The Final Terror (1983)

While they're not my absolute favorite subcategory of the horror genre, I do enjoy a good slasher movie... if it manages to grab me in some way. Most people will say that the only reason to watch slasher movies is for the gory kills but there are plenty of them that I like for much more than just that. Many of the ones that I like, outside of the major franchises, be they Prom Night, The Burning, My Bloody Valentine, Happy Birthday To Me, the Sleepaway Camp movies, or the Slumber Party Massacre films, to name a few, have something more to them than just the blood and guts. Sometimes, they have memorable characters that I actually like; other times, they have well-used settings; occasionally, they manage to have genuinely creepy atmospheres; or, they're just so bizarre and cheesy that I can't help but love them for that. In addition, while I can't quite say I like watching them, those that make me feel kind of dirty and uncomfortable, like Maniac or Don't Answer the Phone, at least still get some sort of reaction out of me. Hell, even the ones that I think are complete trash, like The Prowler or Madman, still have things about them I remember, like Tom Savini's top notch gore effects in the former (the only pro about that movie, for me) or the attempt to create some kind of legend for the killer in the latter. None of this applies to The Final Terror, which is one of the most uninteresting, forgettable, dime-a-dozen slashers I've ever seen. Despite the fact that it involved a number of prominent people early on in their careers, it's so obscure that, until Scream Factory put it out on Blu-Ray in 2014, I'd never heard of it, as it wasn't featured in that Going to Pieces documentary, which is where I learned about most of the slashers that didn't spawn franchises. I must admit, the title was enough to get my attention and I decided to take a chance on it, blindly buying it, along with some other Scream Factory releases, that fall. That turned out to be a mistake, as it left no impression at all, and I felt no compulsion whatsoever to watch it again until I decided to do it for this month. By that point, I had almost forgotten everything about it and, re-watching it, I realized why that was. With no memorable kills, characters who are mostly just cannon fodder, a nice-looking but somewhat underutilized setting, a predictable twist revolving around the killer's identity, and the usual thin story that comes with slasher movies, there's virtually nothing here that would keep you coming back for more.

A young couple crash their motorbike in the middle of the California woods in an area called Mill Creek and are subsequently murdered in a grisly fashion. Shortly afterward, Mike, a park ranger, takes the boys who make up the Redwood County Youth Corps on a work detail job there, planning to go on a camping and rafting trip with some lovely young women, including Mike's girlfriend, Melanie, when their job is finished. Eggar, a very eccentric and borderline crazy ranger, who has an antagonistic relationship with the guys, tries to warn Mike that Mill Creek isn't a good place for them to go but his warnings go unheeded. Eggar continues to make enemies of the others once they get there and start work, and becomes strangely enraged when one of the guys, Boone, tells them a supposedly true story about a 14-year old girl who was raped by her uncle, got put in a mental institution, and had a child who eventually took her out of the asylum and let her loose in the area. Irked at this, he leaves with the bus, Mike expecting him to leave them the boats at Mill Creek and to pick them up come Friday. Later that night, three of the men, Dennis Zorich, Marco Cerone, and Nathaniel Hines, go off to look for marijuana that's said to grow nearby, with Zorich and Nathaniel leaving Cerone as a "lookout" while they search for the weed; in reality, they plan to cut him out of his promised third. The next morning, Cerone isn't at camp, and when Mike gets wind that Zorich and Nathaniel had something to do with it, he makes them take him to where they left him. Finding nothing but his bandana there, Mike has them go back to camp to search upstream, while he and Melanie search down. Out there, Mike is murdered while having sex with Melanie, who's then taken hostage; elsewhere Zorich and Nathaniel come across an old cabin in the woods filled, with a lot of fresh food and other items. They also find what looks like Eggar's cap, making them think he's the one behind the weird stuff that's going on. That night, when Vanessa discovers his severed head, arm, and innards in an outhouse, the group learn that Mike is dead and fear that Melanie, who's still missing, may be as well. As they try to figure out how they're going to escape the deep wilderness they're trapped in, the question remains as to whether Eggar is the killer or if it's the work of someone far more disturbed.

Samuel Z. Arkoff

The Final Terror was an attempt by Samuel Z. Arkoff, the co-founder of American-International Pictures along with James H. Nicholson, to cash in on the slasher craze, which was proving to be very cheap to get into on the production side and guaranteed to make a profit. Having just recently resigned from AIP and set up his own production company, Arkoff International Pictures, he approached Joe Roth, a friend and fellow producer, as well as his daughter's boyfriend at the time (they would later marry), with the idea of doing a slasher movie and decided to use a script that was co-written by Ronald Shusett, who'd just worked on Alien. Throughout production, they couldn't settle on a title, as it went from Three Blind Mice (mainly because the characters sing that song at one point) to Bump in the Night, before they finally decided to call it The Final Terror during post-production, which has about as much relevance to the plot as those other titles. However, after the film was completed, they ran into much bigger troubles, as they had to add in a couple of more kills due to the initial low body count of just three people, and even then, they couldn't find a distributor. Because of this, though it was filmed in 1981, it didn't get released until 1983, and when it finally was released, it did nothing at the box-office, since by that point, it was really tame in comparison to so many of the other slasher movies that had come out.

Ronald Shusett was the one who suggested to Joe Roth that he should consider Andrew Davis to direct the film. At that point, Davis only had one directorial feature credit, 1978's Stony Island, and he'd followed that up with a television short; otherwise, he was mainly working as a cinematographer for director Gene Corman, Roger Corman's brother. Though Davis doesn't like horror films, he agreed to direct The Final Terror and also acted as its cinematographer, using the pseudonym Andreas Davidescu to avoid getting into union trouble. He didn't have the best time making the film (though he did do a commentary for Scream Factory's Blu-Ray release) and has never returned to the genre, instead going on to mainly be an action director. Among his credits are Code of Silence, with Chuck Norris; Above the Law and Under Siege, both with Steven Seagal; the massive blockbuster thriller, The Fugitive; A Perfect Murder, a modern adaptation of Dial M for Murder, with Michael Douglas, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Viggo Mortensen; Collateral Damage, with Arnold Schwarzenegger; Holes, with Shia LaBeouf; and The Guardian, with Kevin Costner.

