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1980 - USA Directed By: Charles McCrann. Starring: Charles McCrann (as "Charles Austin"), Beverly Shapiro, Judith M. Brown, Kevin Hanlon, Dennis Helfend, Paul Haskin, John Amplas, Bob Larson, Harriet Miller and Phillip Garfinkel.
Aka
Bloodeaters
Toxic Zombies
Blood Butchers
Current Availability Forest Of Fear is available on R2 DVD from Germany courtesy of Retrofilms under its alternative title Toxic Zombies. While the German DVD is a fairly bog standard affair it is at least fully uncut and available quite cheaply if you look around online. There is also a similar US R1 DVD available under the Toxic Zombies title courtesy of Televista. However, this as with all of Televista's output is actually a completely unauthorised bootleg even though it is carried by reputable online retailers such as Amazon and DVD Pacific. The old UK pre cert VHS release of Forest Of Fear on the Monte label (once banned as a "Video Nasty") is still fairly sought after by collectors and tends to command prices in excess of £20 on E-Bay. It should however be noted that the UK pre cert tape whilst uncut in terms of violence is several minutes shorter than the full version of the film and is apparently missing the original ending.
Recommended?
Perhaps worth a look for fans of trashy zombie films and low budget backwoods horror and exploitation. Forest Of Fear borrows heavily from the early work of George A. Romero yet makes for a modestly engaging no budgeter in its own right which offers occasional moments of suspense and a fair amount of gore. There are certainly worse film that feature on the UK's infamous "Video Nasty" list.
Review (Contains Spoilers)
During the early eighties Britain was swept by the latest in a long line of needless moral panics in the shape of the famous scaremongering over so called “Video Nasties”. Due to a number of factors, including high levels of unemployment, the fledgling entertainment medium of home video had taken Britain by storm. In order to satiate the growing clamour for new films a number of fly by night independent distributors began releasing more or less any film they could lay their hands on the rights to cheaply. More often in not the films in question tended to be low budget American and European horror films. Soon the then essentially unregulated British video market was swamped by a deluge of horror and exploitation product, much of which would probably never have been approved by the British Board of Film Classification for theatrical exhibition. Unfortunately this golden age was not to last as the combination of grisly content and lurid cover art soon bought the availability to the attention of the British tabloid newspapers and several suitably outraged MP’s. Soon horror videos were being blamed by the tabloid press for all of society’s ills and predictably judicial and parliamentary action was to follow which would bring about the end of the availability of unregulated horror tapes on the high streets of Britain.
The Department Of Public Prosecutions soon set about compiling a list of over 70 “Video Nasties” (eventually reduced to just 39) which the police were advised were liable to seizure under the Obscene Publications Act. In the months that followed these films were swiftly banned and parliament passed the draconian Video Recordings Act decreeing that all video tapes sold in Britain were required by law to be classified and if necessary censored by the BBFC before going on sale.
While few horror fans who were around at the time are likely to look back on the foolhardy scapegoating of horror films (and their viewers) with any particular fondness the whole sorry business did have its upside in that it bought to more widespread attention the works of pioneering horror filmmakers such as Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci and Sam Raimi who more casual horror fans may not have been aware of had their films not been included on the DPP’s list of banned Nasties. The rest of the Video Nasty list however, was comprised of ragged and often rather shoddy low budget shockers originating from America and Mainland Europe, which would no doubt have faded into obscurity if not for the lasting notoriety afforded to them by their inclusion on the DPP’s banned list status. One of the obscurities embellished with “Video Nasty” status was the backwoods hippie gorefest Forest Of Fear.
Forest Of Fear – alternatively known as either >i>Toxic Zombies or Bloodeaters in the United States – is the one and only credit of the late Charles McCrann, an avid horror buff who managed to scrape together the capital in order to fulfil his dream of making his own low budget horror film. For Charles McCrann Forest Of Fear seems to have been a real labour of love and a painstaking personal endeavour as he directed, produced, wrote, edited and starred in the film! Following Forest Of Fear McCrann would vanish back into total obscurity and would remain one of the great enigmas of American exploitation cinema until 2001 when his name was bought back to the attention of horror fans albeit for far more tragic reasons. In the final years of his life McCrann was employed as Senior Vice President for the financial conglomerate Marsh & McLennan who operated out of the ill fated World Trade Centre in New York City. Sadly Charles McCrann would be one of the thousands who lost their lives as a result of the Islamic terrorist attacks which took place on the 11th September 2001. Despite the tragic nature of his premature demise perhaps some heart can be taken from the fact that McCrann did at least leave a minor memento of his life behind in the shape of Forest Of Fear – a film clearly patterned after the better known works of legendary horror director George A. Romero, specifically the classic Night Of The Living Dead (1968) and the overrated cult favourite The Crazies (1973).
