Post Terror: Finishing 'the Final Terror' (2014) User Reviews

Cutting The Final Terror

[Michael_Elliott · 23 March 2015]

Post Terror: Finishing 'The Final Terror' (2014)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Here's another winning featurette from Shout Factory! that can be found on their release of THE FINAL TERROR, the pretty much forgotten 1983 slasher movie from Andrew Davis. Allan Holzman starts off talking about how he got the job here, which was pretty much to take a film that had been on the shelf for two years and try to make it watchable. Holzman talks about how he felt the movie was too boring and that the monster was seen way too early. From here he talks about getting his start with Roger Corman, how stuttering effecting his directing career and what he thought about the final product. Susan Justin is also on hand talking about her music score and what effect the low budget had on it. Overall this 23-minute featurette has a lot of interesting things in it. I thought the most fascinating thing was hearing Holzman talk about having to take a product that isn't very good and try to bring a bit more life to it. Fans of the film are going to enjoy hearing these stories as they give you a good idea into the post-production of the film.

Nifty retrospective documentary

[Woodyanders · 8/10 · 8 December 2014]

This neat little 23 minute documentary provides an enjoyable overview on the post-production for the early 80's backwoods slasher outing "The Final Terror." Post-production supervisor Allan Holzman talks about seeing the 3D movie "House of Wax" in the theater and how he had to overcome his stutter when he got the gig to direct "Forbidden World." Moreover, Holzman points out that an earlier cut of "The Final Terror" moved much too slowly, showed too much of the monster, and had way too much travelogue footage of the woods. In addition, Holzman emphasized Joe Pantoliano as much as he could in every scene that Pantoliano acted in and happily discusses working for Sam Arkoff. Composer Susan Justin reveals that the opening and ending credits music was inspired by Billy Idol's hit song "White Wedding" and that she used her rock band to perform said music for the credits. Better still, Justin does some singing just like she did for the score of the picture. Worth a watch for fans of film.