Let’s jump straight into the plot synopsis with this one, shall we, and pause at such salient points as merit more in-depth discussion?
A university campus in America. A soft top parked in an out-of-the-way spot. A young couple in the front seat, canoodling. The gentleman is angling to get the lady in the back seat, the better to instigate fuller and more meaningful intercourse. An awful lot of back-and-forth ensues, with the lady insisting the gentleman commits to saying that he loves her. After about five minutes of this, and the audience forgiven for thinking that ‘Paradise by the Dashboard Light’ is going to kick in at any moment (it doesn’t), the pair of them repair to the back seat only to be attacked by a psychopath whose face remains unseen. Both buy the farm in what, to be perfectly honest, is fairly bloodless for a stalk ‘n’ slash flick.
So far, so protracted.
The scene then shifts to another campus where nerd Radish (Joel S Rice) and goody-two-shoes Courtney (Cecile Bagdadi)’s discussion of the aforementioned murders is interrupted by fraternity bro Mark (John Fallon). Mark is stressing the imminent chemistry exam where, if he doesn’t achieve 82%, he looks set to lose his scholarship, the immediate and most galling ramification of which will be that his parents cease making payments on his car. But Mark needn’t worry. His frat buddies stage a prank, under the ensuing chaos of which Mark successfully cheats in the exam. And what kind of prank, you ask, is so attention-grabbing that Mark can pull such a stunt and get clean away with it?
They fake a school shooting.
Now, maybe things were a bit different in 1981, but holy fucking fuck – this is a cheapie horror movie in the ‘Prom Night’ vein that uses a faked school shooting as a plot device and then has most of the characters, including the football coach and the alcoholic groundsman laugh it off in a “gee, those crazy kids” kind of way. A faked fucking school shooting!
Just as jaw-dropping is the indifferent response evinced by the sheriff (Sam Kilman), who turns up (if the wobbly chronology of the film is anything to go by) at least an hour after the incident, doesn’t have any back-up and, on finding out it was a hoax, is more interested in lambasting Radish for making the call than dealing with the pranksters. Radish, incensed that he’s taking shit for being a good citizen, provides the sheriff with the licence plate of the van used during the stunt. This earns him the wrath of Mark and his fratboy best bud Wildman (Ralph Brown). Wildman is like Stifler in the ‘American Pie’ movies, but without the depth or charm.
Now, having incorporated something as tasteless as a fake school shooting into the movie, you might think that writer/director Jimmy Huston is at least going to key in the killer’s motivation to the incident (a la the prank-gone-wrong approach of, say, ‘Slaughter High’). Mais non. Not only has the killer already struck, rendering this an impossibility, but the fake shooting literally plays no part whatsoever in anything that follows.
And speaking of what follows: heads down and see you at the final reel, because we’ve got a fucking boring forty minutes or so to wade through. We’ve got Radish hopelessly carrying a torch for Courtney, Courtney’s low-grade jealousy of how easy life is for blonde bombshell roommate Lisa (DeAnna Robbins), Lisa’s grade-earning dalliance with her sleazy chemistry teacher, Wildman and Mark’s scheme to sell pills, overeager fratboy-wannabe Gary (Terry W Farren) agreeing to an exam paper theft in order to secure entry to the fraternity, and Gary’s simpering girlfriend Janet (Sherry Willis-Burch) at odds with him over his secretive behaviour.
Granted, that sounds like more than enough to fill forty minutes, but Huston invests it with no a single iota of dramatic imperative. It’s more like watching the pilot for a painfully unfunny sitcom: episodic scenes, a cast desperately mugging away to try to convince you that they’re quirky and worthy hanging out with, and a susurration of coughs, exhalations, indrawn breaths and soft rhythmic snoring where the canned laughter track ought to be.
Intermittently, the killer strikes. Sometimes in a brutally effective scene, such as the particularly unexpected despatch of one of the fratboys following a fight in the gym. Although the killer has the element of surprise, and has effected other kills using a knife, he actually engages his victim in hand-to-hand combat here. Sometimes in an utterly stupid one, such as the death of (SPOILERS) a character who’ll do anything to be part of the fraternity. Wildman and co. seize on his desperation and force him into a ritual where he’s tied to a tree, denuded apart from his tighty whiteys, has shaving foamed sprayed on him, and a bucket of ice decanted into the aforesaid undergarment. As night falls, Janet goes looking for him. She finds someone else instead. Guess who? Meanwhile, back at the tree, Gary’s bonds are loosened and he goes stumbling around in the dark, calling out to Janet, convinced that she’s his rescuer. Then a dark shape drops from the tree and knives him to death.
Let’s pause here to consider the logistics. Imagine you’re a psycho-killer. You’re doing your nocturnal rounds, looking for someone to kill the shit out of. You come across a dude in his underwear tied to a tree. Do you (a) kill him in situ while he’s in a deeply compromised position and unable to fight back or run away; or (b) cut him loose, climb the tree and then jump on him from the upper branches of the tree, risking a twisted ankle or broken leg if you land badly? If you picked (b), you’re an idiot and you’re just looking to get caught. But (b) is exactly what our knife-wielding nutjob plumbs for.
Then again, maybe he’s not worried about being caught, since the script effectively puts him in three or four significantly removed locations around the campus during the film’s final stretches. Maybe he can teleport or astrally project, not that I recall mention being made of either at any point.
‘Final Exam’, with its soundtrack that brazenly rips off John Carpenter, its tired script and its bland performances, is a mostly forgettable entry in the killer-on-campus cycle. Bagdadi is an entirely proficient final girl, but Huston’s script invests nothing into her character. In fact, said script just haemorrhages clichés. It does only two things that lift ‘Final Exam’ out of the doldrums: the aforementioned bad-taste fake shooting business, and the revelation that the killer is just some random individual. No big reveal, no final girl/killer relationship, no twist ending. Just a random individual. With a knife. Killing high school students. There’s something in the stark, implacable nastiness of this idea that could have made for a gnarly and challenging horror thriller, one that doubled as a deconstruction of its very aesthetic.
But nah: they just went with the obvious. As well as short changing us on the gore and the nudity. As Windsor Davies would have put it, “Oh dear, how sad, never mind.”
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