Final Exam (1981)

Fraternities are lame,
But of course in all fairness I have no love for the brotherhood because not only am I not the type to join a fraternity but I’m definitely not the type to get selected.
Final Exam is a week attempt to turn the ten popularity slapstick frat boy teen comedy into a horror film.
To be quite honest the movie is suffering from the fact that there is not enough of either that makes both genres interesting. It’s not scary enough. Not enough deaths not enough moments that make you jump out of your seat in fright.
There was not enough comedy. We had bits of frat boys doing bad behavior but nowhere on the level of such comedies as Revenge of the Nerds or Porky’s (would I think differently about that comment if there was more nudity in this thing? What a shocker, this joint was made in the 1980s and was centered on getting teenagers to come to the movie and only one girl got topless and it had no shower scene? If Roger Corman had produced this movie he would have it reshot with insurgence of both in order to guarantee he would get his money back).
On one side, I feel Final Exam was very confused about what it really wanted to be and got pulled too hard in both directions that it strained it too much to be ether. Final Eaxm felt like a good idea because you are combining two genre of movies that would sure tgo get kids in the seats daring the 80s but somehow they fucked it up. Somehow the characters were interesting in their stereotypes despite being played by the worse actors ever. It felt like the guy who was supposed to be the jock was an actor who got the job because he was the biggest dude they could find. The alpha frat was not alpha enough for me to love and/or hate. I could barely tell the difference between the girls who was supposed to be the slut and the final girl (lucky for me they had two moments when the characters beat this into me with dialogue just used to make the movie longer). The nerd started out ok, then somehow became too self-loafing for me (and too creepy. Not only was he the nerd but he was also the guy obsessed with mass serial killers two treats that I feel deserve two different actors for)
A then you had the slasher. Some dude in the shadows wearing regular clothes. Could they not afford to get this guy a hockey mass or something? He was a horrible killer too (look at me, they should have hired me to be the kid obsessed with mass murders, of course I would have had to wait for the movie to be half over before the slasher considered coming after me as he did in this movie,
Plus I seen better kills. No one’s death made me think “oh I would not want gto run into him in a dark alley’,the deaths only pointed out that the kids in this film are horrific actors (if only I can say they were hired cause they were good looking but to be blunt, I’ve seen better looking kids get killed in worse movies (which technically made those movies better than this one).
The thing about horror movies too is that a lot of them have stupid moments but this one….this one went beyond stupid for some moments. Just like “why the fuck would they do that?” moments that went beyond clichés.
One thing that Final Exam does have going for it is the particular satire on the slasher genre it was trying to half be. Maybe it’s attempt to poke fun of itself is what caused it to fall so badly but it does have a cool “boy who cried wolf” plot line which perfectly explained why a man can spend a night comfortably killing a little over half a dozen kids without being bothered by law enforcement.
Keeping it Blunt.. Skip Final Exam. I totally sacrificed myself so you did not have to.