Franchises: Friday the 13th. Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning (1985)

Now we come to one of the more controversial entries in the series among fans. Although many have warmed up to it in recent years, others still call it the worst in the series for one simple reason: the killer isn't Jason. And that is true. Other than the original, this is the only Friday the 13th movie where Jason is not the one who's going around, butchering people. But worst in the series? I couldn't disagree with that notion more. While I was initially a little bit dubious about this film when I first got into the franchise given what I'd heard about it, this is actually a really good, entertaining entry. It has all of the ingredients necessary for an enjoyable slasher film: a lot of kills (probably the highest body-count in the series), some pretty good gore at points, a number of memorable characters, instances of morbid comedy, and some really dark moments here and there.

Years after the events of The Final Chapter, Tommy Jarvis is now a very disturbed teenager who is sent to a halfway home for troubled kids. While he struggles to fit in as he battles his crippling personal demons, a series of killings begins in the nearby town near that ultimately lead to some of the other troubled teens at the house being knocked off. Has Jason returned from beyond the grave? (Well, obviously I just told you what the deal is but I'm trying to be dramatic!)

The reason for no Jason in this film becomes obvious when things are put into perspective. Jason was definitively killed at the end of the fourth movie, which was meant to be the last one, but since that film made a lot of money, Paramount decided to continue the franchise. And since the movies had, up to this point, still been more or less believable, it was probably natural for them to decide to not have Jason return but instead have someone else take up the mantle. Moreover, the creepy look he gave at the end of The Final Chapter suggested that Tommy was now disturbed and had the potential to become a psychopath himself, which is what I think this film was going to lead up to: Tommy eventually becoming the new Jason. However, after the reception this movie received (its box-office take started out strong but plummeted sharply after the first weekend), that game plan changed. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Our director this time is, without a doubt, the most controversial person to ever tackle a Friday the 13th flick: the late Danny Steinmann. This is one of only four movies he ever directed, with the other three being High Rise (a porn film), a horror film called The Unseen, and Savage Streets, an exploitation movie starring Linda Blair. Steinmann's past experience with porn gave him something of a seedy, exploitation-centered mentality that really seeps into the film. There's a lot of gratuitous nudity here, probably more so than there was in The Final Chapter, and there are also some really sleazy characters here, as we'll see. The film itself does look quite good but, at the same time, you can really feel that this is just as much a sleazy exploitation movie as it is a slasher movie. As for the cast and crew's opinions on Steinmann, it's really divided. Some liked him, while others, especially some of the women, have said he was a pervert who snorted a lot of cocaine, allegations that he himself always denied (at least when it came to being a perv). Who knows what really went on but, as I said, his past experiences do filter into this film.

Corey Feldman was originally supposed to reprise his role as Tommy for the entire film but he was filming The Goonies at the time, so he only appears briefly in a dream sequence that opens the film. John Shepherd plays the adult Tommy and I must say, for a series that often gets some rather bad actors, he does a great job. He really does come across like an extremely troubled kid. He hardly ever speaks (24 words total, according to IMDB), he never smiles except once and it's so quick you'd probably miss it, and his mannerisms all point to a damaged person who's lost his family and is very disturbed by his encounter with Jason. He's constantly hallucinating about Jason as well. One particularly hard one for him is when he's remembering killing him and then sees him standing behind him in the mirror with an axe raised. But, when he turns around, there's nothing there and he then pounds his head against the dresser and sobs in utter frustration. Tommy's also prone to violence. At one point, Eddie, one of other teens at the halfway house, puts one of his masks on, scares him with it, and then throws it back at him. After asking if he can take joke, gently punching him in the shoulder while saying so, Tommy brutally attacks him and Matt, the guy who's in charge, has to get him off of Eddie. The ending with him is really creepy, suggesting that Jason has tainted his soul for good. He sees another hallucination of Jason and while he gasps at first, he slowly becomes calm and a frighteningly cold look comes over his face, made even scarier by the lightning and crashing thunder going on outside. The last scene has him put on Jason's hockey mask and prepare to stab Pam, the female lead, with a butcher knife, which was meant to be the start of Tommy's intended stint as the new villain, which didn't work out. Despite that, though, Shepherd does a very good job nevertheless.

Melanie Kinnaman as Pam Roberts, the lead female, has nothing to do other than act like a typical nice girl as well as scream and run. (The scene at the end where she's being chased by Roy, the killer, is some really bad horror movie acting: she falls down and then acts like she can't get up.) Shavar Ross as young Reggie, whose nickname is Reggie "The Reckless," acts all tough and says nothing scares him at the beginning when he first meets Tommy but, during the climactic chase, screams like a little girl. That's about all I can say for him, other than he's also a little smartass. Richard Young (who would go on to be the guy who gives the young Indiana Jones his hat at the beginning of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) has
literally nothing to do as Matt, the guy who runs the halfway house. He seems like a nice guy who does genuinely care about the kids but he's so unimportant that his death is off-camera. Another guy who has nothing to do is Vernon Washington as George, Reggie's grandfather. Again, seems like he really cares about Reggie, but, like Matt, he's killed off-camera. Marco St. John is the sheriff, Cal Tucker. Not the best actor but he does seem like a reliable sheriff who wants to figure out what's going on.

