Final Exam

I play for keeps

The general consensus, just by reading the thoughts, opinions, and reviews of slasher fans, the devotees, quite a vocal bunch, is that Final Exam is a mediocre example of the genre. Though, I normally don't read where a lot of the folks say it absolutely sucks, you definitely feel that the sentiment is Final Exam doesn't really satiate the appetite of the common slasher fan. Not a bloody movie, or particularly fast-paced, more concerned with character development and giving the characters personalities, Final Exam is actually atypical in that regard. But even by those standards, likable characters can only take you so far. If the movie doesn't bleed, peril isn't accentuated enough to cause nail-biting suspense, and there's an absense of babes sans clothes, tolerance is normally "snuffed out", patience is "bled dry", and resolve is "brutalized". Look, Final Exam is an endurance test because besides the opening minutes, there isn't another kill scene until nearly an hour's running time.

Biding his time.

 Look, this is a slasher film and there are certain expectations. What we get is a kid pledging for a fraternity whose leaders are a couple of jock dorks (the "Wildman" (Ralph Brown) takes whip cream and under arm deodrant spray in his mouth, spitting all over his dorm room while yucking it up cartoonishly with his frat brother, Mark (John Fallon) who has trouble getting a chick porking her chemistry professor to go out with him), the final girl, Courtney (Cecile Bagdadi) cramming for her chemistry test wondering why she has to study so hard while her best friend, Lisa (very sexy DeAnna Robbins), the hot blonde, can get by on looks alone, a geeky, rather nervy brainiac (with an unhealthy fixation on mass murderers and violence day-to-day) with the odd name, Radish (Joel S Rice) who accidentally gets the jocks in trouble (he took down a license number, giving it to the sheriff) for a terrible prank involving a gang of faux ski-masked terrorists, spilling out of a van, gunning down students as to allow their fraternity leader to cheat on an exam (!), a chatty lovestruck pal of lead Courtney's, Janet (Sherry Willis-Burch), afraid her wimpy beau (the aforementioned plege, so wanting to join these goofballs, he steals a test from a teacher's office) will be "tied to the tree" for giving her his pledge pin, and numerous members of the staff (coach and campus security guard) arguing with the sheriff over his temptation to take the frat jerks in for their sickening prank. The film feels at times like it is a teen soap opera, an 80s Degrassi, instead of a slasher film. I guess after watching Slumber Party Massacre and Bloody Pom Poms, Final Exam just feels like child's play.

Radish and Courtney

What was an interesting move to me was the decision to cast the killer as just some guy with a knife. He has no motive that is ever established, looks like some steel worker with a mop hair cut, and just starts killing the kids after spending the day looking out of his van window for targets to drive his knife through.

That's not exactly the Chemistry Professor..

The main star attraction may not be the cast or killer but the final sequence's location, the William's Tower, with a long spiral staircase leading straight to the top of the building. Really cool is seeing the killer fall seemingly forever when his foot goes through a fragile piece of floor, ruining what was certain to be an easy slay as Courtney was caught and at his mercy.

Final Exam came out really early in the slasher cycle, more akin to Halloween (as He Knows You're Alone was) than Friday the 13th, more involved in the lives of its characters before bumping them off one at a time in rather rapid succession. When the killing does start, it doesn't seem to stop until Courtney is running for her life, the Tower her final refuge. How a slasher fan will react to this is probably dependent on their feelings for the characters, having to understand they are beholden to a large part of the running time dedicated to the difficulties of higher learning and the idiocincracies of frat behavior.

Maybe the film's main strength is authenticity. At a real school, with locals perhaps from the state of North Carolina having bit and starring parts in the movie, it doesn't feel like a Hollywood movie, much more organic and real. That's what I like about 80s slashers, in general, how the casts often make up unfamiliar faces never to be seen much in movies again. A lot of slasher movies were made by "Hey, you want to make a movie!" types who were able to gather enough capital and crew, film and equipment, to make their own little contribution to a popular genre with a fanbase who would be willing to watch their product, regardless of its overall quality. Slasher fans (horror fans, even) are an enthusiastic bunch willing to go out of their way to find movies that are hard to locate...unless there's the financial wherewithal and determined distributing companies offering them to us, the only avenues of securing slasher movies of a certain obscurity, is to search Amazon, ebay, downloading sites, or youtube. Thankfully we live in a digital age that allows us to investigate and retrieve "lost slashers" that would otherwise remain buried.

•••••••••••
°°°°°°°°°°
∆ added 8/7/2016

Having already wrote my technical review for the film back about four years ago (wow, four years), kind of looking at the film without any conversion of synopsis and critique, I could forgo “review mentality” and give totally to the emersion of “Final Exam” (1981).

This just isn’t a slasher film in its most pure form. Conversation about getting the grade the right way as opposed to using your looks and fucking the chemistry professor between two nerds is closer in spirit to afterschool specials or 90210. I can see the reaction of the ribald slasher community, wanting their tits and ass and bloody knives. Fraternity drama and shenanigans, girls talking boys, the sheriff addressing a prank on campus that would horrify today’s student body (funny perhaps then, but not so now), a good ole boy coach always defusing anything that could lead to trouble for his jocks, and a low-magnitude killer who remains formless and colorless.

There’s some good production back story for the film. The folks in front of and behind the camera: how a low budget production can exist independent to the Hollywood studio scene and get renewed interest (even if it results in many a criticism) 20 odd years later is something in itself.

Some images from Final Exam not included on my 2012 review: