The Final Terror (1983) — Triskaidekafiles

THE FINAL TERROR

WRITERS: Screenplay by Jon George & Neill Hicks and Ronald Shusett

Story by Jon George & Neill Hicks

DIRECTOR: Andrew Davis

STARRING: John Friedrich as Zorich

Adrian Zmed as Cerone

Daryl Hannah as Windy

Mark Metcalf as Mike

Ernest Harden, Jr. as Hines

Rachel Ward as Margaret

Akosua Busia as Vanessa

Lewis Smith as Boone

Cindy Harrell as Melanie

Joe Pantoliano as Eggar

QUICK CUT: A group head into the woods to do some work clearing fallen trees from the rivers, and get in touch with nature.

THE MORGUE

Mike - The head ranger, the man in charge, who is pretty open and free with his team, but knows when to put his foot down and get to work.

Eggar - The mechanic for the group, who drives the bus, and has a past questionable history that makes him the target of ridicule.

Cerone - The newbie of the group, and who gets suckered into a bit of hazing. But he gives as good as he gets.

Zorich - The troublemaker, the schemer, and the thorn in everyone’s side. He takes no shit.

If other franchises have taught me anything, it's that this is far from the final movie.

TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! We are pretty much done with the school year, summer is around the corner, and thoughts begin to turn to wandering off into the woods to be murdered. So here we are again with another movie with people traipsing into the woods to do just that, in the early 1980s movie, Final Terror.

The movie starts off with a random scene of a couple blazing down a trail on a motorbike, when it skids out. The guy is injured, and his girlfriend heads off to find some help.

While she takes her flat acting and passionate disinterest elsewhere, he sits and waits. When she returns, Jimmy somehow falls down from somewhere right in front of her, in a most inexplicable manner, but not atypical for horror movies.

She runs off in fear, and hits a tripwire that sends a series of tin can lids attached to branches into her face, slicing her to death.

Oh, oh yeah, you don’t wanna get cut with those.

But we then get to the movie proper, as Eggar wakes up a bunch of park rangers for their early morning start.

We find out what that is in the next scene, when the head ranger, Mike, says they're off to Mill Creek, under the auspice of clearing the river of some fallen branches, but in actuality it's all an excuse for Mike to spend time with his girl.

Fortunately, as incentive, he's bringing along a gaggle of ladies for his men to try and make time of their own with.

Mike heads to the garage to see if Eggar has got the bus ready to go, and it's mostly just some character work, and his acting squirrely that they're heading to Mill Creek instead of Will Creek.

So they go to pick up the women, and they say goodbye to their parents and...this just is weird and uncomfortable. A bunch of adult rangers show up to abscond with your impressionable daughters into the woods. No this doesn't feel hinky at all.

As the bus drives off, they lay out the plan for the movie, and Eggar tries to talk them out of it again, until they pass a mental institution and they tease him for once staying there.

Everybody's gonna live! Nobody is gonna die!

After some actual clearing of a river, and more teasing of Eggar, we cut to nighttime around a campfire, and the obligatory scary story. This one is about a young girl who was raped by some loggers, she had a kid, and over time the boy grew up, and took his mom out into the woods to live, where she terrorises wayward campers to this day.

Later, Zorich and Hines take Cerone up into the woods, intending to raid one of the pot farms hidden in the woods, and leave Cerone as lookout.

Everyone gets up the next day to get ready to continue down the river, and Mike notices Cerone is missing. All thanks to Zorich leaving him out there as a prank.

This leads to that wonderful trope of everyone wandering around trying to find him by calling out his name. And dear movie writers, if you are going to dive into this trope, and spend many minutes of your movie shouting a name, DO NOT NAME THEM MARCO!!

Mike finds a bandana, sends the merry pranksters back to search elswhere, and send Mike's girlfriend out so they can search from the opposite side, and everyone meets in the middle.

And he is so concerned, that when he finds a nice hidden spring, while one of his men is missing, that Mike decides...naaaah, let's take a swim.

His girlfriend joins him, and they end up having sex, and thus they end up being murdered. Finally.

While searching, Hines and Zorich find a run down cabin that they explore, and determine it's Eggar's place, and also a stash of women's clothing that Zorich tries on for a prank. Like they didn't have enough ammo to target this guy with.