Forest Of Fear begins with two undercover federal agents happening across the location of a hippie marijuana plantation hidden in an area of dense woodland. However, the two feds have not reckoned upon the ruthlessness of the hippie dope growers who savagely murder the agents in order to protect their two million dollar harvest. When the two agents fail to return their pen pushing superiors Briggs (Haskin) and Phillips (Amplas) hatch a dastardly secret plot to have a large consignment of the powerful experimental herbicide Dromax air dropped on the hippies plantation. Their plan is kept hushed up due to the fact that there are still scientific concerns over the potentially dangerous side effects Dromax can have on humans. Briggs and Phillips enlist a downtrodden local crop duster to drop the Dromax. Following exposure to the herbicide the crop duster returns home that evening in a zombie-like state and mercilessly kills his nagging wife. As it turns out when the Dromax was dropped from the crop dusters plane most of the marijuana growing hippies also ended up plastered in the deadly powder. After a period of violent sickness they are horrifically transformed into mindless, blood craving zombies who wander aimlessly through the woods killing anyone they come across.
As chance would have it civil servant and forestry agent Tom Cole (McCrann) also happens to be in this neck of the woods on a fishing trip along with his wife Polly (Shapiro) and his brother Jay (Garfinkel). Soon Jim is brutally killed by the hippies and shortly after Tom and Polly come to the rescue of a young girl named Amy (Brown) and her retarded brother Jimmy (Hanlon) who have been wandering around alone and terrified in the wilds ever since the hippies murdered their parents earlier in the day. Together Tom, Polly and the two children desperately attempt to evade the clutches of the marauding hippie ghouls and escape from the woods with their lives.
You certainly have to hand it to Charles McCrann, he evidently knew what lovers of trashy low budget exploitation numbers such as this want to see. Less than two minutes into Forest Of Fear McCrann serves up the leering and totally gratuitous sight of an attractive young blonde hippie girl soaping up her pert breasts. The girl in question is then shot dead by two covert government agents who are then killed themselves by the girls vengeful hippie pals those secret marijuana plantation they have encroached upon. One of the men is mercilessly garrotted and the other stabbed repeatedly.
Following this attention grabbing opening Forest Of Fear settles down into a fairly typical yet mildly entertaining no budget zombie film which borrows heavily from the work of George A. Romero. The basic boiled down premise of assembled survivors struggling to avoid the clutches of flesh craving ghouls stalking the countryside is of course heavily reminiscent of Night Of The Living Dead. In particular scenes in which the main protagonists hole up in a remote woodland shack to stave off the zombified hippie onslaught play like a direct rip from Romero’s classic. In addition Forest Of Fear also shares some thematic ground with Romero’s later cult favourite The Crazies in that like that film it deals (in part) with the theme of a botched authoritarian attempt to halt a contagion which drives its victims to savagery and murder, a contagion which the authorities themselves are directly responsible for. However, whereas The Crazies saw Romero tediously preoccupied with the rights and wherefores of such a scenario, McCrann predictably pursues a more simplistically exploitative and visceral approach. Forest Of Fear also enjoys two other direct link to Romero, firstly in that it was shot in Romero’s hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and secondly in that baby faced actor John Amplas appears in a supporting role as a corrupt government agent. Amplas is of course best known to horror fans for his starring role in Romero’s masterful modern day vampire classic Martin (1977). In addition to being heavily indebted to Romero it could also be argued that McCrann may also have been influenced to a degree by David E. Durston’s grindhouse horror classic I Drink Your Blood (1970) which similarly features a contaminated hippie cult embarking on a gory, flesh rending rampage.
McCrann’s resolutely workmanlike direction is hardly what I would personally term inspired. Yet at the same time he succeeds quite admirably in keeping the endearingly dumb plot moving at an engaging pace. Really when you think about it this is actually quite an impressive achievement in itself when you stop and consider how thinly McCrann had to spread himself in order to get Forest Of Fear made at all. While the absence of any real budget is often painfully apparent lending certain scenes an unintentionally comical effect, Forest Of Fear for the most part avoids descending into ineptitude and occasionally delivers moments of surprising verve. Particularly impressive are the aforementioned Night Of The Living Dead influenced scenes in which the hippie ghouls besiege Tom, Polly and the children in a ramshackle woodland shack belonging to a cantankerous woodsman. In these moments McCrann actually manages to generate a modest amount of tension and suspense even though the sequence is hampered somewhat by substandard camerawork and poor lighting. In this regard the remote woodland shooting locations also work in the films favour, furnishing Forest Of Fear with an appropriate sense of isolation. On a different note McCrann also provides some brief yet amusing comic relief early on in the film courtesy of the gormless crop duster assigned the dropping the illegal Dromax and his relationship with his abusive wife. It is also a little amusing to note the not exactly small coincidence that the day the world and his wife chooses to convene on this remote, sparsely populated area of heavy woodland is also the day that a bloodthirsty band of zombified hippies happen to be in the vicinity.
