{"id":6683,"date":"2024-10-23T13:27:45","date_gmt":"2024-10-23T17:27:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=6683"},"modified":"2024-10-23T13:27:45","modified_gmt":"2024-10-23T17:27:45","slug":"final-exam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/10\/23\/final-exam\/","title":{"rendered":"Final Exam"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Final Exam <\/strong>(1981)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 AVCO Embassy\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 89 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence, brief nudity, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Jimmy Huston\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Jimmy Huston\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Gary S. Scott\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Darrell Catchart\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: June 5, 1981 (US)\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Cast: 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.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $1.3M (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Body Count: 11<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0As 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<\/strong> about ten years ago. It wasn\u2019t a favorable review. In fact, it was completely negative. I gave it my lowest rating, the dreaded \u201cNO STARS!!!\u201d My opening statement was \u201cIf I was a film school professor teaching a class called Slasher 101, Final Exam<\/strong> would get an F.\u201d \u00a0I remember not liking it, but that\u2019s all I remember. I couldn\u2019t remember a single detail about the movie so I decided to rewatch it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0A funny thing happened when I rewatched Final Exam<\/strong>. I enjoyed it. It seems to have mysteriously gotten better with age. It\u2019s not great, mind you. It doesn\u2019t 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\u2019s knife while making out in a car, nothing happens for nearly an hour. It stars a lot of actors who can\u2019t 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\u2019s neither scary nor suspenseful. It\u2019s as predictable as night and day. Final Exam<\/strong> has all these problems and more, yet I still like it. For all its flaws, it\u2019s infinitely more watchable than the rotten remakes and PG-13 s*** shows that pass for horror these days.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The plot of Final Exam<\/strong> is simplicity defined. A psycho stalks dumb coeds on a college campus during finals week. That\u2019s 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\u2019t need to study so he gets drunk on whiskey and flirts with Courtney.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The nerd, whose name is Radish, is the only developed character of the bunch. He\u2019s obsessed with true crimes, especially mass murders. He praises Charles Whitman and says things like \u201cPeople are killed every day for no reason at all.\u201d 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\u2019s completely arbitrary. We never find out a thing about him. Initially, I didn\u2019t like this. I saw it as one of the narrative\u2019s biggest faults. Then it hit me that it\u2019s actually one of the movie\u2019s 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\u2019s completely random. HE\u2019S completely random. When you think about it, it\u2019s more unsettling than an unkillable freak in a mask chopping up horny teens.<\/p>\n

\u00a0One scene in Final Exam <\/strong>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 \u201cvictims\u201d 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. \u00a0First, a scene like this wouldn\u2019t 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\u2019t the place be swarming with cops and feds afterwards? I know it\u2019s 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\u2019s 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 <\/strong>with such trivial matters?<\/p>\n

\u00a0Regardless of how much my opinion of Final Exam<\/strong> has changed, I\u2019m 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\u2019s knife. It\u2019s relatively bloodless compared to any given Friday the 13th<\/sup> movie.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0It all comes down to this. Final Exam <\/strong>is a better movie than I originally thought. Note that I only said \u201cbetter\u201d. It\u2019s 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\u2019s not entirely effective as a horror movie. At times, it\u2019s laughable. I\u2019d 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\u2019t feel like doing a reshoot?<\/p>\n

\u00a0In any event, Final Exam<\/strong> doesn\u2019t suck either. It\u2019s competently made on a purely technical level. It\u2019s a polished effort that belies its low budget ($363,000). On a personal note, I love that Radish\u2019s 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\u2019d ever recommend Final Exam<\/strong> yet here we are. It\u2019s no horror classic, but it\u2019ll do the trick on a dull night.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Final Exam (1981)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 AVCO Embassy\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 89 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence, brief nudity, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Jimmy Huston\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Jimmy Huston\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Gary S. Scott\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Darrell Catchart\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: June 5, 1981 (US)\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Cast: Cecile Bagdadi, Joel S. Rice, Ralph Brown, DeAnna Robbins, Sherry Willis-Burch, John Fallon, Terry W. Farren, Timothy L. Raynor, Sam Kilman, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6883,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-horror"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Final-Exam-IC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6683"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6885,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6683\/revisions\/6885"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}