Final Exam is a 1981 American slasher film written and directed by Jimmy Huston, and starring Cecile Bagdadi, Joel S. Rice, and DeAnna Robbins. The plot follows a nameless killer stalking the remaining group of students left on a college campus days before the beginning of summer vacation.
Filmed in North Carolina with a cast of largely Los Angeles-based actors, Final Exam was released by Motion Picture Marketing in the winter of 1981. The film was met with a middling critical response, being both criticized and praised for similarities to Halloween (1978) and Friday the 13th (1980).
While not prosecuted for obscenity, the film was seized and confiscated in the UK under Section 3 of the Obscene Publications Act 1959 during the video nasty panic. The film has received a modern reevaluation by critics for the arbitrary villain and its focus on character development rather than gore and shock value. The central male character in the film, Radish, served as partial inspiration for the character of Randy Meeks in Wes Craven's Scream (1996).
Plot[]
One night at March College, a young couple are making out in a parked vehicle. An unseen assailant harasses them before murdering them both.
Meanwhile the nearby Lanier College is preparing for its final exam date. In order to ensure a group of students ace their chemistry final, a fraternity fakes a shooting on campus so that the students can have more time to study. The prank works, resulting in a small number of students remaining on campus until the following day's final. Meanwhile, the murderer responsible for the March College killings arrives on campus in a van and begins stalking the remaining students.
Bookish Courtney is studying hard for her exams, while her wealthy roommate Lisa is preparing to leave for her home in New York City. Lisa is also having an affair with one of her professors, Dr. Reynolds. At nightfall, Gary, a pledge for Gamma Delta, suffers from a prank in which he is bound to a tree. The murderer unties him, before killing him with a knife. Gary's girlfriend, Janet, goes searching for him, and mistakes a silhouette in the distance for him. When she realizes it is not Gary, she attempts to flee, but is attacked by the killer and murdered.
Another Gamma member, Wildman, is lured into a darkened gymnasium while attempting to steal prescription drugs from the football coach's office. The murderer appears and chases Wildman to the weight room, where he is garroted on a weight-lifting machine. Another student named Mark discovers Wildman's body and is subsequently chased by the murderer into the school's electrical building. The murderer emerges from a barrel and stabs Mark, killing him. Nerdy student Radish discovers the carnage and attempts to alert the police, who do not take him seriously due to all the ongoing pranks. Radish goes to warn Courtney but finds the murderer in her room instead and is also killed.
Courtney returns to her dormitory, where she discovers Radish's body pinned to her door. A terrified Courtney attempts to alert her dormitory, but everyone has gone home for the break. Lisa waits for Dr. Reynolds in the school's conservatory but the murderer enters the room and stabs her to death. Courtney goes to the conservatory to alert Lisa, only to discover her body. The murderer chases after her, and Courtney arms herself with a kitchen knife, before taking refuge in the campus's clock tower. Alerted by Courtney's cries for help, a coach arrives and shoots an arrow at the murderer, but he catches it in his hand and impales the coach with it, killing him. The murderer attempts to finish Courtney off but she manages to push him from the top floor of the tower. Thinking him dead, Courtney is seized by the murderer when he grabs her ankle. She stabs him 12 times, ultimately killing him.
The film ends as Courtney sits on the front steps of the building and begins sobbing over the events that just took place.