The Final Terror

A couple on a motorcycle crash in an area of wilderness. The driver has a badly damaged leg while his girlfriend tries to locate help. What (or who) are they hurriedly fleeing from? The guy hangs upside down from a tree (the “trap door” effect so iconic in Friday the 13^th films where a victim seems to fall from someplace (trees mostly) on cue to frighten a running young woman) in front of her as she terrifyingly runs in the opposite direction eventually heading right into a trap that has branches carrying paper plates and barbwire whipping at her, leaving us to believe the gal’s dead. Who killed them and why?
**

“Maniacs in the woods” slashers were commonplace in the 80s. While The Final Terror has similarities to  these kinds of slashers—it’s shot and budgeted cheap, in the woods (using what appears to be natural light), dark, murky photography, with a basic familiar plot that keeps things simple—it doesn’t conclude in that direction as one might expect. The basics, first: Young adults (how many times have I started a slasher synopsis with “Young adults…”) want to raft on a river running into an area known as Mill Creek, a place considered dangerous thanks to a spun tale that gives it a notoriety in regards to a mental case mama left in the wilderness by her son (born out of incest thanks to a mean scumbag uncle who raped her). Picking up some girls for the trip, a group of Forest Rangers plan to take them into the wilderness for some thrills, riding the rapids, but they soon discover to their detriment that someone primal lives within the environs, unstable and out to kill. She might have family, also.

Where The Final Terror strays from the slasher norm is in the low body count, sudden turn into an almost Deliverance stylized survivalist thriller where the remaining group, opposite their leaders who are taken out after the first night, camouflage themselves, attempt to flush out the killer(s), set a trigger-trap that would unleash a spiked log to stab her/him once in position.

It is well documented by all those who have had the (mis)fortune of sitting through this that the cast will perhaps draw curious eyes to it. Adrian Zmed (TJ Hooker; Bachelor Party), Joe Pantoliano (who comes off best here as a rather intrusive, disruptive, rude, angry, and hot-tempered bus driver; his explosive emotional state, that has little calm, is about as energized as the performances get), Mark Metcalf (Animal House), Lewis Smith (The Heavenly Kid; Southern Comfort), Daryl Hannah (Splash), and Rachel Ward (Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid; Against All Odds) all feature in the film, although few standout with a performance that is lasting and effective. I can throw other names of the others in the cast, but absent some minor bickering and complaining about their predicament, they are just warm bodies occupying 75 minutes in the woods, trying to get to civilization.

 Pantoliano’s backstory later becomes important and there’s a reason he has a hissy fit while Smith weaves the supposedly fictional campfire spook tale. There’s also a reason behind why the ramshackle, patchwork cabin (it looks like it was assembled/built in a hurry and has been left to deteriorate over time) has goods recognizable from their storage on the bus (like canned corn and a radio). With mushrooms and weed, the wilderness does offer mood-altering chemicals to take a break from the intensities of the horrific situation. Interesting enough, the character that sort of takes command is John Friedrich as a former soldier still scarred from Vietnam, aggressively (and sometimes not necessarily hospitably) charging the others towards getting out of harm’s way. Because he’s been in the jungle, knows what madness it produces, Friedrich is best suited to guide the others to a less hazardous destination.

What takes me right out of the movie are the night scenes. Except for some good use of moonlight, the scenes shot at night are so indiscernible all that happens means nothing to me. If I can’t see what’s going on before my eyes, I don’t care about what is occurring. That’s the just the way it is. I’m not the only one with this sentiment, this critique. Just Before Dawn had lots of night scenes and you can see what’s going on in that movie, so I’m not excusing The Final Terror just because lighting gave so little for us to attentively identify. The day scenes are a different matter because at least director Davis can milk the vastness of space, how the wilderness does produce (at the same time) both an idyllic and ominous impression. You get the idea that becoming lost in the wilderness wouldn’t be too difficult…and neither difficult would be the ability to hide.

