Ella-May O'Brien
Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.
alexanderdavies-99382
"Just Before Dawn" isn't exactly ground-breaking in its plot but this film does manage to sustain some suspense as well as a steady pace and a very good performance from that fine character actor, George Kennedy . He should have been in the film much more as he is the only person I could describe as being a professional and gifted performer. Even so, George Kennedy certainly makes the most of his screen time.
A group of young campers are on holiday amongst mother nature in the grassy hills but are warned by Kennedy to stay away from the area. Naturally, the characters don't listen and pretty soon tragedy occurs.
The violence is pretty grim most of the time and leaves little to the imagination. The setting is ideal as you are rooting for the campers to survive the mad killer who is on the loose and that there is no one nearby who can help.
A minor classic that deserves repeated viewing.
Avinash Shukla
'Just Before Dawn' is one rare slasher that has impressed me every time I watched it. The reason lies in its penetrative and intense backwoods atmosphere that disturbs me deeply. Jeff Lieberman has always applied a simple but methodical approach to make the viewers uneasy. His 'Blue Sunshine' could be classified as both simple and bizarre at the same time. The antagonists of Lieberman's films often suffer from anguish and kill for the sake of enjoyment. The creepy and campy atmosphere, persistent sound of the nearby waterfall, and finally the above average performances by Gregg Henry, Chris Lemmon, Jamie Rose and Deborah Benson give this movie a constant momentum avoiding any element of boredom. The film has very less gore and almost no nudity, making this perfect by all means. One can bet that Lieberman doesn't want to make his creation famous with the help of nudity and gore, so the lovers of these stuffs would be somewhat disappointed. On the contrary, the movie seems inspired by the atmosphere of John Boorman's legendary 1972 film 'Deliverance', that involves hillbillies somewhat similarly. However, this doesn't make JBD a copy cat as it teems with originality and deploys a simple plot to please and astound the viewers.Two hunters Ty (Mike Kellin) and Vachel (Charles Bartlett) are out in the woods drinking and exploring an old abandoned church after a successful hunting trip. The men are in high spirits when Ty catches the look of a horrendous man (John Hunsaker) looking down at them through the roof hole. Ty leaves Vachel behind to trace the man down, but is shocked when his truck rolls towards him and he barely escapes injury. We soon witness a grisly figure cutting Vachel open to the groin with a serrated machete. The figure menacingly laughs while Vachel cries in pain. Ty watches in horror when he finds the figure putting on Vachel's clothes and looking at him with fiery eyes. The scene soon cuts to Warren (Gregg Henry), Constance (Deboraeh Benson), Daniel (Ralph Seymour), Jonathan (Chris Lemmon), and Megan (Jamie Rose), who are in a camper heading towards the wilderness to have a great camping adventure. On the way they are warned by the forest ranger Roy (George Kennedy) about the dangers of the wild. Roy persuades them to go back but meets no success. Ahead they meet Ty, who is out of his breath, drinking and trembling. In a palsied voice, Ty narrates his horrible experience to the teens and urges them to take him along. The teens however refuse his request and set out to the woods. Ty, left behind, gives a satirical laugh while he watches the grisly man climb up Warren's camper.The teens camp at a remarkably serene location filled with the constant sound of waterfall and packed with lush greenery. Everything seems to be as normal as any other camping excursion with an exception of a perverted killer, who is constantly on the trail of his young preys. That night they are disrupted when a local old man (Hap Oslund) comes along with his family holding a gun, and furiously advises the teens to leave at once because he thinks that they are doing no good in the wild than 'raising the devil'. The youngsters pay no heed to the old man's words and continue camping. Next day, Jonathan becomes the first target of the hillbilly, who cuts down the rope bridge forcibly facilitating Jonathan's fall. Soon Megan and Daniel become his targets, when they are stabbed in the old church. Finally, Warren and Constance are left with no option than to face their enemy.....or enemies? Well, there are so many twins around here!JBD is a great effort by Jeff Lieberman, and I personally find it more interesting and menacing than other backwoods tales like Sleepaway Camp, Cabin Fever and even Evil Dead, which all try to intensify the horror aspect with the aid of explicit gore. Surprisingly, JBD is very mediocre on gore. Here the viewers are afraid to see the clash between two different cultures, the one inculcated in the city while the other tamed in woods. Like 'The Shining', JBD has some amount of hypnotic qualities, which I suppose are due to the breathtaking locations, the placidity of nature and the fear of wilderness. JBD really comes at par with the other horror gems of 1981 like 'Dead & Buried', 'Dark Night of the Scarecrow', 'The Burning' and 'The Beyond' in terms of horror. 10/10 for Mr. Lieberman!
cameron-kills-it
"Just Before Dawn" tells the tale of four young backpackers who are going to check out a piece of property in the woods that one of them has inherited. Sounds like every other slasher, right? Well, while it DOES have many of the slasher clichés that were ever so popular at the time, it surprisingly has depth and a unique, creepy style that many other of these movies lack. While the other films are good for some campy fun, this is one is not campy and is more creepy and disturbing. Not to mention it has one of the best endings in horror history. Check it out as soon as possible! Rated: R for Violence and Nudity.Grade: B+
Michael_Elliott
Just Before Dawn (1982) ** (out of 4) Five hikers go into the mountains to look around only to run into a murderous, deformed redneck. I was really looking forward to this one but in the end I was left really disappointed. The movie is technically well made but the screenplay and story leave a lot to be desired. The biggest problem for me was that none of the characters were very interesting. I really didn't care which ones lived or died and right from the start it was easy to tell which ones would walk away at the end. Another problem is how stupid the characters are. Yes, horror films must have stupid characters or they'd end before they got started but the ones in this film are so out there that at one point I thought I was watching some sort of spoof but of course wasn't. If you're looking for violent, gory kills like most of the slashers out there around this time then you're going to be disappointed as there aren't many. As I said earlier, there's some nice style in the film and it's certainly well directed but that's not enough to keep the film moving. The best sequence is the opening one where two rednecks are inside a church when the killer shows up.