The other teens at the halfway house are quite a colorful bunch, to say the least. You've got Jake, played by Jerry Pavlon, who stutters a lot; Juliette Cummins as Robin, who does absolutely nothing other than laugh at Jake's advance on her and strip down to just her underwear before she goes to bed; Tiffany Helm as Violet, a goth sort of chick who constantly listens to music and does some crazy dance moves to it as well (watch her movements as she dances to the song His Eyes right before she gets killed; her movements almost look like their stop-motion!); and our horny couple this time, Tina and Eddie, played by Debi Sue Voorhees (yes, that really is her last name) and John Robert Dixon. Other than being sex-obsessed, Eddie doesn't do anything other than get his ass kicked by Tommy. Tina's most amazing traits are her gigantic boobs. Check out those things! Damn! Finally, I have to mention two teens who only appear in one scene but it's really a memorable one. Dominick Brascia is Joey, a fat, chocolate-loving kid who is a bit annoying but seems like a nice guy who only wants to help. And then there's Vic, played by the late Mark Venturini from Return of the Living Dead. Joey comes up to him and starts to ramble endlessly about helping him chop wood. Vic eventually loses his cool and after Joey tells him he's out of line, he chops the kid to pieces. What makes this scene notable is that this is the only kill in the series not committed by the actual villain of the film, be it Jason, Mrs. Voorhees, or, in this case, Roy. Also, you have to question the logic

behind this place. These kids are disturbed and yet, you let them work with sharp tools? Moreover, you give Vic, who is clearly crazy and would literally rip your head if you breathed on him wrong, an axe to chop wood? It was a disaster waiting to happen. This murder also serves as the impetus for the other killings in the movie, as I'll explain in a bit.

There are also plenty of side characters whose only purpose is to serve as more cannon fodder but some of them are so colorful that they are worth mentioning. There are these two greaser guys dressed in black leather jackets whose car has broken down and, as a result, they become Roy's first victims. The one named Pete (Corey Parker) is a major douchebag to, the other guy, Vinnie (Anthony Barrile), and threatens to kick his ass if he doesn't fix the car. Long story short, he, at least, deserved to get butchered. Billy, played by Bob De Simone, is a pervy paramedic who delivers Tommy to the house and gives Pam a really bizarre gesture involving his ear and tongue. His girlfriend, Lana (Rebeca Wood-Sharkey), does nothing but show her enormous tits (which are nice) and whine a little bit before she gets killed. Miguel A. Nunez Jr., another Return of the Living Dead actor, plays Reggie's brother, Demon, and although it is made clear that he's kind of a troublemaker, particularly with how George feels about Reggie going to see him, he does genuinely love his brother. I like how he seems to be a tough guy with how he's dressed in leather and chains but when he's trapped in the outhouse by Roy, he starts crying like a little girl. His girlfriend Anita (Jere Fields) does nothing special but they do serenade each other while he's taking a crap in the outhouse (Ooh, baby, ooh baby, ooh, baby).

The best characters in the film by far are Ethel and Junior Hubbard, a hilarious over the top redneck mother and son. Carol Locatell plays Ethel as such a nasty, foul-mouthed hick woman that it's awesome. She calls her own son a big dildo at one point, as well as tells him to, "Shut the fuck up!", threatens the sheriff by saying she has a bomb on her, and warns all the kids at the
home that if she catches any more of them on her
property, she'll blow their brains out... and she would, too! Ethel rules! Junior (Ron Sloane) is also pretty funny with how much of a big baby he is. After he picks a fight with Tommy and gets the crap beaten out of him, he rides around on his motorcycle, screaming and crying as he circles around his house. (They hurt me, Ma! They hurt me! Aaaaaaah!) Normally I would find something like that annoying but in this instance, I was dying laughing. There's also a random guy who shows up on their doorstep at one point and asks for work so he can earn a meal. I think the credits call him Duke but he never has a name in the actual movie. Even though he's another person who's only there to up the body count, Ethel's reaction upon seeing him in front of her door is priceless.