While the majority of the characters are utter cardboard, the men of the group, sad to say, are a tad more memorable things than the women, who are mainly just there to be eye-candy. One of the most notable people in the whole movie is Dennis Zorich (John Friedrich), an edgy, hot-headed, and almost psychotic guy who, after the deaths of Mike and Melanie, becomes the group's de facto leader. None of the guys are all that crazy about Eggar but Zorich, in particular, hates him, pulling a knife on him when he gives them a rude wake-up call early in the morning, riding and mocking him every chance he gets, and threatening to kill him when the opportunity comes. On their first night out in the woods, Zorich, Nathaniel Hines, and Marco Cerone go out to steal some weed so they can sell it. When he demands a third of the cut, Zorich tricks Cerone into being their "lookout," telling him to keep howling like a wolf every 45 seconds, when in reality, they plan to cheat him out of it. Come the next morning, Cerone is nowhere to be found and Zorich and Nathaniel are forced to search upstream for him, coming across an old cabin in the woods and finding a cap inside that looks like the one Eggar wears. The two of them believe he's the one behind what's going on, and when Nathaniel finds a radio of his in there, they decide to get him back. They also find a severed wolf's head in a cupboard, suggesting that Eggar is even more disturbed than they imagined, and when Vanessa later finds Mike's remains in an old outhouse, Zorich, who vomits at the sight of them, decides that they should hit the cabin the next day and catch Eggar off-guard. No one else really cares about getting revenge but Zorich doesn't give them a choice when he takes charge and tells them, "You people want to survive this thing, you better start looking, and thinking, like the forest." Upon storming the cabin, they find no sign of Eggar but find more gruesome examples of the killer's handiwork, making Zorich more determined than ever to kill him. However, the others convince him to forget about it and simply use the old raft they find by the cabin to make their way down the river and, while he goes along with it, he continues to bark orders at them, alienating himself further from the group.

Zorich's unhinged nature shows itself throughout the film, like when he makes snide remarks towards Margaret and Windy when the former criticizes him for his getting Cerone lost early on and almost charges at Boone when he tells him to lighten up. Later on, when the killer throws Melanie's body into the raft with them and they bury her on the side of the river, Zorich gets impatient when he feels they're taking too long to do it, eventually growling, "Enough already." And when they get attacked while taking shelter in their abandoned bus, he runs off and leaves behind Windy, who trailing after her, leading to her getting lost and attacked. After all this, they decide to go along with Zorich's plan to trap and kill the killer, which leads them to set up a trap in a ravine, down near a large, fallen tree. Zorich is acting stranger than usual as they make their way down to the spot, humming out loud, having a constant smile on his face, and when he finds the perfect spot to ambush the killer, he starts going on about how beautiful it is, how he admits that he respects Eggar, and compares the way he's been stalking them to the tactics of the Vietcong. Nathaniel realizes that he took some magic mushrooms they found at the cabin and Zorich starts going on about it being a war-game, calling Windy a blonde-haired bitch when she tells him to get up there and help them, and when they leave him, he says, "Goddamn. I ain't stoned." Stoned or not, he manages to rig up a spiked log trap in the trees, but doesn't take part when the others attack and mercilessly beat Eggar when he appears, instead just standing by and watching them. This leaves him open to attack from the real killer, who yanks him off the fallen tree by his feet and causes him to fall to his death.

Marco Cerone (Adrian Zmed) is portrayed as someone from the city who's never been out in the country before and, as a result, becomes a target for Eggar, who constantly calls him "city boy" and is the first one he gets onto when he gives the guys their wake-up call, finding him reading a dirty magazine in his bunk. Once they get out in the woods, Cerone is curious about what kind of weed is grown out there, though he's warned that trying to steal from someone else's stash could be a fatal mistake. Despite this, he goes along with Zorich and Nathaniel when the two of them go out to get some of that weed, though the only reason he's allowed to come in the first place is because their usual accomplice, Boone, is too interested in Windy to care about it. Not knowing him at all, Nathaniel is not happy with having to steal the weed with Cerone, figuring he doesn't understand that pulling it up out of the ground isn't like selling it out on the street, but Zorich convinces Nathaniel to let him be their lookout. He promises Cerone 20%, only for Cerone to ask for a third and threaten to leave them when they don't agree to that. Thinking he can put one over on him, Zorich tells Cerone he'll get his third if he stands guard by howling like a wolf every 45 seconds, saying they'll know someone's shown up if he stops howling. Cerone goes along with this and keeps up the howling, but is nowhere to be found come morning. As everyone looks for him, you're meant to assume that he met his end, especially since the killer was shown to be stalking him while he was on guard, but he shows back up the next night and proves he's not as big a sucker as they thought he was, having grabbed a big bundle of weed himself. That's when he learns that Mike and Melanie got lost while out looking for him and later, when Mike's remains are found, he suggests that they should forget about trying to find Melanie and get out the same way they came in. After that, he mainly becomes just another part of the group and, like everyone except for Zorich, survives to the end, by which he's seemingly become quite despondent. Notably, he acts as bait, calling out Eggar to lure him to the trap, though things don't go as they originally planned.

Nathaniel Hines (Ernest Harden Jr.) is the closest thing Zorich has to a friend, as they both share in their disdain for Eggar and he has to rein him in when his temper gets the best of him. They've also attempted to get their hands on the weed that grows in the area before, and when their usual accomplice, Boone, is replaced by Cerone, who demands a third of the cut, they leave him on guard duty, howling like a wolf, while they go for the weed. They apparently didn't get anything, as they're empty-handed the next morning, and since Cerone isn't back at camp, they have to search one end of the river for him. While doing so, they come across the cabin and find evidence that Eggar is there, as well as that he's been stealing from them, as Nathaniel finds his radio there. Upon finding the wolf's head, they're convinced they're dealing with a real sicko, and try to warn the others, Nathaniel having Zorich stand watch at first while they wait for Mike and Melanie to return. Following Cerone's return and the discovery of Mike's severed body parts, everyone has different ideas about what to do, Nathaniel not finding Cerone's idea of hiking the road they drove in plausible and suggests that they head down the river the next day. After attempting to raid the cabin but finding no sign of Eggar, they do just that, everyone becoming stressed and more frantic the worse things get, especially Zorich. Like everyone else, Nathaniel decides to take part in the plan to ambush and kill Eggar, but is angered and frustrated when it becomes clear that Zorich is high on those magic mushrooms the two of them found at the cabin. Also, like everyone else, he joins in the attack on Eggar when he does appear, only to be surprised and shocked when he turns out to not be the killer, as they thought.

