Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985)

The problem with slashers is that there wasn't much to do with them.  The early ones - Halloween, Friday the 13th and The Burning - had differences and followed tried and true horror and exploitation trends.  They in fact followed on the heels of the Italian giallo films and cult British horror movies like The Abominable Dr. Phibes.  

By the mid-1980s, however, they had become their own sub-genre, and pretty much every movie followed the same pattern.  Some sort of wrong was done in the past and the person who was dealt dirty came back, in the flesh or in spirit, to take revenge.  That revenge just happened to be on a bunch of rowdy teenagers, all stereotypes that were there to get naked and party.  A final girl would emerge at the end to take on the killer, only for the whole thing to start back over in the sequel if the previous movie turned a profit.  The critics hated them, audiences loved them, but because they were pretty much the same thing over and over even fans started drifting away.

The poster boy for repetitive slashers was Jason Voorhees and, seeing the way the winds were blowing, producer Frank Mancuso Jr. decided to bring things to a close with Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter.  The series had run out of ideas after the first two movies and limped through a third, but there was enough interest to squeeze one more out. It was more violent and action filled than its predecessor, Jason was much more physical, Tom Savini returned to do the effects and, while there wasn't a whole lot of character development, there was Corey Feldman as Tommy Jarvis, a 12-year-old kid who got to finally kill Jason in the end.  There were hints that Jarvis would continue on as the next killer and, since the movie seemed to breathe some new life into the series, as well as becoming a box office hit, a fifth installment was made.

Tommy Jarvis (John Shepherd) is now a teenager and is being moved to a camp for troubled teens in order to get him ready to re-enter society.  Problem is, he is still haunted by dreams and visions of Jason (Johnny Hock, Tom Morga).  When a boy named Joey (Dominick Brascia) is murdered by an older kid named Victor (Mark Venturini) a new series of murders begins, both inside and around the compound.

Sheriff Tucker (Marco St. John) is afraid that maybe Jason isn't dead after all, and it whoever the killer is has definitely done himself up to look like the deceased killer.  As things escalate Tommy finds himself once again faced with dealing with a psychopath, but this time is helped by a councilor named Pam (Melanie Kinnaman) and young boy named Reggie (Shavar Ross) to keep Jason's legacy from continuing on. 

It's not going to be a big spoiler to say that, other than in Tommy's dreams and hallucinations, there is no Jason in this movie.  The killer is telegraphed at the beginning, but the reveal is one of the weakest parts of the movie, as is the explanation for why he was doing the killing.  I recalled, for some reason, that Tommy was on the hook for the murders, but realized later that I confused parts of this with Child's Play 3, as this is the only film in the series other than Jason X that I've only watched once.  Where there was that opportunity to plant suspicion on numerous characters the opportunity is missed over and over again.

What I mostly remembered was some of the kills, and I definitely remembered Deborah Voorhees, as she provided the best gratuitous nudity in the entire series.  That is saying something because both the fourth and fifth movies increased the amount of breasts and buttocks to make up for the fact most of the violence was being excised.

Director Danny Steinmann's plan for that was to load the film with nudity and violence to the point that most of what he wanted would be in the movie once the MPAA got done, much like Joseph Zito did with the previous film.  Paramount, however, decided to start cutting before it ever went into review, and by the time it got whittled down to an R rating a good portion of the death scenes were gone as was most of Voorhees's sex scene, although she contends that Steinmann and others exaggerated how graphic the original was.  

Removed from the disappointment felt when this came out, and the definite feeling that the series was now being dragged on not for fans but to make a few extra bucks, Friday the 13th: A New Beginning is not as bad as I remembered.  It has more humor, most courtesy of Ethel (Carol Locatell) and her son Junior (Ron Sloan) as well as Reggie's older brother Demon (Miguel A. Nuñez Jr.) who, notoriously, has a run-in with some nasty enchiladas.  It also has a certain exploitation level nastiness courtesy of Steinmann that some of the others in the series could have used.

What it doesn't have in the end is Jason Voorhees or a decent ending, either with the reveal of the killer nor with the coda in the hospital.  Tommy needed to be more of an actual presence in the movie which instead becomes an ensemble piece like most of the rest, and he barely contributes to the final fight.  Pam does most of the heavy lifting as the required final girl.  Because fans were not pleased with this movie the plans for the future films shifted back toward Jason and how to bring the killer back to life.

Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985)

Time: 92 minutes

Starring: John Shepherd, Melanie Kinnaman, Shavar Ross, Tom Morga

Director: Danny Steinmann