Just Before Dawn was one of those films I saw as a kid, making the rounds of the Horror VHS section of the video rental store, that admittedly didn't make a huge impression on me the first time around, but which I later started to have a real affection for, after having seen most of the well-regarded slasher classics out there.
I think that maybe its slow, methodically-paced approach threw me off a bit at the time I first saw it, or even more likely, I dismissed it as a thinly-veiled rip-off of Wes Craven's seminal The Hills Have Eyes, which was a film I did love. However, director Jeff Lieberman, perhaps best known for the Creature Feature Squirm, insists that he hadn't seen that film, nor the classic Texas Chainsaw Massacre at the time, which was another film this one was oft-compared to, time and again.
Instead, Lieberman cited the pseudo-horror thriller Deliverance as a main influence (thankfully, no one has to "squeal like a pig" in this one), pointing out that he practically rewrote the original script he was given from scratch, which was based on a story by Jonas Middleton (aka Joseph) called The Tennessee Mountain Murders and redubbed The Last Ritual by screenwriter Mark Arywitz. This original version was even closer to those aforementioned sources, with the Logan family more actively involved in capturing and killing folks that wandered into their territory, and lots of overt religious undertones.
Indeed, that version of the film featured more characters- and therefore, more deaths- and even ended with Final Girl Constance going through the titular ritual, which involved her handling snakes, a la Pentecostal practices, before wedding one of the backwoods twins! I can see where Lieberman might have scoffed at that turn of events, so it was probably wise that he stripped the film down to its basics instead.
However, in doing so, he made the film into what amounts to a slasher film, in spite of his insistence to the contrary- Lieberman professes to loathe such films, although he later went on to helm yet another film that qualifies, Satan's Little Helper, albeit one with such a twisted sense of humor, it practically qualifies as a spoof of the subgenre. I'm hardly the only one who thinks that, mind you: Just Before Dawn was released as part of 88 Films' "Slasher Classics" line in 2017 on Blu-Ray in the UK. (See pic above.)
In spite of the categorization, Lieberman considers the film his favorite of the films he directed, and given the overall quality of said films, which also includes the trippy cult classic Blue Sunshine (featuring then-future softcore mastermind Zalman King, of 9 1/2 Weeks and Red Shoe Diaries fame in the lead) and the amusing sci-fi horror flick Remote Control (with a pre-Entourage Kevin Dillon and pre-Chucky Jennifer Tilly), one wishes he had made more of them over the years.
He only has five feature films, two TV films, a documentary and a short to his name since the early 70's, along with a few other scripts, including The Neverending Story III (with a young Jack Black, no less!), which I wasn't even aware of existed until I researched him. (I just loved the first two as a kid.)
Make no mistake, though, Just Before Dawn is a slasher movie, through and through, despite what Lieberman says, with most of the tropes present and accounted for. Some are represented in spectacular fashion- notably the Final Girl's defeat of one of the baddies, which is something to see, and alone near worth the price of admission, it's so bonkers and out of nowhere. It definitely beats snake handling and becoming the wife of one of the killers, that's for sure.
The plot is simplicity itself: a group of campers- one of which has inherited some land recently that he used to visit when he was younger- decide to check out said land and see what condition it's in, while engaging in the usual high-jinks of getting drunk, fooling around and the other types of things that frequently get you killed in a slasher movie.
The group is made up of Warren (Gregg Henry), the one who knows his way around; his girlfriend Constance (Deborah Benson), who's wary of the whole camping thing; Warren's friend Jonathan (Chris Lemmon), his girlfriend Megan (Jamie Rose) and Jon's brother, Daniel (Ralph Seymour), who fancies himself a bit of a nature photographer.
The group head deeper into the forest, in spite of the protests of both the local Forest Ranger, Roy McLean (George Kennedy) and a frenzied hunter, Ty (Mike Kellin), who has just seen his friend, Vachel (Charles Bartlett) killed by a hulking, giggling madman, one of two twins (both played by John Hunsaker) given to killing folks just for the thrill of it that have the misfortune to wander into their neck of the woods, often taking "souvenirs" in the process, i.e. a hat, a jacket, etc.
Ty is basically the "Crazy Ralph" of the movie, while McLean is the local authority that doesn't quite believe in "demons," as Ty dubs the men who killed his friend, but is smart enough to know that tourists who don't know what they're doing have a way of getting themselves killed. Indeed, upon meeting the camping group, he asks them where exactly they're going, so that he knows where to "look for their bodies when they don't come back." Now that's reassuring!
He's not wrong, though, as, when Ty shows up after being told to basically take a hike by the main camping group- bad karma will always come back to bite you in the ass in a horror movie- he informs McLean of his "demons" and McLean buys just enough of it to go hunting for the group on horseback. Meanwhile, as per usual in a horror flick, said group are indeed being picked off one by one by the terror twins. Ultimately, it's down to Constance to take down the last twin standing, and boy, does she ever, in a decidedly insane fashion that I'm not sure is even physically possible.