Despite being an accomplice to Zorich and Nathaniel's weed-stealing plans, and being taken with the lovely Windy, Boone (Lewis Smith) is actually one of the most sensible members of the group. When Mike and Melanie disappear and the group is told of how crazy Eggar apparently is, Boone suggests that they just wait for the two of them to come back, sure that they're just fine. Of course, they learn that they're anything but fine, but Boone insists that they should try to find Melanie, even though he knows it's unlikely that she's alive. The next day, when they hit the cabin and then decide to take the raft there down the river, Boone disagrees with Zorich;s saying they should burn the place down, telling him that they need to show the police what Eggar's done. But, by the time they've gone down the river, had Melanie's body flung at them, and Windy has been slashed by the killer, Boone decides to go along with Zorich's plan to trap and kill him, suggesting that they do so in a ravine where there wouldn't be any place for him to run. Boone's most memorable moment in the film, however, is when, on their first night out, as they're sitting around a bonfire, he tells them the story of the 14-year old girl who was raped by her uncle, was institutionalized, had a child from the rape, and that the child took her out of the institution and let her loose in the area. He ends the story with him and Zorich scaring the crap out of everybody with a jump scare, only to be admonished by Eggar for telling it; you learn his reason for reacting that way at the end of the movie.

The film focuses so much on the male characters that the women don't have much more to do than sit around, look pretty, and freak out and panic over the situation they're in. Margaret (Rachel Ward), the brunette, Australian girl, comes off as the most level-headed of the two, despite being pretty angry about the fact that, thanks to Zorich's tricking Cerone, they're stuck out there without Mike and Melanie as their guides. Though they don't have that many interactions, from that point on, it's obvious that there's a lot of animosity between the two of them. Margaret also seems to know first aid, as late in the film, she stitches up a nasty wound that Windy received from the killer when they fled into the woods following the attack on the bus. Windy is played by a young Darryl Hannah, who, at that point, had only one film credit to her name (specifically, Brian De Palma's The Fury). She's definitely the girl who's there to be just eye-candy, as she doesn't say or do much of anything that makes her stand out from everyone else. The most memorable moment involving her is when she gets separated from the others when they flee into the woods near the end of the movie and she gets slashed in the throat when she runs into the killer. She seems like a goner, but the others find her and Margaret is able to stitch her up. With that, Windy is willing to go along with Zorich's idea of killing Eggar, but like everyone else, she calls him out on his crap when he turns out to be stoned on magic mushrooms. Zorich, who earlier made a snide comment about the fact that she comes from a wealthy family, calls Windy a blonde-haired bitch for this and tells her to mind her own business. Finally, Vanessa (Akosua Busia) is the one who would clearly rather be anywhere else but out in the wilderness, being willing to pack up and leave the first night. When things get serious, she becomes more and more frantic and despondent about the situation they're in, being angry at the guys for how their prank on Cerone has Mike and Melanie lost in the woods, looking for him. She goes off to an old outhouse by herself, refusing to let anyone come with her, and when she does, she finds Mike's severed head, arm, and innards, much to her horror. The plan to go down the river is especially bad for her, as she can't swim, and when they're attempting to get the raft through a shallow spot, Vanessa has to get into the water and has a panic attack, to which Zorich responds by screaming and yelling at her, as he's been doing to everyone else.

Mike (Mark Metcalf) and Melanie (Cindy Harrell), the two supervisors on the work detail, are also fairly bland, especially the latter, whose only role is that of Mike's girlfriend and the one who supervises the girls. Mike comes off as a decent enough guy, though it's obvious that the rafting and camping trip he plans for them to take after they finish their job is just an excuse to be alone with Melanie. He also tries to keep Eggar in line when he's complaining and riding the other guys but it doesn't do any good, and when Cerone turns up missing their second day out, Mike has Zorich and Nathaniel take him to where they left him. Finding no sign of him, Mike sends them back to camp and tells them to have Melanie meet with him so they can search one end of the river. However, after some searching, Mike comes across a spot in the woods that he decides to take a dip in, and when Melanie finds him, instead of continuing their search for Cerone, they have sex instead. This ends with Mike getting murdered and Melanie being taken prisoner by the killer. When the others storm the cabin, searching for Eggar, they're unaware that Melanie is being held captive below the floor and being forced to keep quiet. Once they've gone and the killer climbs up through the trapdoor, Melanie tries to slip away but the killer spots and recaptures her. The last time she's seen is when the killer throws her body at the others when they're heading downriver on the raft, and they bury her on the bank.

He may have less screentime than anybody else in the main cast but, in spite of that, Eggar (Joe Pantoliano) is, by far, the most memorable part of the whole film. From the moment he arrives at the station early in the morning and gives all of the guys an obnoxious wake-up call, seeming to enjoy riding them, it's clear that there's something really off about him. He's also reluctant to take the crew to Mill Creek, apparently because of the story he hears on the radio about a couple who's gone missing in that area, and he criticizes Mike for using a company bus for personal business, saying that he knows what's going to happen once they get those girls out in the woods. On the way there, Eggar again tries to deter them from going to Mill Creek, telling them that it's not a place anyone would want to go to, but he gets ignored, with Zorich teasing him, suggesting that a mental institution they drive by is where he's from. When they arrive at the spot, Eggar continues to receive abuse and dish it back out, at one point using a rope to pull Zorich and Nathaniel's feet out from under them while they're working in a stream when they start riding him again. Things come to a head when Eggar, for some reason, gets really angry with Boone when he tells that story around the bonfire, accusing him of scaring the girls and throwing water on him, threatening to cut his tongue out. He proceeds to pack up his stuff, get into the bus, and leave, though everyone expects him to be back on Friday to pick them up. When things start going wrong and Mike and Melanie are murdered, everyone believes that Eggar is behind it, since they found his cap in the old cabin, in which they also find human innards and body parts in later on. For a little bit near the end, it seems like he could be the killer, as Eggar is shown to be at the cabin, talking to himself about how he warned them not to come, and the group finds the bus abandoned on a bridge, only to get ambushed there when they take shelter inside it. At the end of the film, when they set a trap for Eggar, Cerone manages to draw him out and he attempts to strangle him, again saying that he warned them not to come. The group then proceeds to gang up on him and beat him mercilessly, when it's finally revealed that the figure who's been stalking them wasn't Eggar at all.

