Why anyone chooses to go camping remains a mystery. This fact is readily apparent to horror filmmakers, who have been churning out woodland cautionary tales for decades. While a return to nature is a spiritual requirement for some, those looking to frolic amongst the leaves and streams would do well to remember what these movies have taught us. The wilderness provides many places to hide for a potential slasher or wild creature looking to wreak havoc on your hippy dippy fun.
In short: maybe you should stick to the beach.
Since its summertime, we here at Shock thought it best to re-iterate this forewarning, wagging our collective fingers at you like Crazy Ralph. Here are ten camping nightmares that will make you think twice about staking that tent in a nearby national park. Because you never know who or what is spying from the trees
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Jacob Knight is an Austin, Texas based film writer who moonlights as a clerk at Vulcan Video, one of the last great independent video stores in the US. You can find find him on Twitter @JacobQKnight.
Camping Nightmares
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Camping Nightmares #1
Deliverance [1972] (d. John Boorman, w. James Dickey)
It’s best to just get this one out of the way, as though it may be a clichéd and obvious pick, any list revolving around camping survival horror would be incomplete without Deliverance. Forty-plus years later, John Boorman’s cinematic adaptation of four city boys being brutalized by backwoods deviants is still gut-wrenching and wholly terrifying. James Dickey’s scripting of his own novel is arguably an improvement on the source, as the visual translation heightens these suburban adventurers’ regression to their primal selves; a moral deterioration necessary to endure the sexual and environmental horrors they encounter. Accenting it all are the central performances, as Burt Reynolds, Jon Voight, Ronny Cox and Ned Beatty (who is placed in a most compromising position) cement these ordinary fellows as archetypal icons, each of who would be repurposed and ripped off for years to come in many lesser filmic endeavors. Too few “classics” stand the test of time and multiple viewings. Deliverance is not one of those.
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Camping Nightmares #2
Rituals (a/k/a The Creeper) [1977] (d. Peter Carter, w. Ian Sutherland)
It would be easy to call Rituals a Deliverance rip-off, but that assertion would completely discount the fact that, while certainly not an all-around better piece of cinema, Peter Carter’s film is a sturdier red blooded horror picture. Hal Holbrook (The Fog) and Laurence Dane (Scanners) lead a team of surgeons trekking through Canadian mountains. What starts as a mere wilderness outing ends as a purging of secrets and lies, all while a murderous stalker (who may or may not be a former patient seeking revenge) watches from afar before playing mind games with the intellectuals. First he takes their shoes. The he takes their friend. Then he takes their lives, one by one; all as the men go mad, pointing the finger at one another while attempting to subsist in the harsh bosom of Mother Nature. Rituals is a gift from Carter, embracing his country’s more sadistic side while never averse to punishing the audience – a Canuxploitation maven at the top of his game.
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Camping Nightmares #3
The Burning [1981] (d. Tony Maylam, w. Peter Lawrence & Bob Weinstein)
Perhaps a controversial inclusion for some, upon re-watching the The Burning, they’d discover that, outside of the first act, most of the movie’s slasher mayhem takes place during a camping canoe trip. The Weinstein Bros. first production may begin as a cheapie riff on Friday the 13th (going as far as to hijack karo syrup guru Tom Savini from working on the series’ first sequel), but it improves upon Sean Cunningham’s infamous summer camp hack-and-slash in nearly every way. Sporting a cast that includes George Costanza himself, Jason Alexander, as well as Fisher Stevens, Ned Eisenberg and ultimate jabroni, Larry Joshua, the “kids” are more engaging than any other entry in the subgenre. The finale is a clever spin on the “Final Girl” formula (with Brian Matthews as a denim clad dream boat), and the killer (inspired by local East Coast summer camp legend Cropsey) polishes the floor with most other monsters of his ilk. Once you tack on prog rock pomp master Rick Wakeman’s synth score and a script (co-written by Bob Weinstein himself) that actually cares about delivering developed camper characters, it’s hard to deny that this is undoubtedly not only a great slasher, but also a defining horror film of a crowded decade.
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Camping Nightmares #4
Don’t Go In the Woods…Alone! [1981] (d. James Bryan, w. Garth Eliassen)
Easily one of the most inept motion pictures ever produced, any amount of incompetence doesn’t stop James Bryan’s perverse transmission from being a hell of a lot of fun with a few beers and a room full of trash adoring misfits. The set up is everything you’ve seen before: a remote forest, an unseen killer, oblivious victims; but Bryan seems interested in miring his movie in ugliness (have continuous daylight exteriors ever looked this bad?) and a relentless goofball tone. You’re never once going to be scared (especially once the dirt smeared hobo murderer finally appears on screen), however it never seems like that’s the point of this $20,000 sojourn. Instead, Bryan is simply cashing in on a time period in which you could take a Super 16 camera out in the woods and shoot a movie for almost nothing. Shameless, exploitive and campy to its core, Don’t Go In the Woods…Alone! is as silly and stupid as its title would have you believe. It’s also kind of a ball.