Just Before Dawn is indeed a full-on slasher flick, aided and abetted to excellent end by the gorgeous location shooting, lush cinematography (by Dean and Joel King, the latter of which also worked on DePalma's Carrie, The Beastmaster, and, of all things, Prince's Graffiti Bridge), and the hauntingly creepy score, by Brad Fiedel, who we discussed recently, in my review of Night School, so go there for more on him, if you like. Also love the recurring "whistle" motif, which is this film's version of the Twisted Nerve theme.
Another thing that sets this one apart from the pack is the quality of the cast, top-lined by old pro George Kennedy. Kennedy was a first-rate character actor, perhaps best-known to the 70's generation for his role in a slew of disaster flicks, like the Airport series and Earthquake. He also won an Oscar for his role in the classic Cool Hand Luke.
However, for those of us who grew up in the 80's, he's best-known for his genre roles, particularly Death Ship, Wacko, Creepshow 2, Demonwarp, Alien Terminator, Uninvited (the one with the killer cat, not the remake of A Tale of Two Sisters), The Terror Within, Brain Dead (the underrated one with Bills Pullman and Paxton, not the Peter Jackson one), as well as his role in the Naked Gun trilogy. He was also in the horror classics Strait-Jacket, Hush...Hush Sweet Charlotte and The Boston Strangler.
Another familiar face to genre fans is leading man Gregg Henry. Henry was a particular favorite of famed director Brian DePalma, who has used him in six films, notably an excellent turn in the classic Body Double and a solid one in the underrated Raising Cain. He and Kennedy had worked together before as well, in Henry's feature film debut, Mean Dog Blues.
Other notable credits include: Scarface, The Patriot, Fair Game, Casualties of War, Star Trek: Insurrection, Payback, Femme Fatale, The Hunt for the BTK Killer (he played Dennis Rader), Slither, The Black Dahlia, Super, Guardians of the Galaxy, Jason Bourne, The Belko Experiment and roles on TV's The Killing, The Following, American Horror Story, Scandal and Black Lightning.
Chris Lemmon, who played Jonathan, also had worked with Kennedy before, in Airport '77, which marked his motion picture debut as well. Other credits include Seems Like Old Times, The Happy Hooker Goes Hollywood, Swing Shift, Cannonball Run II, Going Undercover, Weekend Warriors, That's Life! (with his father, the legendary Jack Lemmon), Dad (in which he played his father's character in his younger years), the Hulk Hogan film series Thunder in Paradise (he was in the TV spin-off, too) and the Wes Craven-produced Wishmaster.
Leading lady Deborah Benson had a decent run of movies in the 70's that included Our Winning Season, North Dallas Forty and 1941 before mostly turning to TV after that, notably guesting stints on Dallas, Knots Landing, Designing Women, In Living Color, Get a Life, Renegade, Hung and Friends with Benefits. Sadly, her only other genre credits are the spoofs Ghost Fever (with Sherman Hemsley, aka "George Jefferson") and the amusingly-titled Mutant on the Bounty.
Lovely co-star Jamie Rose, who played the sexy Megan, fared considerably better, especially on TV. She was a regular on the nighttime soap Falcon Crest for three years, had recurring roles on St. Elsewhere, My Two Dads and Chicago Hope, and cropped up in guest spots on Columbo, Murder She Wrote, Amazing Stories, JAG, Ally McBeal, Walker Texas Ranger, Weird Science, Silk Stalkings, ER, Cold Case, House, Jane the Virgin and Grey's Anatomy.
She also landed the occasional big-screen role, notably in Tightrope (with Clint Eastwood), the immortal Chopper Chicks in Zombietown (with a young Billy Bob Thornton, Playroom, Crackdown, Holiday in the Sun (the one with the Olsen Twins), Atlas Shrugged II: The Strike and two of the Route 30 series. I might also add that, if the pictures I saw were any indication, she's still a looker, even at around 60.
Ralph Seymour, who played Daniel, had a sporadic but interesting career that lasted until the early 2000's. He bounced around Hollywood in everything from mainstream pictures like Back Roads (with Sally Field and Tommy Lee Jones), Fletch, Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, Empire of the Sun, Rain Man and Murder by Numbers (his final credit to date), to beloved cult flicks like Surf II, Meatballs II, Ghoulies, Killer Party and The Relic.
