Lousy Lottery 20: Summer is Over, but the Final Exam has Just Begun
Welcome, friends, to the Lousy Lottery! Here’s how it works. First, I post four movies to a poll on Twitter. Fans vote to pick which movie to make me watch that week. I watch it, review it and spread the word about an amazingly awful, terribly terrific b-horror flick.
This is week 20! Class is in session for your pick for this week, it’s 1981’s slasher Final Exam! Before the bell rings, let’s talk plot.
Our story begins with a dude trying to get some action down a forgotten road. The top is up on his convertible and the mood is hot. Problem is, his date seems spooked for some reason. Maybe she had a premonition because seconds later some mysterious person is on top of the car, slashing through the convertible top and starts getting his murder on. They may not have fucked, but they sure did get fucked up by a guy with a knife.
We then cut to the campus of a nearby university that is having its final exams before summer. In what may well be the most random scene in the history of film, masked men show up and a campus shooting commences. It was a super triggery scene for me and straight up pissed me off when suddenly we learn it was a frat prank. One of the college’s frats decided to stage the shooting to delay finals. In the age of mass shootings and school shootings this segment, played for laughs, is about as funny as a holocaust documentary.
Then we meet Lisa, who is studying lightly for exams, but is much more interested in her affair with one of the professors, Dr. Reynolds. I feel like movies from the late ‘70s and early ‘80s seemed to think all students had affairs with professors. Anyway, they plan to meet up one night and Lisa can’t find him anywhere. Well, that’s because those same silly frat boys have pulled yet another hilarious prank and tied ol’ Dr. Reynolds to a tree. Yuk yuk! A man approaches and cuts the good doctor free. He’s very grateful for the help until his good Samaritan stabs him to death. The killer tosses the body aside and Lisa sees the man and assumes it is her loverboy. She learns she’s mistaken when the guy suddenly starts chasing her and, well, murders her too.
The killer then roams the campus picking off one coed after another. Some of the kills are pretty great, like when he kills some beefcake by choking him to death with the very weightlifting equipment the guy was using. Some were more cartoonish and silly, like when he hid in a barrel and would pop up whack-a-mole style and stab people as they walked by. Like any good early ‘80s slasher, the police do get called but they think it’s yet another prank and don’t come to help. We don’t really have a true final girl or person who rises up to take out the killer. Instead, one of the coeds named Courtney gets attacked on the roof and accidently knocks the killer off and to the ground. She gets her badass cred, though, when she goes down and stabs him about a dozen times for good measure.
There are three aspects of Final Exam that really keep it from being better known and more appreciated. One is not their fault and two are. The part that is due to no fault of the filmmakers is its comparison to Halloween and Friday the 13th. These two movies came out just before Final Exam and were such enormous successes that any movie even remotely similar immediately was judged comparatively to these two classics. It seems all critics could do at the time was to take traditional slashers and say, ‘how do these measure up to Halloween and F13?” The sophisticated horror fan knows Final Exam and many other similar slashers from the ‘80s may follow a formula, but they are not at all supposed to all be the same movie. One can judge a remake by the quality of the original, but what good does it do to compare such different flicks as these. Final Exam is its own thing and, yes, compared to those two absolute, certified classics, it’s not great, but it’s not a rehash of them either.
One of the shortcomings of Final Exam that is on the shoulders of the filmmakers is the killer. Well, shit, I’m going to compare it to other movies, but bear with me. What made so many great ‘80s slasher movies great was the combination of mystery and malice to the villain. From Jason to Michael to Bruce the shark in Jaws, the viewer knows just enough to make the villain interesting but not much more, adding to the mystery. We don’t see much of them and we know very little, but enough to add some weight. They are also scary. We know they could be anywhere and capable of anything. Instead, in Final Exam we know absolutely nothing about the antagonist and see them constantly. The guy just walks around the school slaying fools. Even the tiniest bit of subtlety and a decent set of running shoes would save the students. Ultimately this made me have no sense at all as to why the killer was killing, nor any fear whatsoever that he’d be coming after me.
The other main issue with this flick that keeps it from greatness is its confused tone. This is common in b-horror from the ‘80s, for sure. The reason it’s notable here is because of just how pronounced it is in this movie. Often ‘80s b-horror can come off as either too serious or a straight up comedy. Sometimes it seems the comedy wasn’t intentional. Where Final Exam seems off is that they don’t seem to know what the movie is. Sometimes it’s a traditional slasher that invites the comparisons mentioned above. Then suddenly the movie will turn into a frat-boy comedy, much more similar to things like Animal House and Porkies. It’s so odd and so jarring that it really takes you out of the movie. It certainly made me shake my head several times.
At the end of the day, is it a fantastic flick? No, not really. Does it add much to the subgenre? No, it doesn’t. Is it worth watching? Sure! Look, it may not be novel or all that well made, but it has its charms and it’s about as ‘80s as it gets. It’s almost like a compilation of horror scenes and scenes from raunchy ‘80s comedies. If that description doesn’t grab you, well, you may not be able to see past the film’s faults. If you’re the type that such a description sounds like a hell of a lot of fun, you’re surely gonna love it. Check it out streaming on Tubi and Prime, for now.
Also, don’t forget to see what’s coming next in the Lousy Lottery. Make sure you tune into Twitter later today and vote for Lousy Lottery 21! My handle is @MrJosh79, look for it and don’t forget to vote!
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