Directed by Lawrence D. Foldes
Written by Lawrence D. Foldes, Linwood Chase (Story)
Starring:
- Aldo Ray as Taft
- Meeno Peluce as Nick
- Tamara Taylor (credited as Tammy Taylor) as Bondi
- Barbara Bain as Patty / Tra / Griffith’s Wife / Petranella
- Robert Gribbin as Mark / Gar
- Linnea Quigley as Bondi’s Mother
Rating: 
Not the worst of the “Don’t Go” exploitation flicks, but the weirdest of them all. An effort as unaccountably bizarre as this should only be actively lousy but I find it more actively flummoxing for its uncanny capacity to deal in such a stupefyingly messed-up way with narrative filmmaking, thus spawning an amorphous monstrosity in celluloid form that doesn’t seem to be bound to any narrative logic; it simply exists in its own primitive filmmaking mentality by dabbling with one of the most heterogeneous storylines seen in American exploitation cinema.
Malibu High producer Lawrence D. Foldes in his directorial debut attempts to put on screen what is arguably the most unfilmable of all unfilmable screenplays. With limited resources and a talentless crew, Don’t Go Near the Park’s challenging contrived craft aims to cover 12,000 years of history beginning with some caveman siblings who are cursed by their mother to be forced to live for many years by feeding on the entrails of other mortals in order to rejuvenate themselves. The only way to break the curse is that one of the siblings must conceive a child to be used as a virgin sacrifice to achieve immortality. Even I don’t know what I just wrote, but picture this: It’s the middle of the 20th century and you have two prehistoric humans dressed as modern men practicing cannibalism in broad daylight in Griffith Park, L.A. No matter how ludicrous the premise sounds, Lawrence D. Foldes’ cockeyed vision finds in this framework of jarring incongruities the ideal vehicle for allegorizing depravity. The various genre-nonspecific developments imply a barbaric form of allegory. The incestuous desires are not subtle within the Freudian dynamics surrounding the familial relationships between the characters, and the crude camera angles render this all the more evident by sexualizing the staging as a lurid motif you’d find in a porno. And as if the incestuous suggestiveness wasn’t enough, just in case the sinuous plot occasionally drops a few hints at pedophilia so as not to lose the singularly odd feel of watching this asymmetry of ideas translated into a depraved movie.
There is solid spine-chilling imagery in many portions of the story, but ultimately nothing is more unsettling than its perverse intimations. Aldo Ray unexpectedly turns up in an inessential role, and when his character is introduced into the plot the film establishes a choppy rhythm that never goes anywhere but dwelling on the incoherence of the cosmic notions and depraved prehistoric pretentions embedded in the fanciful goings-on. There’s no such thing as protagonists here, the entire cast has the same hierarchy on screen, which ends up in an unanticipated role reversal that just takes us from seeing the two prehistoric cave siblings preying on children towards three homeless kids trying to survive in the midst of poverty. It’s that weird. None of it works as one would want it to by following the philosophy of the aphorism “So bad it’s good”. And I think the ultimate reason why the insurmountable ridiculousness of this film doesn’t rise to that sort of level is because the filmmakers believe that the insanity of the material is logical enough to be carried through; had it been carried through self-consciously, the outcome would have been diametrically opposed to the discomforting awfulness of what we have before us. I do love weirdness in my exploitation movies, but this has so many divergent facets and chameleonic issues that the experience feels almost schizophrenic.