Night falls, and everyone is kinda starting to get worried about their missing leaders, as they should be.

Zorich takes charge, and decides no one is to be alone, and they'll take shifts keeping watch. A plan which doesn't do much good when someone creeps out of the woods and strokes their hair while they sleep.

They wake up screaming, and all see someone go running off into the woods. And that's also when Cerone returns into the plot. He went and hid in the woods for a bit just to make everyone worry, and get back at the pranksters.

We get a decent scare when one of the girls heads off to the outhouse, and finds Mike's severed head. Everyone now knows that things are serious, and try to just figure out how to get out alive.

Zorich however is more interested in revenge, and wants to catch Eggar at his cabin. They get all painted up like some sort of war game, but nobody's home, so it seems. But their attacker is under the floor, with Melanie held at the edge of a blade to keep her quiet.

They make their way out of there, sure Melanie is dead already , grab a raft, and head off down the river to find the police and get them up here.

While I appreciate this is the sensible thing to do, it does feel like an awkward lull as essentially our party of potential victims just...ups and tries to leave the plot.

There is some decent enough tension as their pursuer watches from the banks of the river, and eventually tosses Melanie's corpse into their boat.

After awhile traveling down the river, eventually they see the bus where Eggar left it for everyone to catch up with after the trip.

They wait for nightfall to go check it out, and they think they're safe, so they grab a good night's rest in the relative safety and comfort of the bus. Since they can’t get it started, that’s the best they can do.

With some clunking on the roof, everyone awakens in time to avoid being axed through the windows, and run off some more. It would have been a shame if anyone had died during that.

If Windy isn’t careful, she’s gonna make quite the Splash.

During their trek through the woods at night, Windy gets separated, and pushed down a hill, cutting herself pretty badly.

Zorich runs back to the bus to get the first aid kit, and they patch her up. But Zorich is even more determined to get Eggar for all this, and the others are now on his side.

So the group finds a nice ravine to make their final stand, set up some traps, and wait for their prey to show up. And Zorich takes an undue level of glee in this prospect.

Come on! Do it! DO IT!! Kill me, I’m here!!

He eventually does, and everyone piles on him and beats holy hell into the person they think is responsible for their weekend of terror.

But they were all wrong, and the person we've seen camouflaged and stalking them, and is really responsible for doing all the murders, appears out of a fallen tree, murders Zorich, and ends up setting off one of the kid’s traps, and getting murdered.

Long story short, the person responsible is Eggar's mother, the person in the campfire story, which was all apparently true.

With Mama Eggar impaled, everyone lays off the kid, and the movie kinda abruptly ends, but you can probably assume everyone makes it out and things get sorted, one way or another.

Well there's yer problem, you've got forest gnome infestations.

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: It’s a bit rough, but not bad, not by any means. The original elements are lost to time, and they pieced the movie together as best they could from acquired sources. On that level, it’s more than good.

Audio: A decent enough mix that works well.

Body Count: The cover art of this movie questions, “Can anyone survive??” and let me tell ya, based on the body count, once you remove those first two randos, and the killer herself, the answer is “A shockingly large number can, yes!”

1 - Almost 4 minutes and Jimmy's corpse appears.

2 - Girlfriend gets sliced up by can lids.

3 - Mike gets his back slashed up.

4 - Mel is found dead later.

5 - Zorich gets slashed and then falls to his death

6 - Momma Eggar gets caught on a booby trap

Best Corpse: Hard to not pick Zorich getting what he deserves.

Peak Corpse: I don’t remember this point enough. But they accept they’re being murdered when they find Mike’s head.

Blood Type - C+: There’s some good blood here and there, but a lot is hidden as well, using some good tension and imagination.

Sex Appeal: A sex scene between Mike and Mel spices things up.

Drink Up! whenever someone dies.

Movie Review: There’s not a lot here, but it actually works pretty well. There’s some good tension as things slowly build towards that final confrontation. But I wish there was a few more deaths in this rather large cast, and a little less just kinda wandering around and waiting. But it’s a solid enough story that could have really gone for things. Two out of five rafts

Entertainment Value: The biggest treat here is seeing all the familiar faces who would go on to bigger and better things. The acting is actually FAR above average in this than your typical slasher fare, and that helps carry things. And Joe Pants is always a delight seeing the choices he makes. Three out of five cans of peaches.