Also worth a mention is Mike Kellin, who played Ty, the hunter that got away at the beginning of the film, who has over 100 credits to his name. As with a few others on this list, he also co-starred with Kennedy, in his case in the excellent The Boston Strangler, inspired by the real-life serial killer. Genre fans will also recognize him from the likes of God Told Me To, Midnight Express, Echoes (aka Living Nightmare) and the slasher classic Sleepaway Camp, which ended up being his final credit. Not a bad one to go out on, though!
Katie Powell, who played the decidedly normal-looking Merry Cat Logan, sadly had a short-lived career that only included a few TV guest spots, and an appearance in the Melanie Griffith vehicle Milk Money, her only other feature film credit, as well as a bit in the TV movie Deadly Medicine.
The film was shot on location at Silver Falls State Park in Silverton, Oregon. Oregon is where the film was set as well. Because it was a working park, there were often people milling around the set at all times, which occasionally caused some issues, notably when word got round that star Jamie Rose was doing a nude scene, upon which director Lieberman wryly noted that a substantial amount of people showed up than ever before to watch. Hmm. I wonder why?
Despite its authentically rustic look, the abandoned church was built especially for the film and made to look weathered. if you look closely at the gravestones in the adjacent cemetery, you can spot the name Logan on some of them- this is, of course, the last name of the inbred family that spawned the murderous twins that serve as the main antagonists. As such, it is implied that the family has been in these parts for some time, though how Warren and his family managed to avoid them when they were there previously is never explained.
Chances are, this is because director Lieberman, who quickly rewrote the script before signing on, simply forgot this plot point and never rectified it moving forward when he made his own changes, likely adding the bit about Warren having been there before with his family to the existing material about the Logans himself.
The film was shot in 1980 and was somewhat disrupted by the eruption of Mt. Saint Helens in Washington, which could be heard- and felt- from miles away. At one point, the lights went out during shooting, and no one could figure out why. After sitting in darkness for several minutes, one of the producers jokingly yelled out: "Let there be light!" and the lights came back on, without explanation, causing much nervous laughter on the set.
There are several versions of the film available, which can run anywhere from 90 minutes to 102, in the film's most uncut form. Despite this, much of the deleted footage is actually just exposition and the like, as the director toned down most of the violence himself, not wanting to make a gore-fest.
The original film was released on DVD in a 2-disc set by Media Blasters, in 2005, complete with a commentary and documentary, among other goodies, upon which many re-evaluated the film and it celebrated a much-better reputation among horror fans, myself included.
The "extended" International cut was released by Code Red on both DVD and Blu-Ray in 2013, which also features the uncut original 90 minute version, minus the approximately twelve minutes of non-essential deleted footage, which is of lesser quality than the rest of the film, making the International cut a bit of a slog, visually. You can get a hold of both versions fairly easily, which is a rarity for such a relatively obscure film.
Finally, yet another version was released by Ronin just last month. This one features new cast interviews and a more cleaned-up version of the "extended" cut. Despite all these different versions, the original Media Blasters version remains a collector's favorite, as it features bonuses that aren't on either of the other two versions. Both it and the Code Red versions are out of print, but you can easily get them on the likes of Amazon or eBay, albeit sometimes for an exorbitant price.
Just Before Dawn isn't perfect, and it's no Hills Have Eyes, much less a Texas Chainsaw Massacre. But if you've already seen all the "big-name" slashers, it's a great find and deserves a second look, or a first one, for that matter, for those who are unfamiliar with it in the first place.
I like the way it subverts certain tropes, notably the way the Warren character starts out all rough-and-tough and mansplaining everything to his wide-eyed compadres, only to be reduced to a blubbering mess by the end, while his GF Connie goes all native on the killer, down to putting on "warpaint," aka make-up, for the first time in the film, after scoffing at Megan's use of it earlier.
Note also the clever foreshadowing of things within the film, such as the appearance of twins early on, which Warren makes a snarky comment about, and the fact that Park Ranger McCall specializes in plant hybrids, which is its own form of inbreeding. And then, of course, you have the more obvious foreshadowing, when the group hit the deer with their RV- shades of Get Out- although, it's possible the deer was actually thrown by one of the brothers to get them to stop so one of them could climb aboard.
Toss in the whistle worn by one of the group, which becomes a recurring musical motif used by composer Brad Fiedel, and used to excellently creepy effect throughout the film- Fiedel also recorded himself making droning noises and ran it through an electronic filter to make the unique score- and you have a slasher that is admittedly a cut above the rest, no matter how director Lieberman may feel about the subgenre. What it lacks in gore, though, it more than makes up for in suspense, IMHO.
So, by all means, check this one out, ASAP. With the new version out on DVD and Blu-Ray, it's a great time to discover the film for the first time, or revisit it, especially if you dismissed it the first time around, like I did. Among the sub-subgenre of backwoods slashers, it's right up there with the best, I think, and one of the best slashers, period, of the Golden Age.
Check it out! 👹
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