Just Before Dawn (1981)

One of the many low-budget slashers rushed into production in the wake of the enormous success of Halloween and later Friday the 13th, Jeff Lieberman’s Just Before Dawn follows a familiar path into backwoods horror territory. Unfortunately, while it borrows heavily from its more distinguished predecessors, it contributes very little of its own.

The story follows a group of young adults travelling deep into the Oregon wilderness to inspect a parcel of land that one of them has apparently inherited. Along the way they encounter a local forest ranger, played by George Kennedy, who warns them in no uncertain terms that venturing further into the forest would be a very bad idea.

Naturally they ignore him.

The audience already knows that something unpleasant is lurking in the woods, having witnessed an opening murder that establishes the presence of a machete-wielding killer. Before long it becomes apparent that there may actually be two killers at work—an identical pair of murderous, backwoods twins whose favourite pastime appears to be butchering anyone unfortunate enough to wander into their territory.

Unfortunately the film takes an eternity getting to the point.

For much of the first half, the characters simply wander through forests, exchange banal dialogue and behave with such astonishing levels of stupidity that one begins actively rooting for the killers. The script makes almost no effort to develop its victims into recognisable human beings, leaving the audience with little emotional investment in whether they survive or not.

When the killings finally begin, they prove surprisingly underwhelming. The death scenes are staged without much imagination, the gore is restrained even by early-1980s standards, and the suspense that should drive a film like this is largely absent. Lieberman attempts to create an atmosphere of mounting dread, but the result is more lethargic than unsettling.

The shadow of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre hangs heavily over the production, but where Tobe Hooper’s classic was grimy, intense and deeply unsettling, Just Before Dawn feels oddly lifeless. The forests are attractive enough, but the cinematography rarely finds anything memorable to do with them. Likewise, the performances range from merely competent to thoroughly forgettable.

George Kennedy provides a touch of professionalism, but there is only so much even a seasoned veteran can do when surrounded by characters who seem determined to walk directly into danger at every opportunity.

The climax finally attempts to inject some energy into proceedings with the traditional “final girl discovers her inner strength” routine. The heroine suddenly transforms from frightened victim into determined survivor, leading to a showdown that strains credibility even by slasher standards. While the sequence is clearly intended as triumphant, it arrives far too late to rescue the preceding ninety minutes.

Perhaps the film’s greatest surprise is that it doesn’t even bother with the obligatory final shock ending that had become standard slasher practice by the early 1980s. Instead, it simply stops.

Viewed today, Just Before Dawn is neither terrible nor particularly memorable. It lacks the gore that exploitation fans might seek, the atmosphere that horror fans demand and the style necessary to elevate routine material. What remains is a slow-moving, largely forgettable woodland slasher that has slipped into obscurity for perfectly understandable reasons.

For dedicated slasher completists there may be enough here to justify a viewing. For everyone else, there are dozens of better entries from the same era competing for attention.