Just Before Dawn
While a lot people define the âoriginal backwoods horror movieâ as being Tobe Hooperâs Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the truth is that the original prototype for the whole subgenre was really John Boormanâs Deliverance, a film often wrongly labeled as an âaction revenge dramaâ but in reality is just a pure piece of trashy exploitation horror (how could that infamous rape scene be anything BUT exploitation?), a fact thatâs often obscured by itâs A list cast and astonishingly unwarranted Oscar Nominations. But Hooperâs film two years later still managed to outdo it by going in the right direction and actually TRYING to be scary rather than doing misguided metaphors and biblical allegory when the only thing that ever made Boormanâs film stand out was Ned Beattyâs discomforting rite of nature at the hands of a toothless hillbilly. Nonetheless, BOTH films would play a major influence on the crazed slew of ripoffs and knockoffs to come in the horror movie business, including this 1981 release in which director Jeff Lieberman (a guy mostly known for gooey cult movies with extra goo) outright claimed that he was basing it solely on Deliverance and had never even seen Texas Chainsaw, thus making this one in many ways one of the few that (allegedly) never had the shadow of Leatherface hanging over it. It does feature a mildly developed backwoods family responsible for most of the carnage, five friends in a camper heading for a deadly encounter with fate, and a villain (or villains, considering that they are twin brothers played by the same actor) with bestial, snorting, animalistic tendencies who relentlessly stalks the main characters throughout the story. It also has a smattering of actors who, if not future stars, were all destined to have solid acting careers in Hollywood and best of all, Oscar winner George Kennedy as The Friendly Forest Ranger who gets to ride in towards the end and be the big hero. The film begins with two drunken deer hunters stumbling into a dilapidated church where one of them (played by Mike Kellin, the seemingly always drunk character actor best known at the end of his career for playing the perverted Summer Camp Director in Sleepaway Camp) starts giving a mock sermon before noticing that SOMETHING is watching them through the hole in the roof. While he goes outside to check, his companion (also his nephew) is stabbed with a machete, but itâs far from a desirable wound, going in through his lower abdomen and coming out of his ass(!). While the old man freaks out over this occurance and runs off screaming into the woods (and will do so for the rest of the film), we meet our core group of main characters. Theyâre your typical horror movie group: Two happy couples along with a nerdy, useless fifth wheel who fancies himself as a photographer but whom probably wouldnât know what to do with an actual woman if he was caught dead with one of them. The actors are actually pretty respectable, with the two lucky guys being Gregg Henry (best known as Mel Gibsonâs turncoat best friend in Payback) and Chris Lemmon (the Hollywood royalty son of Jack Lemmon who later made a fool of himself playing Hulk Hoganâs scrawny sidekick on the short lived TV show Thunder In Paradise) while the girls (Deborah Benson and Megan Rose) and The Fifth Wheel (Ralph Seymour) would all go on to have long acting careers also. On the way up the mountain for their camping trip, they stop at Kennedyâs Ranger Station (a place where Kennedy sits there all day talking to his horse and to his plants, one of whom he calls Lucille in a sly reference to his Oscar winning role in Cool Hand Luke) where he warns them not to go up there without being specific as to why (never a good thing which also opens up suspicion as to how much he actually knows) and is not even deterred when shown a deed that proves that the Henry character owns some land up there as he tells them none of that matters. The bad omens continue for the group including hitting a deer (that immediately disappears) and encountering the Kellin character screaming his head off that âdemonsâ are in these woods (while still never letting go of his bottle of booze that heâs been carrying since the opening scene). But they press on anyway because, hey, they own this land. After they set up camp, it turns out that there is a mysteriously beautiful female whom they first observe sweetly singing in the woods and who later manages to attract and draw away Lemmon from the rest of the group with her charms (an obviously implied reference to the beautiful female family member Ruby from The Hills Have Eyes). The clan also features a stuffy old man (Pa) and his younger looking but much fatter wife (Ma) who only seem able to do little more than shoot a hole in their radio and give ominous warnings to the group about how them being there will âraise the devilâ. This opens up the doors slightly about how the mountain clan (here named âLoganâ) seems to have a bit of a religious mania thing going on with them (as supposedly the original script was a LOT heavier on the religious overtones before it got cut down greatly) where their belief system appears to be that bad acts (including killing) are the work of the devil but when their own kin engages in such acts, you should still protect them at all costs. Even creepier is the implication that this family has engaged in massive and extensive acts of incest and inbreeding to spawn their offspring, leading to the more mentally unstable ones (i.e. the two twin males) to engage in such acts as just being a part of their normal routine. Thus begins the extended game of cat and mouse, with members of the group being stalked and killed by the fat, grunting, hillbilly twin brothers (John Hunsaker), the beautiful female clan member proving to be somewhat of a wild card (as expected) and Kennedy finally, wearily riding to the rescue on his white horse. Very little of this is done with any real subtlety or sense of awe and dread at the hidden dangers that we all seem to face when we go camping in the woods (at least the Friday The 13th films featured the awesome presence of the legendary Jason Voorhees to propel its momentum along) even as the cinematography (the film was shot at Silver Falls State Park in the aptly named Sublimity, Oregon) is very well done when it comes to showing the more beautiful aspects of nature. Perhaps the one truly memorable and original aspect in all of this is in that of the female group member (Deborah Benson) who ultimately winds up becoming the so called âFinal Girlâ here: Shown at first to be a repressed, buttoned up blonde who almost never smiles, things change when halfway through the film she emerges from the tent looking simply AMAZING in skimpy shorts and a tank top before later applying makeup to complete the effect which seems to convey (not very well by director Lieberman) her emerging sexuality coming forth in the wake of these harrowing events, even taking on one of the twins (who tries to be cute by paddling her ass with his machete) in a straight up hand to hand fight for which she seems to relish the opportunity to do so and finishes it in such a way which probably has never been seen before or since (although it goes without saying that she would be easy meat in the loving hands of Voorhees). Definitely a hottie whose incredible body will not be forgotten by any viewer in the days after watching this one. But in the end sadly, most of the other expected tropes and clichĂ©s pretty much play out as expected even as we have Brad Fiedel (who would later compose the legendary score for The Terminator movies) coming up with some kind of compositions here for quirky background music and the sight of a beloved and respected Oscar winning character actor lowering himself to appear in something like this for a quick and (we hope) healthy payday. But thus was the world of old school B movie horror, a world where anything could happen in order to draw eyeballs to the product and you could never tell if a random Legend Of Acting might just show up to make it all a little bit betterâŠ
7/10