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Camping Nightmares #5
Just Before Dawn [1981] (d. Jeff Lieberman, w. Mark Arywitz & Jeff Lieberman)
Jeff Lieberman already had two offbeat films under his belt (Squirm and Blue Sunshine) when he decided to make something slightly more accessible in Just Before Dawn. Ostensibly another post-Friday riff, it carries all of the grim elements of the genre while adding Lieberman’s trademark LSD strangeness to the proceedings. An air of off-kilter oddness hangs over the movie, right up until its rather clever twist regarding the hulking, backwoods killer’s identity. Too few camping pictures fully manipulate the spooky nature of being lost in the wild, but Lieberman seems to completely understand the overwhelming gloom that becomes inescapable once you’ve strayed too far from the path. A true underrated gem.
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Camping Nightmares #6
Baker County, USA (a/k/a Trapped!) [1982] (d. William Fruet, w. John Beaird)
It’s always good to remember that the woods can double as a home for society’s weirdest, most aggressive members. Baker County, USA takes this Deliverance supposition and then adds a healthy dose of Henry Silva, as a mountain man who murders his wife and then sets out to off the teenagers who accidentally witnessed his rage butchery. Like Rituals, Baker County is pure Canuxploitation. Fruet's earlier film, the Ivan Reitman-produced Death Weekend, was a similar dabbling in the redneck slaughter subgenre the country became known for during the late 70s and early 80s. It’s derivative as hell, yet Fruet once again succeeds in elevating the material in order to craft a quite memorable B-picture potboiler. Aiding him the whole way is a script by fellow Canadian horror stalwart, John Beaird (My Bloody Valentine, Happy Birthday to Me). It’s a lean, mean little murder movie; representative of the often government-funded genre circles in which it was made.
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Camping Nightmares #7
Survival Quest [1988] (d. & w. Don Coscarelli)
Surprisingly restrained, considering it came from writer/director Don Coscarelli (the Phantasm series), Survival Quest follows a trek through the Sierra Madre Mountains made by two sets of campers. The first is the “Blue Legion”: a trigger-happy squad of teenage boys under the command of autocratic survivalist Jake Cannon (Mark Rolston). The second – dubbed “Survival Quest” – is lead by self-help guru Hank Chambers (Lance Henriksen) striving to aid the likes of a wayward ex con (Dermot Mulroney) and an emotionally unstable divorcee (Catherine Keener) re-discover their inner strength. Violence erupts after Jake’s militaristic students revolt, leading to a showdown that the Survival Quest members cannot escape. The subtext is lean, but present, as it presents the flipside ideologies of becoming “one with nature”. You can either spiritually connect with the forces around you, or see them as a threat, ready to be conquered at all costs. Make your choice.
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Camping Nightmares #8
The River Wild [1994] (d. Curtis Hanson, w. Denis O’Neill)
Before he crafted what is as close to a perfect film as ever been made in L.A. Confidential (1997), Curtis Hanson was something of a glorified B-movie genius. His first film was the low budget sex killer opus, Sweet Kill (1972), while his sophomore effort was the zombie weird out, Evil Town (1977). Hanson also helped envision the Rob Lowe/James Spader creep fest, Bad Influence (1990), and aided Rebecca De Mornay in terrorizing an idyllic family in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992). Though certainly not out and out horror, The River Wild fits snugly into the pulp thriller portion of his filmography. Hardened criminals Wade (Kevin Bacon) and Terry (John C. Reilly) take a New England couple (Meryl Streep and David Strathairn) and their son (Joseph Mazzello) hostage during a white water rafting trip and force them to ferry the fugitives down the titular rough waters. Bare bones and tense as hell, it’s a solid white-knuckler that feels like it escaped another era’s studio system unscathed, and is further proof that Streep can do whatever the hell she wants.
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Camping Nightmares #9
Cabin Fever [2003] (d. & w. Eli Roth)
Playing like a blueprint for everything that would come after for the NYU horror maven, Eli Roth’s debut feature is fresh, funky and super gross, as a flesh-eating virus ruins an otherwise idyllic weekend for a set of best friends. Peppered with Roth’s usual weirdo panache (including a Kung Fu kicking kid and a “party man” local deputy), the whole of Cabin Fever wobbles and weaves, never quite finding its footing as a piece of horror, comedy or unified horror/comedy. But while it may lack in genre trappings, it more than adequately serves as a hangout picture. Once the grue starts to overtake the picture, stomachs are bound to turn. Yet even during its most harrowing moments, you can feel Roth poking you in the ribs. As far as first films go, this one’s pretty special.
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Camping Nightmares #10
Wolf Creek [2005] (d. & w. Greg McLean)
Wolf Creek resulted in one of Roger Ebert’s most embarrassing reviews (though his Blue Velvet revulsion will always take the cake as the notoriously squeamish mainstream critic’s worst “hot take”). When talking about McLean’s directorial skills, Ebert lamented: “…in telling a story like this, the better he is, the worse the experience.” But what Ebert seems to completely dismiss is the fact that not all movies (or art, for that matter) are supposed to be pleasant. With Wolf Creek, what the Australian novice created was a grueling journey into the heart of madness, not too far off from Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chain Saw Massacre. The story of a gaggle of backpackers being literally taken apart, piece by piece, by an Outback survivalist (John Jarret), Wolf Creek is grueling, nasty and wholly affecting. It’s a shame we haven’t seen much from McLean after (though his killer crocodile picture, Rogue, remains incredibly underrated), as it would’ve been fun to see the Australian accepting Ebert’s pan as some kind of warped gauntlet, pushing himself to actually make the now deceased critic vomit in a theater.