While I just despised the night scenes—and admittedly like some of the day scenes—there is the occasional shot or set up that caused an “oooo” or “ahhh” like how the campfire, with the group encircling it, looks from afar or a moment the next morning where Davis has the camera move gradually in a complete counter-clockwise turn from one position to another. And so many directors love to shoot from the ground to the sky because of how the trees seem to be all encompassing; it’s a trick that has become overused, but I like it just the same. I especially recall how the director of Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 uses the technique, and Andrew Davis loves experimenting with what his camera can do to capture action as it happens…like characters covertly moving carefully through the woods, hoping not to make too much noise and perhaps, if lucky, ensnare the killer(s).

 This scene below has a character scaling a large California Redwood in preparing the trap for the killer. I just thought it was an exhilarating shot.

I always felt the action director Davis was alive even in this early film from his career. I never felt as I watched this that The Final Terror (a title that just doesn’t work; it’s misleading and unfair to the audience expecting a film it just isn’t) was designed as a backwoods slasher as so marketed; instead it is survivalist wilderness thriller that might play alongside the gluttony of similarly styled films that had previously came before it (there were any number of Deliverance-inspired wilderness fare in the 70s like Rituals and Southern Comfort).

This is an incredible scene below that has the killer emerging from a fallen tree as Heinrich has his attention diverted elsewhere.

I am not one of those that suggest The Final Terror is must-see slasher fare (or even must-see wilderness survivalist horror; there are plenty of better examples out there), or that it is interesting enough to pursue immediately. As a curio, perhaps The Final Terror might be worth seeking out if you just have nothing better to watch. Pantoliano is fascinating in his scenes (which come at the beginning) but Hannah and Ward factor, performance-wise, very little. Hannah is injured in an attack, stitched up even, but this happens during the night and is barely visible. Ward flirts with one of the actors, and has a row with Friedrich, but her character has very little dimension. Zmed is poked at by his peers for being a city boy newbie, and he’s left by two of the guys to howl like a wolf just in case the protectors of backwoods weed might show up (there is someone there, but she/he isn’t some shot-gun toting backwoods hick).

The most powerful scene (one of the two murders) could be Megan’s demise (Cindy Harrell, Metcalf’s girlfriend in the film; her sex with Metcalf is interrupted by the backwoods maniac) and how it is flaunted in front of the others in a sickening way that reveals a human wacko lives in the woods. It all kind of chaotically concludes as the killer tries to halt a mob-like assault on her boy, triggering a death trap, while a key member of the group is pulled from a large fallen tree, landing in such a way as to smash to his death. The maniac in the woods is quite a sight, to me, but because the lighting of the night scenes is so poor, I think the audience is robbed of some potentially creepy moments with her/him. I think what also sets this scene apart is how the killer keeps Megan under the floorboards, her scared eyes peering upward, these dirty fingers groping her forehead, a curved blade under her chin (at her throat), while her friends looks for her in the cabin. The killer even lets her exit from this spot only later to drop her slain body literally into the laps of her friends rafting on the river. That hopelessness and bleakness of Megan's situation, how her situation materializes into her murder, certainly motivates the others into action. Defend yourself or die, become the hunter or the hunted.

 To know the surroundings and ably hide within the woods gives the killer a distinct advantage, but because Friedrich also has a history of survival in the same sort of location, the group isn’t totally at a disadvantage. It is just too bad Friedrich isn’t altogether reliable, prone to outburst and getting high on chemicals that come from the likes of mushrooms. He has anger/rage issues, but when it comes to ordering others around, Friedrich seems comfortable doing so.

So, if I were to point out what I liked most was that battle of wills in the wilderness between the kids and the killer(s). I've seen far superior examples (I think Walter Hill's Southern Comfort is such an example), but coming away after a second viewing of The Final Terror, that is what seemed to be the key part that did satisfy me. I liked the ending a great deal. I'm especially glad the movie ended during the day...