The Final Terror (1983) on Netflix
A group of friends camp in the Northern California redwoods, where an old story about a woman set loose in the forest unsettles them. By morning, two of them are missing.
- Netflix2.1/5
- IMDb5.2/104,736 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes33%
Trailer
Plot summary
Ten friends arrive in the Northern California wilderness for a camping trip, clearing a site and passing the night around a bonfire with a story about a local teenager who was committed to an institution, gave birth to a son, and was taken from it years later to live in the woods. In the morning Marco and Eggar are gone, and the others split up to search. Mike and Melanie swim, and Margaret wakes the camp insisting she saw someone near her in the dark. The searchers find an abandoned cabin with a grave beside it, and inside, a wolf's severed head in a cabinet. Marco turns up back at camp on his own.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Final Terror (1983)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- While making the film in the Redwood Forests of northern California, locals gave the cast marijuana brownies, and some of them ended up being admitted to the hospital.
- The film had only five deaths, so the opening scene of a couple being killed was added to improve the chances of landing a distributor; it was shot without director Andrew Davis's permission, and producer Joe Roth had to pay a fee, partly with money set aside for Davis's wedding.
- Akosua Busia was cast as Vanessa at an open casting call on Hollywood Boulevard; the daughter of Ghana Prime Minister Kofi Abrefa Busia, she was a childhood friend of Rachel Ward, and neither knew the other had been cast until the first day of shooting.
- Most of the cast were inexperienced or new; Rachel Ward was cast as the lead, Margaret, after Davis saw a modeling portrait of her in Roth's office.
- Davis cast Joe Pantoliano as Eggar after Pantoliano entered the audition in character, which impressed the director with his commitment.
- Adrian Zmed found the scene in which Eggar strangles him difficult to fake, so he asked stunt-woman Jeannie Epper to pull the rope around his throat tighter for real.
- Davis directed the film and also served as its cinematographer, billed under the pseudonym Andreas Davidescu to avoid problems with the filmmakers' union.