All throughout the film, you see this camouflaged figure stalking around and keeping tabs on the group, at one point killing and, offscreen, dismembering Mike, and taking Melanie hostage before finally killing her as well. Living in the old cabin that the group finds and being quite skillful at blending into the surroundings and striking when they least expect it, the killer is believed to be Eggar, only to be revealed as someone else entirely at the end. It's actually Eggar's mother, the woman from the story who went mad after being raped by her uncle, was taken out of the asylum by her dutiful son, and set free in the woods, where she's been living ever since. Like Jason Voorhees, she murders anyone who enters her domain, be it by her own hands or, as the opening shows, through traps that she has set up in the forest (she's not as prolific a killer, though, as she only manages to kill five people when it's all set and done). She seems to have an interest in young women, with how she kidnaps Melanie and, in one scene, sneaks into the camp and brushes Margaret's forehead while she's sleeping. Also, when her face is revealed, she's played by a man (Tony Maccario), a conscious choice to make her appearance more unsettling; in addition, Joe Pantoliano himself played her during much of the film when she's stalking around without revealing her face. At the end of the movie, when her son is being attacked, she appears behind Zorich and kills him, before starting down towards her son. But, in doing this, she triggers the spiked log trap that Zorich set up earlier and gets brutally impaled in front of everyone, including Eggar.

One thing I can respect is that the filmmakers decided to virtually live the movie while making it, shooting in the Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, with no sets whatsoever, save for the cabin that Eggar's mother lives in. You know that couldn't have been easy on them, even though they weren't actually as deep in the woods as they appeared to be. For one, it actually got cold and damp sometimes, despite the fact that they shot in the summer, and they also made the decision to shoot all of the night scenes at night, rather than using the day-for-night process, save for the scene where the killer attacks them while they're taking shelter in the bus. The place also definitely makes for a nice setting for a horror film, with dense woods made up of enormous redwoods and thick brush all-around, save for the river, which itself is very hazardous and also arduous to get through when they run into shallow spots and have to push and carry their raft through it. That said, while the location is nice to look at, and Andrew Davis clearly knew that, as he filmed plenty of beauty shots, like some of those you see here, I don't have much of a reaction to it other than, "It's a nice setting." Mind you, they do make good use of parts of it, like the river and the spot with the fallen redwood where they set the trap for Eggar (something they literally just came across while location scouting), which is a particularly memorable-looking area, and I like the eerie, rundown cabin in the middle of the woods, as I always enjoy those kinds of places anyway, be it the isolated cabin Terry finds in The Howling or Jason's dilapidated shack in Friday the 13th Part 2. The art direction about the cabin is particularly strong, as they did a good job of making it looking like an old, rotting place of absolute squalor, with a bunch of junk piled inside of it that gives the impression that the inhabitant lives like a pack-rat, chickens and over livestock kept around it, and a trapdoor in the floor that can be used to hide from any unwanted visitors. But, all that said, I don't get the palpable feeling of isolation with this place that I do with other movies. I know that they drove into the woods deeper than they'd ever gone before, that, without the bus, it would take a couple of days for them to hike out, and that it's very easy to get lost, but, whether it's because I don't really care about these characters, find the killer to be that interesting, or even think the movie is that exciting, the feeling that they're seriously lost out there doesn't really hit me.

What the movie does get across very well is how downright miserable camping and life off the grid can be. I've been camping a lot in my life and, while it is fun, depending on who you're with or where you are, it's still pretty uncomfortable to be stuck out in the middle of the woods with no modern conveniences, including a bed, a bathtub and shower, or even a toilet. Sleeping bags often don't do it for me, tent or not (the characters in this film don't even have tents and have to sleep on the rocky river banks, something I couldn't imagine doing), it has to suck to bathe in a river, and outhouses? Hell, no. I sympathize with Vanessa in that scene, even before she finds what's left of Mike, as there are few things more disgusting than an outhouse, especially one as old as that one (to this day, I'm convinced that an outhouse I was forced to use at Yellowstone made me horribly sick for a couple of days). As much as I like settings such as the cabin, they also make my skin crawl because you know how primitive and disgusting living in a place like that, with no electricity and having to scrounge up anything you can, is. It's not as disgusting as Jason's aforementioned shack was but it's still really, "Ugh." I've also been on rafting trips like the one these characters go on, or were planning to, and, while they're fun in the summer, when the water is freezing, they can be an endurance (though, in my case, the problem with the cold water was because every time we came on another raft, the people in it would always intentionally splash us). I hate being cold and wet and seeing them all have to pile into this raft in order to make their way down this narrow, often shallow river is a nightmare scenario for me. And yeah, hiking through the woods in the rain sucks as well, especially when you have to wear ponchos, which stick to your clothes and skin.

I also do have to cut the movie some slack when it comes to the way it looks, as they were working with very little money and shooting in a place that didn't allow for many lighting opportunities. Andrew Davis did what he could with what he was given but, even on Scream Factory's Blu-Ray, the lighting is often very murky, with the daytime scenes filled with really black shadows and the nighttime sequences sometimes being so dark that it's hard to see (the blue lighting he used for those scenes, however, does help offset that a bit and give it a nice style). Trust me, though, I've seen shots from prints of the movie's VHS and DVD releases and the Blu-Ray is a massive improvement. Speaking of which, the people at Scream Factory ran into a big problem when they decided to put this movie out, as they found that all of the original film elements are lost and so, they had to resort to using various film prints and take the best-looking reels from them to make the transfer for the Blu-Ray look as good as it possibly could. You can often see fading and grain on it and it does come up a tad short when compared to high-def transfers of other movies from the same period but, again, it couldn't be helped.

