The entire of the vicious and barbaric forest rape and barbaric hunting scene which can be entirely cut out and you would have the same affect for the plot and flow of the movie and the end twist. About 30 minutes of this movie puts any other slasher/goreflick to shame. Nothing about that forest scene says good cinema or will leave you with any feelings besides a piece of your soul leaving. It puts the incredibly painful, once in a life, watching of the squeal like a pig scene from Deliverance to shame. Besides that large chunk of the movie. Wes Craven tells a good story. Except he wanted to sicken people just to see how far he could go. He may have used some bull reason that it was an allegory for Vietnam. That's bull though. This was just schlock gore trying to see how far he could get away with. Finding a cut version (there are tons out there... It still can't be shown with the whole forest scene in most regions on the planet almost 50 years later) if you want to watch it. You won't miss anything to the story.

Under different circumstances, I would have given this movie a slightly better rating, but it leads a lot to be desired. It's just disturbing and gruesome. There's no suspense, no plot, the movie doesn't go anywhere. It's literally like watching it just for the torture. A good movie is supposed to build up tension and the plot. This movie does not do that. I'm not a big fan of gore in horror movies as there are much better ways to make it scarier and build suspense at the same time.

It's Mari Collingwood's 17th birthday. She and her friend Phyllis Stone go to NYC for a concert. They try to buy some weed but are kidnapped and raped by a gang of criminals. They are stuff in the car trunk and driven to the woods near Mari's home. The girls are tortured and killed. The gang ends up coincidentally at the Collingwood home while the bumbling local cops struggle to track the gang down.This is definitely an exploitation film. I'm sure it was derided by the critics at the time. Some of those exploitation parts are actually the best parts of the movie. Being forced to pee in her pants is a compelling scene. The rest of the movie is amateurish, silly and simply bad. The comic stuff with the cops is groan-worthy. The coincidence of running into the Collingwood home is ridiculous and unnecessary. The gang could have gotten the address from Mari. The overall need to create a peaceful happy tone while counteracting it with the brutal violence does not come off well. Then there is the killing of the girls which splits the movie in two. The second half fades and the intensity never fully recovers. It's one of Wes Craven's first and it's at the level of a good student film.

Jesus, this may have been Horror in the 1970's... but we were laughing most of the way through it.Completely two dimensional characters, pathetic actors that were never seen again, and the storyline was full of plot holes and completely implausible.For some reason, while all sorts of mayhem is going on, the police characters are written as comedic? It was also meant to be a horror movie, where in effect, its actually a crime/thriller.Production value wise, it looks like it was made using a $120 voucher from Kennards Hire.Not recommended.