The Final Terror
I'm kind of torn on this one. On one hand, I'm incredibly grateful to Scream Factory for finding a way to assemble a cut of a movie cobbled together from various collector's prints which had until now never been released on home video. On the other hand, the movie is not very good.
A group of forest rangers are out camping in the woods, so as you might expect there is someone waiting in the woods to cut them into bite-size pieces. The setting is actually used fairly well (when you can see what's going on...the night scenes are DARK) and there are a few genuinely tense moments, but the movie mostly left me cold.
I think the main thing that didn't work for me was the characters. I appreciate that they were older than the intended victims in most slasher movies tend to be, I just found them to be mostly unlikable. A lot of their interplay came across as fairly obnoxious, so I wasn't rooting for them the way the movie seemed to be hoping I would.
It was directed by Andrew Davis, who would go on to make The Fugitive and Under Siege, and who was also smart enough to turn down the offer to direct the sequels to either of those. There are a few flashes of his talent, especially as the movie goes completely batshit in its final act. The last 15 minutes or so may actually be worth sitting through the whole thing. Then again, who doesn't want to see Adrian Zmed menaced by a knife-wielding maniac? He kind of deserves it just for Grease 2.
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