While not always the case, sometimes a lackluster cast of characters in a slasher movie can be evened out by a memorable killer and some really good deaths. But, that's something that The Final Terror drops the ball on as well. The backstory behind the killer is an interesting and twisted one, but you can guess how it's going to tie into the story fairly early on, given Eggar's overall bizarre behavior (it makes him too much of an obvious red herring), his trying to keep them from heading out to Mill Creek, the mention of the mental institution, and his reaction to Boone telling the story. As for the killer herself, while it's cool how she's able to camouflage herself real well, often hiding in plain sight while stalking the group, and climbs up and along various surfaces using these metal hooks on her arms, which she also uses as weapons (kind of like a human version of the Predator, in that regard), her look and methods of killing aren't all that memorable when compared to many other slasher villains. It would have been nice if we got to see some more traps that she had rigged throughout the area or, at least, saw her using an assortment of different weapons, but given the limited resources they had and Andrew Davis' disinterest in the horror genre anyway, I guess that wasn't possible.

This is one slasher movie that really doesn't deliver in the kills department either, as, including the killer herself, only six people die and their deaths are mostly very ho-hum: Jimmy and Lori, the couple in the movie's opening, respectively die from having their throat cut before being hung upside down and activating a trap that slices them up with what appears to be sharp can lids attached to branches; Mike is merely stabbed in the small of his back while having sex with Melanie; Melanie, after her body is thrown into the raft with the others, is revealed to have had her throat slashed as well; and Zorich gets pulled off the back of the fallen tree and falls to his death. The death of Eggar's mother is the most memorable one, as she gets impaled by the spiked log trap that Zorich rigged up and is left hanging there in the air. However, while the kills themselves leave something to be desired for, the makeup effects work is fair, particularly when it's used to create the aftermath of the killer's handiwork. The severed wolf's head found at the cabin, Mike's severed head, arm, and innards in the outhouse, and the other grisly sights they later find in the cabin, such as more remains and a severed hand in a jar (very likely, Mike again), all look disgustingly realistic, though you sometimes can't see these effects really well because of how poor the lighting often is.

The film opens with a small, serene montage of the forest: sunlight pouring through the trees, babbling brooks, fawns exploring their surroundings, etc. The serenity is then broken by the sound of a motorcycle, and as it rounds a bend, the driver, Jimmy, wipes out, sending him and his girlfriend, Lori, slamming to the ground. While Lori only has a few scratches, Jimmy's leg is pinned underneath the overturned motorcycle. Lori has to help him up and over to a spot where he can sit down. Looking at his right leg, they see it has a bad gash in it. Lori goes to find help and leaves Jimmy there. Sitting there by himself, Jimmy hears the sound of brush popping and cracking nearby, while Lori comes across a ranger station, though it appears to be abandoned. She runs back to the spot where she left Jimmy, only to find that he's not there anymore. Calling for him, she gets no answer and walks towards the spot beyond the motorcycle, searching for him. She continues calling for him and gets no answer, when his body suddenly tumbles down from some tree branches, hanging by a rope and with his throat slashed. Screaming in horror, Lori runs down the trail, only to trigger a hidden cord that swings two branches on either side of the road right at her, slicing her up with razor sharp can lids tied to them. Her screams echo through the air as the branches recoil, the lids now covered in her blood. (This whole opening was filmed after principal photography in order to try to make the movie more appealing to slasher fans and it was done without Andrew Davis. Producer Joe Roth had to pay a fine to the Director's Guild because of it.)

Following that, the movie spends some time setting up the characters, their upcoming work detail in the woods and the camping and rafting they're going to go on afterward, and their picking up the girls before heading out. Along the way, Eggar, who's been established as being unpopular amongst the group, continually tries to dissuade them from going to Mill Creek after hearing about the two people who've been reported missing there. While driving them in on the bus, Eggar loses it when Dennis Zorich says that he's going to, "Tell them all about you," yelling that he's not going to take his bullshit anymore. Shortly afterward, they drive past a building with a sign out front that says, Del Norte County Mental Health Center, and Zorich asks Eggar if that's not his old home. After that, they drive over a bridge and head into the depths of the woods. Later, they disembark by an old shack, where Zorich and Nathaniel Hines continue to tease and harass Eggar, throwing something at him and hitting him in the back of the head with it, as well as mockingly calling him as he walks away, carrying a box. He later bosses the guys around, getting all over Cerone when he attempts to take the boats off the top of the bus and chewing out Nathaniel when he accidentally drops some cans of food on the ground while pulling something out of the back of the bus. In the next scene, they're clearing a stream of a large blockage of branches, when Mike tells them to take five. While sitting around and talking, they again get on Eggar, who threatens to leave them stranded out there. He goes on to tell Zorich that he took a smart ass like him up into the hills and tied him down so no one would be able to find or help him, adding that he left him up there and nobody has ever found him. Zorich and Nathaniel don't pay any mind to his threat, only to get a wet, cold surprise when he uses a cord on the ground to swing them off their feet and send them into the water. He yells, "Y'all hear me now?!" and laughs in their faces before taking off running, with Zorich and Nathaniel chasing him, the former threatening to kill him.

