The Final Terror (1983)
** (out of 4)
Decent slasher about a group of park rangers who decide to take some of their female friends out in the woods when some of their party is attacked and murdered. The survivors must try to make it down the river without getting picked off.
THE FINAL TERROR was released in 1983 after a couple years on the shelf and it's pretty easy to see why. While there are certainly much worse out there, this film really doesn't have too much going for it except when viewed today there are quite a few familiar faces that film buffs will notice. However, these unknown people wouldn't have been much of an interest back in the day so THE FINAL TERROR pretty much entered and left theaters without too much hype and the film's reputation never really grew much.
The best thing that the film has going for it is that we're treated to some now famous faces. Daryl Hannah and Joe Pantoliano are both on hand in pretty good sized role. Pantoliano steals the film as one of the many nutjobs and you can't help but enjoy his over-the-top performance. You've got Mark Metcalf from NATIONAL LAMPOON'S ANIMAL HOUSE, Rachel Ward of AGAINST ALL ODDS fame and THE HEAVENLY KID fans will enjoy seeing Lewis Smith. Even Adrian Zmed from BACHELOR PARTY is on hand. All of them offer up nice performances consider the type of film they're in, although I doubt anyone would have seen this in 1983 and knew what they'd go on to do.
The screenplay really doesn't offer us anything new or original. This is clearly yet another Friday THE 13TH clone with the wood trappings and of course there's a big mystery running throughout the picture. The red herring is given to us from the word go so the only real interest is trying to figure out what twist is going to come. Sadly the screenplay is pretty much by-the-numbers as we see the people party, then stand around and slowly they start to get picked off. The body count is incredibly low here so it's easy to see why the pre-credits sequence was added without the director's knowledge but it doesn't add much. There's one effective kill scene that happens towards the start of the film but not much else.
THE FINAL TERROR was director by Andrew Davis who would go on to make films like UNDER SIEGE and THE FUGITIVE. There's really nothing here that would make you think he'd have films like that in his future but he at least makes a professional looking picture on what was obviously a very low-budget. THE FINAL TERROR is pretty forgettable but slasher fans will still want to watch it at least once.
