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Final Exam
[Deimos / BCI]
1981; color
Directed by Jimmy Huston
Starring: Cecile Bagdadi & Joel Rice
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Set on a rural college campus in the South, this low budget slasher goes fairly light on the gore while offering a virtually unstoppable maniac with an obvious grudge against college students of all types. All of the action takes place during finals week at the end of the fall semester. (What's interesting about that is, after the first couple scenes where the campus looks to have an average number of co-eds milling about and in classes, the student population seems to radically drop off to less than twenty during finals.) After a faked terrorist style shooting incident - really a distraction so the prez of what appears to be the lone frat on campus can cheat on a final; a prank which, today, would result in not only expulsion but probable jail time and national news coverage - the nerdy bookworm who calls the sheriff is revealed to be obsessed with mass murderers and psycho killers. The meanwhile the frat, which seems to have only four or five members, apparently still rushes pledges during finals week. (Which totally makes no sense; even though I was not a Greek when I went to school, I know for a fact all of that kind of stuff is well wrapped up before the semester ends.) We know this because later that night, the brothers tie one poor pledge to a tree, strip him to his skivvies, cover him with whipped cream and pour ice in his crotch. After screaming for help for a while, his bonds are mysteriously cut and he's freed, only to become the first victim of the knife-wielding killer. (Who's actually been stalking around the campus for a while.) In relatively quick succession the pledge's girlfriend, who's out looking for him, the frat prez and his best friend / star of the football team all get killed. The nerd discovers the dead frat boys but becomes another victim before he can warn the good girl he's completely crushed out on. (His death is probably the only unexpected one in the film.) She finds him with his head bashed through her dorm room door and takes off running for help with our killer in close pursuit. After a drawn-out final confrontation in the campus bell tower, including the ever-predictable not-quite-dead maniac grabbing for the girl after falling six or seven stories to the ground, she grabs his butcher knife and stabs him for all she's worth for a good 30 seconds, hopefully insuring he's really dead. She stumbles out of the building the sole survivor, bringing this seemingly senseless movie to an end. Even though Final Exam is a pretty early entry in the DDB (1981), it's one of the more predictable examples of genre plotline. One thing that stands out, however, which separates it a bit from the rest of the pack: we are never given any explanation of who the killer is (not even any speculation) or why he's killing everyone. If this dangling question were answered, even a little, the film would make a lot more sense.
—the Kommandant
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