Wow! Such a good movie.

Perfectly adorable

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

FINAL EXAM is one of those sluggish and slow-moving slasher films of the early 1980s that fails sufficiently engage with the subject matter and as such becomes humdrum and below par. Apparently the writer and director decided to go and focus on characterisation over suspense, violence and death, but as the latter are the main things this genre is known for, that wasn't going to achieve much. The film has an annoyingly spoofy feel to it and the characters are pure walking cardboard, without a sympathetic focus among them. Too much time is spent early on with random pranks and misbehaviour so that when the kills finally start happening you just can't take them seriously. I had always intended to buy a physical copy of this movie but never got around to it, so I'm glad I managed to catch Code Red's copy on Amazon Prime instead of wasting my money on it.

You remember that interview where Vanilla Ice tried to explain why he didn't steal Queen/David Bowie's "Under Pressure?"I'd like to hear whoever did the music for this movie to explain how they added a "da na na" to the theme from Halloween. Then again, there's plenty more that this movie owes to that film.A killer with a kitchen knife is on the prowl, killing off college kids. And he's on the way to Lanier College during finals.Meanwhile, a fraternity stages a mass shooting to help their members pass a chemistry test. How does this plan work? Who comes up with such a plan?While students prepare for the end of the year, the killer is hiding among them. We have Courtney, who is the Final Girl, of course. Her roommate is Lisa, who is all into the hot professor. Well, not really hot. He's a professor, though.For some reason, all of the pledges can't dare anyone. But Gary is in love with Janet and pins her, so he gets punished by being tied up to a tree, his underwear filled with ice and then sprayed with shaving cream. What? Where did this ritual come from? Who goes through with this? Even the rest of the town, like the security guard, follow these rules. What is the deal with this school?Well, he's tied up and the killer gets him. Then it gets his girlfriend, too. While that's going on, Wildman, a frat guy, is looking for pain pills when he gets killed by a Universal weight machine. His friend Mark tries to find him and he gets killed.Then we have Radish, who isn't gay in the movie but would totally be a proud out character if this was made after 1981. He's constantly looking for killers and has a great poster collection of old films. All his knowledge of murder doesn't help, as he's instantly killed.Lisa tries to model for her boyfriend in the nude, but she gets killed, too. And now we're down to one and the killer even catches an arrow and stabs the coach with it when he tries to save Courtney. But then he falls into a hole and she stabs him to death. That's it. That's the fight he puts up.Written and directed by Jimmy Huston (My Best Friend Is a Vampire), this is pretty much Halloween with a killer who was too lazy to get a mask (he was also the fight coordinator for the film).That said, I wasn't bored, I laughed out loud at many of the things that Radish did and said, and I enjoyed the arrow catching scene. You'll be filled with questions. Like, how much chaffing did the short shorts of the 80's cause?

Final Exam (1981) * (out of 4)Downright horrid slasher has an unknown maniac showing up on a college campus and going on a killing spree as many of the students are preparing for their final exams.You know, when I watch really bad movies like FINAL EXAM it can't help but make me more impressive with certain movies in the Friday THE 13TH series or even THE BURNING. It's really amazing when you go back and see how many slashers were made in this period but what's even more shocking is how many of them are downright awful like this one. I finished the movie just minutes before writing this and I'm still in shock at how stupid this movie was. Umm...was there a motivation for anything we just saw? How about a motive? A backstory? Anything? What's even more shocking is that we're given a murder in the opening sequence but the next one doesn't happen until around the 55 minute mark. I'm a little confused but had the filmmakers noticed that in slasher movies you need dead bodies? So we get about fifty minutes worth of character development, which is actually zero development and instead we just see a bunch of dumb characters doing dumb things that really don't add up to anything. The characters are all extremely annoying and it's impossible to care what happens to any of them. You get the typical stereotypes (the hunk, the dork, the good girl) but all of them are just boring.The death scenes are also pretty boring with most of the bloodshed just a little aftermath stuff with blood coming from mouths and so on. Even the murder weapon is just a butcher knife and not much is done with it. Then there are the performances that range from poor to downright bad. The music score is a cheap knock-off of Carpenter's HALLOWEEN and there's no question that this movie is trying to be like that one in many ways. FINAL EXAM is a really horrid little movie that has very little going for it.

Take every worn-out cliché about slasher films, scrap up some truly horrible looking and terrible acting "kids", and blatantly steal pivotal scenes from much better done flicks - put them all in a blender and you have "Final Exam". Seriously, the only thing scary about this film are the terrible 80's outfits and even worse hair. The killer is just a killer with no motive, no backstory, nothing! Normally this wouldn't be a problem, but this man has nothing remotely threatening about him. There is ZERO atmosphere, ZERO gore, and ZERO interesting characters. Special Effects do not exist in this film. These are the lamest bunch of kids that make even the most mundane slasher films' cardboard characters look intricate. This movie will try even the most hardcore 80's Slasher Fan's patience.