That night, they're sitting around a bonfire, telling ghost stories... all except Eggar, who's sitting over by himself. Boone's turn comes around and he tells them, "So, once upon a time, not too long ago, this used to be a logging camp, right here, and there was this little sweet, 14-year old girl who lived here with a big family. And her father died, so her uncle came to take care of the place. He was a lumberjack, and he was a mean son of a bitch. Mean, boy. And one night, this uncle said, 'Hey, Susie Q, you want to go for a little walk in the woods?' So, he took her on one of these trails here, way far out, you know? Like we are. And he raped her. She screamed but nobody could hear her. She had to keep all this inside after the rape, because she couldn't tell anybody because, you know, he was supporting the family. She was afraid to. She started going crazy. So what they done is, they put her in a mental institution. You know that one we passed on the way down here? And while she's in the hospital, they find out that she's pregnant. So, she has this little baby boy. But, the doctor says, 'Well, she's too messed up to take care of the kid.' So they take the baby away from her. Okay, so 19 years later, this young kid, just about my age, shows up down there at the hospital. He wants to see this lady. So they let him in, and he goes crazy. I mean, he just freaks out. He says, 'You can't treat my mama like this, you can't keep her in this garbage can!' It was her son. He just stole her right out of the place. Just took her. But she was so crazy, you know, that he didn't know what to do with her. So he put her out here in these woods, so she could live in peace, you know? But the story goes that, whenever anybody camps out around here, she sneaks into your camp, and she whispers to you. She bends down over you, man, and you can just smell her breathing on you, you can feel it. And she says, 'Who stole my land? Who stole my...'" And at that moment, Zorich grabs Vanessa from behind and yells, while Boone yells as well, startling everybody. They all then have a laugh, except for Eggar, who all throughout the story, was giving Boone the evil eye. He storms over and admonishes Boone for doing it and scaring the girls. He goes as far as to throw water on him and threaten to cut his tongue out. Eggar stomps back over to his spot, followed by Mike, who tells him he wants to talk to him. Eggar, however, isn't talking about anything and tells Mike that he's leaving right then. After everybody puts what they don't need on the bus, Eggar drives off into the night, and nobody is all that crushed about him leaving.

Late that night, Zorich and Cerone meet up with Nathaniel at a spot in the woods in order to go get some of the weed that's being grown nearby. However, Nathaniel isn't thrilled about having to work with someone he barely knows and who's only experience with weed has been dealing it out on the street, and the two of them get into an argument. Trying to get them both to calm down and be quiet, Zorich suggests that Cerone act as a lookout, telling him that they'll cut him in for 20% if he does it. Cerone, however, says that he wants a third and threatens to leave when they refuse. Zorich sends Nathaniel on, telling him to give him ten minutes, and when he's out of earshot, Zorich agrees to the third. He tells Cerone to stay and howl like a wolf every 45 seconds, stopping only when he sees someone coming. At first thinking it's a ridiculous notion, Cerone agrees to it and, after demonstrating how well he can howl, Zorich leaves him to it, telling him to keep at it for a couple of hours. Cerone starts howling, while Zorich joins Nathaniel up ahead and the two of them laugh about how they think they've pulled the wool over his eyes as they run off. Cerone continues howling, completely unaware that a camouflaged figure is standing right next to where he is and slowly moves away.

Come the next morning, Melanie, who's the first one up at the campsite, wakes Mike, and the two of them, in turn, wake both the guys and the girls... or, at least, try to, given obstinate the campers are. It's not until they're sitting around the fire, eating breakfast, that they realize that Cerone isn't around. At first, Mike thinks he might have just wandered off, but then Zorich and Nathaniel jokingly let it slip that he's been out all night. Aggravated at this, Mike has the two of them show him where they left Cerone, and they eventually reach the spot but find no sign of him, except for his bandana. Seeing this, Mike sends them back to camp, telling them to send Melanie to where he is so that they can search both ends of the stream as far as they can. Once he's alone, Mike hears some slight rustling and heads down that trail, deeper into the woods, and at one point, the sound of howling can be heard. Soon, Melanie is looking for both Mike and Cerone, while Mike continually yells for him. Getting no response, Mike spots a small pool fed by the stream and decides to take a dip, unaware that he's being watched by Melanie. Back at the campsite, Nathaniel gets Zorich to come with him to go find Cerone, when Zorich angrily shouts at Margaret when she calls him out for what she did, and makes a remark about Windy, saying, "You tell your friend's father to buy you better company next time, you understand?" Boone tells Zorich to lighten up and Nathaniel has to keep him from charging at Boone, forcing him on up the stream. Once he's out of earshot, Windy comments that she thinks Zorich is psychotic. Elsewhere, as he's sitting in the pool, Mike is surprised when Melanie makes her presence known by putting her bare foot on his shoulder (you can that water was really cold, as Mark Metcalf is clearly shivering here). This leads to the two of them having sex afterward, a task which Andrew Davis was uncomfortable with shooting, which is why it's done in extreme closeup, with no graphic details, save for some side-views of Metcalf's buttock. Suddenly, Mike gets slashed in the small of his back and, because of his passionate moaning earlier, it takes Melanie a second to realize what happened, when she looks up and sees the killer's blade. Mike is sliced a couple of more times, his blood splattering on Melanie's screaming face, and he expires while still lying on top of her, when she's pulled out from underneath him.

On the opposite side of the forest, Zorich and Nathaniel are searching around the stream, when they see smoke from a chimney in the woods. Telling Nathaniel that whoever lives there may not like his "kind," Zorich has them slowly move towards the spot, where they find a small, old log cabin. Zorich goes on ahead, walking past a small coop of chickens and acting like a commando trying not to be spotted, while Nathaniel finds a spot where a sheep is being kept (that sheep, by the way, makes a sound that I've never heard a sheep make; when I first heard it, I though it was a really angry cat!), as well as a raft from the camp that used to be there. They also find a small grave nearby, though Zorich writes it off as probably being some animal like a dog. After examining the grave's fresh dirt, Zorich looks through the cabin's window and manages to slip inside through the sticking front door. Nathaniel continues looking around the front yard, seeing all kinds of junk piled around out there, when he hears Zorich scream bloody murder in the cabin. He runs inside to, initially, find nothing but an empty cabin. Then, he's rushed from behind by a figure that comes out of a closet and seems to be an insane woman... but, it turns out to be Zorich wearing a wig and dress he found. Supremely irked, Nathaniel rushes at Zorich and the two of them grapple, before noticing an assortment of cans of various food items, many of which are fresh, and other objects on a couple of shelves by the back window, including some magic mushrooms. Nathaniel also finds a bunch more women's clothes hanging around, while Zorich finds a familiar-looking cap hanging nearby. He shows it to Nathaniel and proclaims that Eggar's the one living in the cabin. Nathaniel then finds a radio that belonged to him on a shelf and with that, the two of them decide that they're going to get him fired for it. Curious to see what else is in the cabin, Nathaniel opens up a cabinet, only to disgusted when he finds a severed wolf's head inside. Figuring that Eggar is even more unhinged than they ever thought he was, the two of them rush out the front door and beat it back to camp.

