phanthinga Just Before Dawn is a slasher movie from the early 80s after the successful of Friday the 13th.There nothing to make this movie stand out from others slasher flick release the same year but it still fine movie if you into the genre.A group of 20 years old looking teenagers go camping on mountain unaware of the locals rumor about devil living up there so now they need to pay the price.The built up to the kills is nice there some good cinematography with the mountain view and some suspenseful moment.The characters not annoying but i still don't care about any of them.The kills not over the top or bloody all that much but the deep throat scene near the end might surprise some people

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!

Tender-Flesh First off, let me say I wasted Halloween movie night by watching this garbage. Second, let me inform you that the current DVD available by Shriek Show is not uncut, so you gore hounds will be very upset. Third, that one scene is the highlight of the film and since it's been cut, well, you see where I'm going.I know a lot of horror fans dig this movie. It is atmospheric, shot in the woods with some very nice scenery, waterfalls and such. But after the opening kill, which has a very brutal shot of a machete being jammed through a hunter's crotch, you get no real brutal kills after that. And, with a slasher movie, you sort of want that. At least, I do. The director and co. do nothing new with the killer in the woods idea, several of this type of movie were all made right around the same time in the very early eighties. The only thing this has going for it is that you don't hate the actors as much as you might in other films. They are sort of likable. The kids have a reason for being there: one of them owns a deed to some property on the mountain. But what is not explained is why his family has property there. There is no cabin or house, so why buy property in East Jesus, especially if you aren't a hunter or whatnot? Well, I'm sure some people do buy land for camping purposes, but that just seems unusual. Anyway, two squealing backwoods inbreds show up and start stalking the campers and picking them off one by one. And, as I said before, you get pretty much nothing in the way of decent deaths after the machete kill in the beginning. The ending has a sort of off the wall kill by Connie, but even that isn't enough to save this from being almost equal with the completely forgettable film, The Forest, which is mind-numbing.If Shriek Show had been able to get a real uncut print, then this review might have been a little more forgiving, but this is the day and age of uncut/unrated DVD releases of old obscure films for cine-hounds like me. When you slight us, you get the crud review. Sadly, the presence of the great fatherly George Kennedy is the only highlight of this movie to set it apart from the other garden variety trash that was churned out back in the day.

lost-in-limbo The mountainous woods, young happy campers, a warning by a park ranger and a lurking figure. The ingredients are there for a horror delight, and director/co-writer Jeff Lieberman does an adequate job at achieving it. It's formulaic woodland horror, but for most part the execution is at the top the game and the story (which is quite basic in a trimmed sense) is effectively told in certain realism. Maybe a little more exposition wouldn't have gone astray, but Lieberman's craftsmanship makes up for the material's flaws and typical details with rising tension, moody visuals and a smothering atmosphere created by Brad Fiedel's very ominously lingering score. Whenever that very creepy whistling was cued in, it painted a truly unnerving sense that settled in with the beautiful backdrop. Cinematographers Dean M. and Joel King do a striking job too. There's plenty of style abound, even with its minimal scope and the build-up is slow grinding. At times the pacing can become a stop-and-go affair. It's not particularly violent, but there's still a mean-streak evident even if some of it happens of screen. The latter chase scenes and escalating fear is well done, as it has the darkness coming alive with itS burly killer/s and you get actor George Kennedy riding his white horse in a slight, but wonderful turn. There's a likable bunch of performances; Deborah Benson makes for a strong, dashing heroine. Gregg Henry, Chris Lemmon Ralph Seymour, Jamie Rose, Mike Kellin and Katie Powell round off a modest cast of believable deliveries. The final climax is rather twisted, but the ending is one of those types that leave you thinking… "Is that it?" A well-etched backwoods slasher item, which probably plays it a little too safe to truly set it apart from the norm.