SPOILER WARNING
SPOILER WARNING
SPOILER WARNING
The German made DVD I have is a little less dark, just watched it for the first time in a few years and had forgotten how much I admire this movie. First thing to remember is if you are watching anything other than the discontinued Code Red DVD, the original Canadian made VHS or something from overseas you are probably seeing a cut version. All of the budget line DVD releases show a censored television print and one of the sequences to suffer the most was the final scenes in the hermit's cabin. Here is a play by play.
In the final act of the movie, Mitzi ditches Harry at the dam, forcing Harry to leave Marty behind. Harry must have followed a road or path that led him to a hermit's cabin in the woods. First simply taking it for shelter Harry finds food and discovers personal mementos in an old trunk of a war veteran. Realizing it's the cabin of the maniac stalking them he finds the lost boots just as the Creeper's brother Jesse returns. He tries to attack Harry with his staff, mistaking Harry for his brother, whom he knew had intended to kill Harry and his friends just for being doctors. Harry mortally wounds him with an ax before realizing that Jesse is blind and more or less invalid. As Jesse dies he tells Harry at least some of the truth about the Creeper, whose name is Matthew and was a decorated WW2 veteran mangled in combat. Doctors had tried to piece him back together leaving Matthew hideously deformed. He also apparently suffered mental/cognitive damage as well and chose to withdraw from society with Jesse to live as hermits in the woods. The subsist by trapping and Matthew cares for Jesse, the two completely cut off from all other humans.
After Jesse dies a remorseful Harry is apparently preparing to leave after arming himself with the hermits's double barreled break loading bird shot gun when Matthew manages to severely wound Harry with a knife by reaching through the wall of the cabin. Matthew had also taken Mitzi captive and ties him to a tree branch hanging over a pit, which Matthew begins filling with firewood as Harry attempts to contend with his wound before he bleeds to death. Unable to staunch the bleeding from a severed artery, Harry elects to cauterize the wound using powder from one of the bird shot shells. Mitzi pleads for his life as Matthew prepares to burn him alive, offering Harry a choice between saving himself or risking bleeding to death by trying to save Mitzi and kill Matthew. Harry remains focused on saving himself and Mitzi burns to death while Harry suffers the agony of burning his wound shut to save himself.
The shock of then seeing Mitzi incinerated throws him into despair on the floor. Matthew then throws burning sticks from the fire into the cabin, bringing Harry back to his senses enough to arm himself with the bird shot gun. Matthew then forces a confrontation first by reaching in through a broken window to undo the cabin door's inner latch, which he manages to do before Harry gruesomely blows Matthew's hand off with the shot gun. As he reloads the hideously disfigured Matthew stumbles in through the open door but does not attack, instead he staggers forward and pulls something on a chain from around his neck with his remaining hand and apparently offers it to Harry, who watches in horrified fascination. We do not see any lingering views of Matthew's disfigurement but its pretty convincing. Despite Harry more or less pleading with Matthew to stay away he continues to advance holding the item out and Harry shoots him dead. The scene ends with the camera revealing that he had been offering Harry his dog tags.
Harry claims a blanket and Jesse's staff to help him walk and makes his way through the wilderness to a stretch of paved road. He sits down in the middle and waits as the ending theme plays and the closing credits roll.
One thing I picked up from watching it just now is that Matthew is certainly not a "retarded crazed hermit". He's very intelligent but likely had some sort of wounding of his personality that made him hostile towards pretty much everybody but his brother, whose blindness meant he could not react to his disfigured appearance. They split off into the woods and lived by their own terms without contact with anybody. Jesse says something about how Matthew doesn't like people but he is a good trapper, other than that we can only surmise what he was actually like. I'd imagine that the combination of the torturous medical procedures used to save his life combined with the revulsion he must have been greeted with by everyone but his surgeons due to his appearance must have driven him totally insane.
If the campers had not just happened to be doctors I imagine he would have just observed them. But he was intelligent and aware enough to realize they all were without being told, very methodical and clever about the traps or psychological attacks he sprang. He wasn't stupid and probably would not have allowed Harry to kill him if Jesse had not already been killed. Without Jesse and minus a hand I guess he decided there wasn't any point in killing Harry anymore and let himself get shot.
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