The test of their lives: Final Exam (1981)

Final Exam (1981)
rating: ****
starring:  Cecile Bagdadi, Joel S. Rice and Ralph Brown

I'll keep this review short and quick since there's nothing much to talk about this movie, but let not that stop you from seeing this worthwhile underrated slasher flick.

Opening with a double murder of a teen couple sitting in their parked car next a lake, where a random loon just literally jumps into the scene, knife clenched at one hand, and began stabbing them to death. Said crime made its way as news to a nearby campus, where its students discuss it all the while studying for exams or worrying about their fraternity initiation. Of course, none of them seem to notice the mysterious black van strolling by around campus, but after a prank involving a fake high school shoot-out, just so the perpetrators can skip out of a final exam, the kids here can definitely kiss goodbye for any outside help since the cops aren't gonna buy any calls from them anymore. Cue in the one night our killer decided to show up and murder a bunch, and one ordinary final girl to fend him off for the climax, and you get yourself a movie like any other of its kin.

That said, Final Exam lacks much of any unusual surprises, save, of course, our killer being a completely random loon and our film spending the first hour with almost a plot similar to a college comedy with a bit of slice-of-life bits, spending much of our attention to following the lives of our students around campus, from pranksters jocks to scholar sweethearts. When our loon began to murder them one by one, gore hounds will meet a bit of disappointment since our murders are simplified into simple stabbings, mind you too.

Not that I'm complaining, of course; despite the lack of any real horror action around the hour, the film is still watchable and you get to know the characters more, whether you hate them or not, making them more than your average meat. The build-up made it good and worthwhile as the simplicity of the flow made the latter massacre genuinely frightening as it happens completely out of random, none of the characters seeing it coming. The last few minutes where our virginal final girl pits herself against a green-shirted killer also made it as one of my few appreciated chase scenes where they went on it to a flight of stairs, with the killer catching on no sooner.

I'm really surprised to how good this movie actually is, and while it is often dismissed as a Halloween (1978) clone, which is true by the way, Final Exam still makes a great addition to any slasher completist or for fans of obscure low-budget fright flicks.

Bodycount
1 male knifed to death
1 female killed offscreen
1 male knifed to death
1 female killed offscreen
1 male strangled with a spring cable attached to weights
1 male knife through chest
1 male knife to the chest
1 male found murdered
1 female stabbed to death with knife
1 male stabbed on the gut with arrow
1 male stabbed to death with knife
total: 11