The performances of the predominantly amateur cast are also functional if at times rather stilted. While numerous reviews of Forest Of Fear erroneously cite John Amplas as being the star of the film, in truth he only plays a supporting role which sees him predominantly limited to brief appearances at the beginning and end. In truth he seems miscast in the role of a ruthless government agent and while I do not wish this to sound like a slight against Forest Of Fear I have to say that I find it a little saddening that just two years after his terrific central performance in Martin, Amplas was reduced to taking ineffectual supporting roles in a low grade shocker such as this. Nonetheless, Amplas’ supporting presence proves to be McCrann’s only acting coup as it is plainly obvious that elsewhere he cast whatever acting personnel he could snare. This is made glaringly obvious by the fact that the characters of Amy and her retarded brother Jimmy whilst clearly intended to be children are blatantly played by adult actors. In fact I was highly amused to discover that Judith Brown who portrays Amy was actually in her mid thirties at the time Forest Of Fear was produced making her at least twice the age of her character. Predictably the films best performance is that given by McCrann himself who stars under the pseudonym of Charles Austin as mild-mannered civil servant Tom Cole. While his performance was never going to see him nominated for any awards, McCrann makes for a personable if at times amusingly over earnest lead. A special mention is also warranted for the young extras assigned with playing the contaminated hippies who all stagger around drooling with a commendable level of conviction. However, it is the aforementioned Judith Brown who would go on to enjoy the most lucrative career. In the years following her inauspicious appearance in Forest Of Fear, Brown would become a child acting coach and over the years has carved out a reputation as one of the best in the profession having tutored several young stars including Elijah Wood and Lindsay Lohan whilst working on numerous Hollywood blockbusters as a studio teacher.
Of course the only real reason that Forest Of Fear has achieved any measure of lasting infamy is solely due to it having been embellished with “Video Nasty” status in Britain during the witch hunt against horror videos during the early eighties. So does Forest Of Fear warrant its status as a nasty? In a word no, although having said that Forest Of Fear does boast a modest amount of grue. The gore level is actually rather inconsistent with certain scenes of bloodletting lingered on in detail, whilst at other times the camera annoyingly cuts away without showing any detail at all. What this suggests to me is that McCrann’s script called for more bloodshed and mutilation than the make up effects allocation of his miniscule budget could run to. The tendency to cut away at some points yet not at others lends the film a frustrating quality for those seeking nothing more than gory thrills although in fairness McCrann does offer us a few choice moments of grisliness. Horror buffs may be interested to note that the make up effects in Forest Of Fear were provided by Craig Harris who later lent his expertise to Ulli Lommel’s grisly cult favourite The Boogeyman (1980) and also its inept sequel Revenge Of The Boogeyman (1983), both of which ironically joined Forest Of Fear on the Video Nasties list in Britain. The highlights of Harris’ handiwork in Forest Of Fear include a hand being lopped off followed by a lingering shot of the blood spurting stump, a knife being driven through the eyeball of a marauding hippy and one hapless female victim getting her throat bloodily bitten out. However, in truth Forest Of Fear is tame compared to many other horror and exploitation pictures of the same period and although it still remains technically banned here in the UK that is really only because no interest has yet been shown in re-releasing it. If Forest Of Fear were to be resubmitted to the BBFC then it would almost certainly sail through uncut without any problems.
All in all Forest Of Fear is a rather derivative no budget shocker that borrows themes and motifs from Night Of The Living Dead, The Crazies and I Drink Your Blood without ever capturing the essence or effect of any of the films it leans upon so heavily for inspiration. However, viewed in its own right Forest Of Fear is a perfectly watchable waste of an hour and a half. While McCrann’s lack of budget or expertise is readily apparent throughout Forest Of Fear, to his credit he succeeds in keeping his tale of bloodthirsty hippie mayhem moving along nicely whilst also delivering occasional moments of tension, tongue in cheek humour and a modest yet satisfying welter of gore. The result is a film that should satisfy all but the pickiest lover of trashy backwoods horror movies. When all is said and done Charles McCrann may only have contributed one film to the world of low budget exploitation cinema, but at least his sole filmmaking effort turned out to be halfway decent one, which is a lot more than can be said for certain better known horror “auteurs”.
Also Try… Don’t Go In The Woods… Alone! / Night Of The Demon (1980, James C. Wasson) / Night Of The Living Dead (1968, George A. Romero) / The Crazies / The Final Terror / Just Before Dawn / The Forest (1982, Donald M. Jones) / Redneck Zombies / Martin.
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