That night, around the campfire, they tell the others what they found, but with Mike and Melanie not back, Boone suggests they just wait for them, saying they're likely alright, although Windy is sure there's something wrong. Zorich tells them that they need to pair up and not go anywhere by themselves, when Nathaniel sends him to go keep watch. He heads down the stream to do so and everyone goes to sleep. Later, as Margaret is sleeping very restlessly, the killer creeps into the camp, kneels down beside her, and softly strokes her forehead. But, Margaret wakes up and screams upon seeing the figure. Her scream sends Zorich running back up the stream and when he returns to camp, Margaret is hysterical, claiming that someone was in camp with them. Boone comforts her about it, while Zorich says that, while rushing up the stream, he fell and sprained his wrist. Now unable to sleep, everyone is gathered around the campfire, Nathaniel wrapping Zorich's wrist up in gauze, when they hear splashing up in the stream. Going to investigate, Boone taking an axe for protection, they see someone jump into the stream ahead of them and stop dead. The figure then approaches them and, when he's close enough, shines a light in their faces. He then reveals himself to be Cerone, putting the flashlight under his face, saying, "Good evening, gentlemen," in a Bela Lugosi-style voice, and doing his wolf howl. Everyone is relieved and Cerone rejoins them, carrying a big bushel of weed with him as he walks to camp. Their relief doesn't last long, though, as Cerone reveals that he hasn't seen Mike or Melanie, and since it's technically because of him that they're lost, Vanessa angrily admonishes him for his joke. Calling their trip a complete disaster, she storms off to go use the nearby outhouse, refusing to go with anyone when Boone brings it up. Reaching the outhouse, Vanessa is instantly repulsed by the "lovely" odors wafting out from the door and lines the seat with some toilet tissue, something any sensible person would do. When she closes the door, the severed wolf's head from before falls down on her from above, as does Mike's head. Vanessa screams in horror and Nathaniel comes through the door and helps her back outside. Joining them, Zorich looks inside and promptly throws up upon seeing Mike's head in there. Boone and Cerone then show up and look inside, seeing Mike's arm and innards on the floor as well. Next, they're around the campfire again, discussing what to do and how they're going to escape. That's when, despite some protests from the others, Zorich takes charge, telling them they're going to hit the cabin the next day and try to catch Eggar off-guard.

Come daylight, the group, now acting like a commando unit under Zorich, stealthily approach the cabin and take up positions around it. With everyone surrounding it, Nathaniel runs up to the front door and tries to draw Eggar out by calling for him. He gets no response so, armed with a stick that's been carved with a sharp point, he bursts through the door, only to find some innards, possibly Mike's, lying on the table in the center of it. Little does he know that, in a trapdoor in the floor, Melanie is being held hostage by the killer, who's threatening her with a blade in front of her mouth to keep quiet. Up above, Nathaniel sets down his spear and pulls out a knife when he yanks open a cupboard door, only to startle a chicken inside. Cerone and the other guys enter the cabin and are just as horrified by what they find as Nathaniel, who happens to find a jar containing a human hand preserved in some liquid. He's so shaken by this that he drop the jar and it smashes on the floor, allowing everyone else to see what was inside it. That's when the girls make the mistake of walking in, as Zorich proclaims he's going to kill Eggar for this. Everyone then leaves, Nathaniel telling them they need to get to the river, but Cerone loiters around for a bit, looking at everything. He finally leaves when Zorich yells for him to come on, all them completely unaware that Melanie is literally right under their noses. Outside, they grab the old raft sitting in the weeds by the cabin, along with some oars, and start carrying them down to the river. Once they're gone, the killer emerges from the trapdoor and Melanie attempts to slip away, but is quickly spotted. As everyone else prepares to pile into the raft down by the river, putting warm shoes and socks on, Melanie gets a hat forced onto her head by the killer. Getting their gear into the raft, the group piles into it and starts down the river, trying to go as efficiently and quietly as they can, while keeping an eye out for any possible ambushes.

They soon reach a rougher section of the river, having to navigate through some rapids, but afterward, they end up in some calmer waters. However, little do they know that the killer, blending in perfectly with the rocky shoreline, is stalking them the whole way. In addition, Melanie, seemingly out of it, is being led along on a leash. When the raft gets close to the shoreline, her body is flung into it, scaring everybody and sending Boone and Zorich into the water. Frantically, they scan the shoreline, searching for Eggar, but don't see anything, and while they attempt to compose themselves, they cover Melanie's face with a jacket and drag the raft to shore. They bury Melanie there, at least until Zorich tells them it's enough, and they continue on. They come to a point where they have to push the raft through a very shallow section and the others allow Vanessa, who can't swim, to jump into it... until Zorich screams at her to get out of it. Vanessa does get into the water but, as shallow as it is, she has a panic attack and they have to help her along, with Zorich yelling at her that it's only three feet and everybody yelling at him to cool it. Later, as they're dragging the raft along, they see the bridge they drove over up ahead, and sitting on it is the bus. While the others see it as a surefire way to get out, Zorich figures it might be a trap and says that they should wait until dark. Once nighttime rolls around, they cautiously board the bus, expecting to be attacked, but nothing happens, and they find that the stuff they put on the bus is still there. Zorich finds that, while the keys are there, the engine has no juice, and when they check under the hood, they find that the battery has been sabotaged. But, since there's no way they're going down the river at night, they settle into the bus, closing the door; unbeknownst to the others, Zorich takes one of the magic mushrooms they found earlier. Back at the cabin (the establishing shot is in daytime, even though it's now supposed to be night), Eggar is there, having found everything, and, sobbing, intones, "I told them not to come."

