends the night at Father Joe's homestead and rudely leaves their country chicken uneaten, as there's no doubt they're vegan soy people.

Something keeps lurking out in the woods, but it's not revealed yet.

Suddenly, out of the blue, a rabies-infected hillbilly from 'I Drink Your Blood' springs from a shrub after his day release from the hills have eyes.

Why don't these two Tesla fanboys from the city just pack it up and get out of Dodge?

This ain't a horror movie! It's more like a sympathy cause and a reach-out program for people with learning disabilities.

Farmer Joe, with the 'Sling Blade' voice, father to Cotton Eye Joe and Leatherface's cousin, takes the incestual brother under his wing and teaches him the tricks of the trade concerning redneck thug life.

You still know there's something bubbling under the surface out here that will erupt at any moment now. I'm basing that on the score setting the scene.

The incestual sister develops the hots for the Geek with rabies and leads him astray with flirtatious behavior, which could backfire drastically as she's too trusting. Typical Liberal. They give the benefit of the doubt to the most vile scum, don't they?

Under the impression that the incestual sister is sending signals to him, the Geek reads the mood wrong and continues to court her until her incestual brother grows jealous and blasts him to kingdom come with a double barrel in front of Farmer Joe, who suddenly curls over and dies from a heart attack. I'm guessing alcohol poisoning was a contributing factor as well?

Unexpectedly, the Geek rises from the dead, after having his lungs blown apart, and thumps the incestual brother one.

The infuriated incestual sister blasts the Geek away again with a second round of buckshot, but he ploughs on in pursuit of her. Man, that PCP sure is one hell of a strong drug. Although they take hillbilly heroin out here, don't they?

You'd think that out here in the sticks, Lyme's disease would play a part in taking down all these people roaming around.

With sundown, the incestual sister is stalked and hunted by the Geek. Come on, lady, he's a halfwit with a brain the size of a frozen pea, and you're struggling to outsmart him.

She stumbles upon Ranger Strange, who's now dead in his vehicle, and I won't get into that whole "why didn't she just get in his auto and drive off" business. That'd be too smart, right? Besides, she must have taken a stand and protested in the heat of the moment against fuel-run models, as they favored EVs.

Instead, she weaves a cobweb and arms herself with a Fred Flintstone weapon in hope of snaring her breakfast.

The Geek falls for the cobweb snare, resembles a 'Hellraiser' sufferer, and is then made to eat a flare, and passes away.

Riiiight.

He dies from a webbed boobytrap and firecracker eating, yet he survived four rounds from a shotgun a few hours earlier. The first two rounds were direct hits to the center of his chest.

The movie ends on a stupid note, with the incestual brother contracting rabies and replacing the Geek as its predecessor.

There's no reason to watch it a second time. Once is enough. Nothing's memorable.

And you're better off watching 'Hunter's Blood' instead.

An old farmer lives in the wilderness with his young daughter and what appears to be his inbred cannibal son who loves ripping chicken's heads off. A young couple hiking in the Kentucky backwoods come across this strange family and the female hiker soon finds out she has a drooling admirer.

Not bad for a film that no one seems to remember or even know of its existence. The acting was above my expectations and I personally like the performance by the old man. The copy I have is in rather overplayed condition and this really hurts when it comes to the film's ending. I could hardly make out what exactly was occurring. Nevertheless, BACKWOODS (aka GEEK) is still a truly forgotten semi-gem from the late 80's - it's just in dire need of a remastered release.

Incredibly lame rip-off of a rip-off of a rip-off. Basically third generation 'Friday the 13th' on a meagre budget, with a cast of unknowns who have, justly, stayed that way - kudos though to Jack O'Hara as the eponymous 'geek' for a performance with more conviction and disturbing energy than the rest of the crew put together. It's difficult to really find anything interesting to say about a film that has very little to offer. Poor acting, poor story, and characters that behave randomly and illogically at every opportunity. For a film of this nature it's also disappointing (and incomprehensible) that all but two of the cast survive!