Released at the height of the '80s slasher boom, Just Before Dawn marked the third feature for director Jeff Lieberman after the soon-to-be cult classics Squirm and Blue Sunshine. This time out he tackled a sort of combination of Deliverance, The Hills Have Eyes and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, taking a rough screenplay called The Last Ritual involving backwoods religious extremism and turning it into a depiction of man's animal nature. The end result was notably different from the butcher knife extravaganzas populating screens at the time, complete with a creepy and oppressively effective atmosphere that made it a hot collector's item among horror fans during the VHS days.

The set up is your usual scenario involving a van loaded with five teenagers heading off where it shouldn't in the woods, ignoring the warnings of local park ranger Roy McLean (Kennedy). We've already seen two men get butchered in an old church nearby, so it's obvious some of them won't be coming back home. Among the careless kids (and Blondie fans) are macho Warren (Body Double's Henry), his girlfriend Constance (Benson), comic relief Jonathan (Lemmon), bad girl Megan (Rose), and obligatory dork Daniel (Seymour). As they camp out in the middle of nowhere, they keep catching glimpses of a mountain girl named Merry (Powell) who seems to be connected to others waiting with machetes in the darkness. As the youths split up, they find themselves being picked off one by one and forced to resort to savagery to survive.

What Just Before Dawn may lack in originality is more than made up for by its unusually solid performances and filmmaking skill, with evocative photography and a truly creepy score by Brad Fiedel (who went on to The Terminator and Fright Night) evoking shivers with Tangerine Dream-style electronics and eerie whistling. Many have also noted the film's influence on the new strain of hillbilly horror films since Wrong Turn, which owes more than a passing debt to this film's most memorable suspense sequence involving tree climbing. Seen today it's a film unlike anything you'd see today thanks to its spooky, handcrafted quality, setting it alongside Rituals and Southern Comfort as one of the best "terror in the wild" films around the turn of the decade.

The VHS release of Just Before Dawn from Paragon containing the uncensored theatrical version had a lot to do with building word of mouth for the film, which barely played on TV and made only a tiny blip when it played in theaters from indie distributor Picturmedia. It took an abnormally long time for a DVD to materialize, but one finally did in 2005 from Media Blasters (under its Shriek Show imprint)in a double-disc edition that turned out to be a very mixed blessing. The extras were spectacular, including a brisk audio commentary from Lieberman, a batch of trailers, a gallery, and "Lions, Tigers and Inbred Twins," a great 67-minute collection of interviews with the cast and crew. It's essential viewing for fans complete with candid remarks about the original script, speculation about the off-screen fate of one female character, and one of the funnier Deep Throat gags you'll run across. Unfortunately the transfer of the film itself was botched pretty severely courtesy of a drab, damaged 35mm print missing several moments of violence throughout the film, ultimately running just under a minute shorter at 90m2s. The deletions may sound brief, but the effect on the film (which isn't particularly explicit in general) was easy to spot and highly destructive. On top of that the 1.85:1 matting looked strange and off center, often clipping characters uncomfortably at the eyebrows and looking more claustrophobic than the open matte VHS version.

Things got even weirder a year later when a UK edition surfaced from Odeon, initially an exclusive release for retailer Play.com. Though this one was also missing some of the same violent footage, it contained several additional minutes of dialogue and extended scenes indicating this was some kind of earlier cut prepared before the theatrical release. The running time extended by nine minutes in PAL, which obviously runs longer at normal film speed. Though splicy and highly unimpressive in visual terms, it was a surprising twist with no immediate explanation. Then a German DVD also came out, containing the first murder uncut but also suffering some of the same deletions as the Media Blasters disc. Various composite cuts started popping up on the fan circuit as the question of exactly which cut of the film still even existed anymore on film remained to be answered.

With Media Blasters fading out of the horror game, that meant a subsequent U.S. release had to turn up eventually, with Code Red stepping in for a limited edition Blu-ray in 2013 containing two cuts of the film. Most obviously, the framing is much better here with the more spacious 1.78:1 compositions feeling more accurate and aesthetically appealing throughout. The 90-minute theatrical version is indeed uncut with all of the gore scissored from previous DVDs, and the quality is excellent with an appearance that's several generations improved from past releases. Detail is improved significantly throughout, while colors are more natural and bright. The longer mystery cut is also included (described as an "extended cut, for overseas distribution" on the promotional material), also in HD but obviously several notches lower in quality compared to the main version. It's great to have included here though for completists and at least makes for an upgrade over the UK disc, especially since it now runs at the correct speed for a total time of 102 minutes. Two of the rather long theatrical trailers are also included.

