Final Exam (1981) AVCO Embassy/Horror RT: 89 minutes Rated R (violence, brief nudity, language) Director: Jimmy Huston Screenplay: Jimmy Huston Music: Gary S. Scott Cinematography: Darrell Catchart Release date: June 5, 1981 (US) Cast: Cecile Bagdadi, Joel S. Rice, Ralph Brown, DeAnna Robbins, Sherry Willis-Burch, John Fallon, Terry W. Farren, Timothy L. Raynor, Sam Kilman, Don Hepner, Mary Ellen Withers, Jerry Rushing, Shannon Norfleet, Carol Capka, R.C. Nanney, Gene Poole, Fritz Jon Goforth. Box Office: $1.3M (US) Body Count: 11
Rating: ***
As I wait out the COVID-19 crisis by sifting through old archived reviews, I came across the one I wrote for the slasher flick Final Exam about ten years ago. It wasn’t a favorable review. In fact, it was completely negative. I gave it my lowest rating, the dreaded “NO STARS!!!” My opening statement was “If I was a film school professor teaching a class called Slasher 101, Final Exam would get an F.” I remember not liking it, but that’s all I remember. I couldn’t remember a single detail about the movie so I decided to rewatch it.
A funny thing happened when I rewatched Final Exam. I enjoyed it. It seems to have mysteriously gotten better with age. It’s not great, mind you. It doesn’t offer up gory kill scenes requiring buckets and buckets of fake blood. After the intro scene of two teens meeting a nasty end at the tip of the killer’s knife while making out in a car, nothing happens for nearly an hour. It stars a lot of actors who can’t act. The characters come straight from the teen slasher movie manual- e.g. the douche bag frat boy, the big dumb jock, the nerd, the slutty rich girl, the dorky fraternity pledge, his loyal girlfriend, the useless campus security guard and the stupid redneck sheriff. Everybody has the IQ of a cardboard box. It’s neither scary nor suspenseful. It’s as predictable as night and day. Final Exam has all these problems and more, yet I still like it. For all its flaws, it’s infinitely more watchable than the rotten remakes and PG-13 s*** shows that pass for horror these days.
The plot of Final Exam is simplicity defined. A psycho stalks dumb coeds on a college campus during finals week. That’s it. Apparently, preparing for final exams at this college entails playing practical jokes, torturing fraternity pledges and aimlessly wandering around the campus. Only one student, virginal nice girl Courtney (Bagdadi), actually studies. The jocks are too busy coercing their pledge (Farren) into stealing a copy of a test. The slutty rich girl (Robbins) is preoccupied with her rendezvous with a professor (Hepner) later that night. The nerd (Rice) gets straight As and doesn’t need to study so he gets drunk on whiskey and flirts with Courtney.
The nerd, whose name is Radish, is the only developed character of the bunch. He’s obsessed with true crimes, especially mass murders. He praises Charles Whitman and says things like “People are killed every day for no reason at all.” Could he possibly be the killer? He is NOT. The killer (Raynor) is actually some random guy in a van who shows up, lurks about and picks off victims. He’s completely arbitrary. We never find out a thing about him. Initially, I didn’t like this. I saw it as one of the narrative’s biggest faults. Then it hit me that it’s actually one of the movie’s strengths. They key to understanding what writer-director Jimmy Huston (My Best Friend Is a Vampire) is getting at is the above-mentioned statement by Radish. There is no rhyme or reason to his killing spree. It’s completely random. HE’S completely random. When you think about it, it’s more unsettling than an unkillable freak in a mask chopping up horny teens.
One scene in Final Exam caught my attention this time. During the chemistry final, a van pulls up outside the school. A bunch of guys in ski masks jump out and start shooting students. People scream in panic. The shooters snatch up their “victims” and drive away. It turns out to be a prank perpetrated by the jocks in order to allow a frat brother (Fallon) to cheat on his exam. First, a scene like this wouldn’t fly today in light of real-life school shootings like Columbine, Sandy Hook and Virginia Tech. It would be considered in bad taste. The PC Nazis would have a field day with it. Second, shouldn’t the place be swarming with cops and feds afterwards? I know it’s a small town, but it stands to reason the response team would consist of more than a single redneck sheriff (Kilman) more interested in threatening students than helping them. Third, it’s clearly a set-up for a later scene where a student calls the police to report the killer only to be disbelieved. Of course, all of this is purely academic. Why ruin a perfectly dumb slasher movie like Final Exam with such trivial matters?
Regardless of how much my opinion of Final Exam has changed, I’m still disappointed by the lack of gore. The best kill scene involves a jock being garroted on a weight-lifting machine. Everybody else is stabbed although one victim gets it with an arrow instead of the killer’s knife. It’s relatively bloodless compared to any given Friday the 13th movie.
It all comes down to this. Final Exam is a better movie than I originally thought. Note that I only said “better”. It’s still not that good. It moves slowly. It has a thin plot and shallow characters. The acting is terrible and the dialogue clunky. There are no decent jump-scares. It’s not entirely effective as a horror movie. At times, it’s laughable. I’d sure like to know if the scene where a female coed picks a wedgie was rehearsed or not. Is it intentional or just something the makers left in because they didn’t feel like doing a reshoot?
In any event, Final Exam doesn’t suck either. It’s competently made on a purely technical level. It’s a polished effort that belies its low budget ($363,000). On a personal note, I love that Radish’s dorm room is decorated with posters for Murder Is My Beat, The Corpse Grinders and The Toolbox Murders. It never ceases to amaze me how some movies improve with age. I never dreamed I’d ever recommend Final Exam yet here we are. It’s no horror classic, but it’ll do the trick on a dull night.