By now, everyone has fallen asleep at the bus, and all is quiet, until some rustling and loud thuds on top of it gradually wake them up. The sounds continue and everyone realizes that someone is crawling and walking along the bus' roof. Suddenly, the blade of an axe smashes through the window Vanessa is sitting next to and, as she screams, they all run for the door. However, as Zorich tries to open the door, it holds fast, even when some of the others try to help him. Boone then attempts to kick the door open, when the killer jumps down on the bus' hood and smashes through the windshield, sending everyone running to the back door. Zorich tries to contend with the killer, who is now brandishing a spear, while the others manage to get the back door's window open and run off into the woods. There's a moment where, while trying to escape, Zorich gets stuck and yells for help, as the killer climbs in after him. The others manage to get the window open and help Zorich escape, slamming the window down on a blade that slashes through. Everyone heads straight for the woods and run around frantically in the dark, not knowing where they're going. In the chaos, Windy, who's trailing behind Zorich, ends up getting separated from him and finds herself in the woods, alone. She fumbles around, yelling for them, while the others come to realize that she's not with them and start looking for her. While she's looking for them, the killer pops out in front of her and slashes her under the side of her chin. She falls to the ground, clutching that spot, which is how the others find her. Margaret attempts to stop the bleeding and says that she's going to need something to sew up the wound. Boone mentions that there's a first aid kit back at the bus and they send Zorich and Cerone to retrieve it, while the others try to calm the hysterical Windy. They manage to get back to the bus and retrieve the kit with no trouble, and once they get it to Margaret, she's able to suture up Windy's slash. Once she's finished up, Zorich proclaims that they need to kill Eggar, a sentiment that Windy shares, and Boone comes up with the idea to lay a trap for him down in the ravine.

The next day, as a light rain comes down on them, the group, dressed in ponchos and rain-gear, heads down into the ravine, with Zorich humming to himself, Boone twice telling him to shut up, and Windy slipping and falling on the ground at one point. They make their way down the side of hill, to a spot where a fallen redwood spans across the ravine. Reaching the spot where the middle of the tree is most level, Boone proclaims that this is where they're going to set the trap. Zorich walks on ahead, to where the roots are sticking out, and, looking overly happily, intones, "Great. This is great." He calls everyone over and, as they come, he climbs down to the ground below, armed with a machete. In an apparent daze, he tells them, "I'm going to kill him... right here. This is where it's going to happen. Beautiful. This is beautiful, ain't it? You know something? Throughout all this, I respect him. He's just quiet, waiting. That's the reason we lost the war. You know that, don't you? Well, the VC knew that. They did. They knew about the forest." Realizing what's going on, Nathaniel tells the others about the magic mushrooms and that Zorich, who's giving them a loopy, inebriated smile, is completely stoned on them. Zorich proclaims it to be a war-game and yells at Windy when she tells him to get his act together. Aggravated, they leave him by himself to go set up the trap, as he talks to himself, insisting, "Goddamn. I ain't stoned."

They get to work, camouflaging themselves and getting the trap ready, with Zorich climbing up the front of a Redwood with tree climbing equipment and yelling at Cerone, who's doing nothing but lying around uselessly. He manages to tie a large, spiked log to the sides of two Redwoods, suspending it in the air in-between them, before making his way back down. With the trap set, Cerone stands at the center of the fallen tree and calls for Eggar, trying to draw him out. He yells that the others are after him but that he wants to help him just so he can get out. Even after this, nothing happens, and it looks like Eggar isn't going to show up, but then, he appears from behind Cerone and ties a rope around his throat, telling him, "I told you not come! But now you done it. They're going to take her away. They're going to take her away. Why'd you come? Why'd you come?" After some struggling, Cerone manages to reach behind him, grab Eggar's face and tries to flip him over his shoulder, but sends the two of them rolling off the side of the log. When they hit the ground, Cerone yells, "Now!", and the others emerge and rush at Eggar, overwhelming him and forcing him to the ground. All of them except Zorich, who was hiding down below the tree's roots, and climbs up to see the others brutalizing Eggar: stomping him, kicking him, punching him, and throwing him into a puddle of water, one of them holding him in place with their foot on his neck. While this is going on, the actual killer emerges from within the depths of the fallen tree and climbs up the roots towards the unsuspecting Zorich, who's still watching the mayhem. They're continuing to beat on and bash Eggar's brains in, with Boone preparing to smash a big chunk of a log over him, when Zorich's left foot gets hooked by one of the killer's hand-blades and he gets yanked over the back of the tree, falling to his death below. The killer stands up at the back of the tree and lets out a maniacal scream, causing everyone to stop their beatdown of Eggar. They watch as this bizarre person approaches the spot, when Eggar, his face now bloody, yells out, "Mom! Mom!" Looking at him, his mother lets out another scream and walks down towards her son, but on the way, she hits a tripwire that sends Zorich's spiked log trap hurtling towards her. She has no time to react, as she's impaled on the spears that jut out from the log and killed instantly. The scene goes quiet, as everyone watches as the log slowly sways back and forth, with the body of Eggar's mother still stuck to it, before coming to a stop and just sits, slightly moving back and forth. There's one last shot of Eggar and of Zorich's body before the movie ends on a shot of the log, as the camera pans up to the treetops, slowly turns around, and just holds there as the credits roll.

The film's music was composed by Susan Justin, whose only other notable piece of composition is for the Roger Corman-produced Forbidden World. On the whole, it's not the most remarkable score, being pretty typical in how it tries to make you feel tension, excitement, and pathos, but the one standout aspect is its main title theme, which you hear over both the opening and ending credits. It's this really rocking guitar theme, accompanied by a soft but constant beat and instances of some rather poignant-sounding notes, which really hammer home the impact of what's happened at the end, after you've seen the death of Eggar's mother. Other than that, I don't have much to say, as the music is another one of those many aspects of the movie that's just kind of there and doesn't leave much of an impression.

I'm not surprised that The Final Terror got lost and still tends to get lost in the shuffle of the 80's slasher heyday because there's so very little to make it stand out, except perhaps the fact that it was an early film for a lot of notable people. It does also benefit from memorable performances by John Friedrich and Joe Pantoliano, a memorable wilderness setting that is often quite well-shot, a nicely eerie cabin set, and a very striking main music theme but, that aside, it's mostly very ho-hum and forgettable. Most of the characters are utter cannon fodder; the location, as nice as it is to look it, is, for the most part, actually used for little more than as a unique background for the story; there aren't many kills and those that are here aren't creative or memorably gory; the killer, while having a disturbing backstory, isn't that distinctive, nor are her methods, and it's easy to predict her identity; and the music score is quite generic as a whole. Combine that with the usual bare bones story that inherent in slasher movies anyway and you've got the recipe for a movie that will likely forever be doomed to complete obscurity. Unless you're a slasher fanatic and completist, I'd say not to bother with this one.