In 2017, 88 Films brought the film to Blu-ray in the U.K. as #27 in its Slasher Classic Collection, centered around the standard 90-minute theatrical cut with an LPCM 2.0 English mono track and, for the first time, optional English subtitles. Spec-wise it looks pretty much the same as the US release in terms of color timing, though the bit rates has been pumped up considerably with the feature occupying far more disc space on the BD-50 occupying 26.2 GB versus the prior disc's 11.4 GB (and the extended cut is included as well in all its ragged glory, looking about as good as it could). The big new extra here is a fine audio commentary by Justin Kerswell, member of the essential podcast The Hysteria Continues and author of Teenage Wasteland, a.k.a. The Slasher Movie Book. Moderated by Calum Waddell, the track is another notch in his slasher-centric belt as he chats quite a bit about Lieberman's cinema, the film's odd man out status in the horror wave at the time (which also makes it more intriguing now), the script additions to Kennedy's character, its box office performance (or lack thereof), the "madman in the forest" trend, and the teenage audience targeted at the time. "Just Before Dawn: Recollections of a Slasher Classic" (9m57s) features Lieberman chatting about the slippery definitions of horror cinema, the influence of Lord of the Flies, his deliberate aversion to watching a certain Tobe Hooper classic before making this, and his rationale for choosing locales for his various films (like swapping the South for New England for Squirm). The more generic "Grindhouse All-Stars: Notes from the Sleaze-Cinema Underground" (34m24s) rounds up Lieberman, Roy Frumkes, Matt Cimber, and Joe Ellison for a grab bag of interview chunks about the retroactive classification of various genres under that header, Times Square culture, and the seemingly endless appetite for cinematic sex and violence while touching on random films ranging from Blade to Pop Goes the Weasel. Also included are two theatrical trailers and a gallery (3m22s) of production photos from Lieberman's collection, while the packaging (which features reversible sleeve poster art options) also comes with a slasher-centric Waddell liner notes essay.

In 2019, Code Red revisited the film with an upgraded edition available from Ronin Flix and Diabolik that features both cuts of the film with considerably higher bit rates, now occupying a BD50 disc taking up 43.3 GB of storage (with 18.6 allocated to the theatrical cut, splitting the difference between the two earlier Blu-rays and looking fine here given the short-ish running time). The DTS-HD MA English mono track sounds as good as always, and in a welcome touch, the film now features optional English subtitles. The longer cut is also present as a bonus, looking as modest as usual. The main feature is also preceded by a couple of brief, perplexing intros with the label's zombie version of Banana Man goofing off with actors Greg Henry and Jamie Rose, with a choppy frame rate. The "Lions, Tigers and Inbred Twins" doc is ported over here but trimmed down to 50m49s, omitting all of Lieberman's participation (which means his commentary is AWOL as well and will likely remain so for a long time). New to this release are four separate video interviews with Henry (13m48s), Rose (15m34s), Chris Lemmon (28m5s), and producer David Shelton (30m50s). The Henry and Rose interviews have the same choppy playback issue but are worth watching as they chat about the film and their careers (ranging from theater to exotic watusi dancing -- guess which one that applies to), all fondly recalling Lieberman and touching on some of their other work as well as highlights like delivering dialogue about "my Caramel Cream" and learning to kiss in front of the camera. Lemmon (son of Jack) is especially amusing as he covers his body of work including Wishmaster and some of his less reputable credits, while Shelton offers insights like "Everything went smoothly; nobody got killed on the set" and explains how a moment of spiritual fervor affected the shooting of a scene. He also goes into some of his other films, most notably The Manitou and its attendant script issues. This edition comes in a limited slipcover edition sporting what is easily the most controversial (and amusing) cover artwork in recent memory. A quirky and wildly satisfying backwoods shocker that keeps improving with age.

CODE RED (2019) BLU-RAY

EXTENDED VERSION

88 FILMS BLU-RAY

MEDIA BLASTERS DVD

Updated review on May 25, 2019.