As you can probably surmise, this film is an odd one in the series because, not only is Jason not the killer, but this is also the first film not to take place at Crystal Lake. In fact, this is the only Friday the 13th film where we don't see Crystal Lake at all in one form or another (when I say that, I'm counting the holographic version in Jason X). We're never told exactly where this place is but, since the sheriff knows about Jason and suggests that he may be the one doing the murders, we can surmise that it must, at the most, be in the same state as Crystal Lake. That, however, is the only connection to Jason's old stomping grounds that we get, as the name, "Crystal Lake" is never even mentioned in the film. Speaking of the setting, you have to wonder exactly what the purpose of this halfway home is. It's supposed to be for troubled teens but many of the teens don't seem to be all that troubled. I guess Jake's stuttering problem could be a reason why he's there, Vic is clearly crazy, and we find out why Joey was there, but why everyone else? Are Tina and Eddie there simply because they can't keep their hands off each other? Is Violet there because she's a Goth who won't stop listening to music? And is Robin there because... she's a redhead? In slasher films, this stuff doesn't matter but it's still fun to point out such oddities and lack of logic in them.

Many have compared this movie to Halloween III: Season of the Witch, the film in that series that has absolutely nothing to do with the films before or after it, a comparison that, while I understand it at face value, I don't think is warranted when you really look at both films. Halloween III, although a good horror film in and of itself, is a completely different and separate story in the middle of that particular series, whereas Friday the 13th Part V is another chapter in the series' story and does pick up from where the movie before it left off. Even though Jason isn't the killer, this is a story where he is prevalent: Tommy is haunted by him, Roy becomes him, and during the climax, his image is there even if it really isn't him. It's still a guy in a hockey mask killing people. In fact, if you think about it, Jason is in the movie. He only appears in dreams and hallucinations that Tommy has but during those scenes, it is him. The opening scene, where Tommy has a nightmare about watching, as his younger self, two men dig up Jason's grave, only for them to be slaughtered by him, is a great opener. I love after he rises from the grave and pulls his machete out of the corpse of one of the guys he just killed, Jason slowly walks up to Tommy, looks at him, and then raises his machete, with a flash of lightning and crash of thunder on the shot of his hand holding it making for quite a creepy image to me. In fact, this scene can almost be viewed as warm up for Jason's actual resurrection at the beginning of the next movie.

Such a large cast means a large body count and Friday the 13th Part V delivers on that score in spades. The two guys in the opening dream sequence get killed with a machete to the stomach and a knife to the throat. After Vic kills Joey (the aftermath of which is quite gruesome), the first real murders are of the greaser guys. Vinnie gets a road flare shoved in his mouth (which would be cool if the effect didn't look so fake) and Pete gets a simple throat slash. Billy gets an axe to the back of the head and Lana gets the same axe in her stomach. Duke, while watching Tina and Eddie have sex, gets stabbed in the stomach with a large knife. Tina gets her eyes gouged out by hedge sheers (we don't actually see this but we do see the gruesome aftermath), whereas Eddie gets a belt latched around his head and gets his skull crushed against a tree as Roy twists it. (That really had to hurt.) Anita, Demon's girlfriend, is killed off-camera but when we see her body, her throat is slashed. Demon gets trapped in the outhouse and eventually gets an iron bar shoved all the way through his torso. Junior gets beheaded while riding his motorcycle and Ethel gets a meat cleaver to her head. Jake is killed by a meat cleaver to the face (while we, again, don't actually see this, we do see the aftermath and there is also a still of a fake head with the cleaver in it). Violet gets stabbed by a machete up through her bed and into her back. Violet was originally supposed to get stabbed in-between the legs but when the MPAA nixed that, they changed it to where she gets the machete in her stomach (a lot of stomach stabbings here, aren't there?) When Pam and Reggie are being chased by Roy, they also discover a dead paramedic, Matt's body, who had a metal spike shoved through his forehead, and George's body, whose eyes had been gouged out. There's quite a bit of gore in these murders and to me, they have an even more mean-spirited feel to them than those in The Final Chapter.

The guy who is imitating Jason in this movie turns out to be Roy, a paramedic who appears briefly in just two scenes. The reason for his rampage is because Joey was his son and seeing him murdered pushed him over the edge. (Why then didn't he just go kill Vic, then?) The "murder mystery" built around it isn't a very thought-provoking one since there's a very blatant clue early on when Roy gives an evil look to the camera when he sees his son's dead body and the reveal at the end that he was the
killer is done very clumsily. Case in point, when I first actually watched the movie, at the end when Roy falls out of the barn and onto a bed of spikes, the mask comes off, and his face is revealed, my initial reaction was, "...I have no clue who that is." I believe they used a dummy for that closeup but whatever they did, it looks nothing like Dick Wieand, the actor who played Roy. And like I said, since the guy only appeared in two short scenes, I had no idea who they were talking about afterward until they mentioned that he was a paramedic. (I actually thought they were talking about Matt because that face kind of looked like him and that first time, I missed where his body is discovered.) Even more confusing is the fact that when Roy is dressed up like Jason during the climax, it's stuntman Tom Morga who's playing him, not Wieand (the two of them have very different physiques, which add to the confusion), and what's more, you'd swear that it was indeed Jason because he smashes through a door and gets up after being hit with a bulldozer, something that only Jason would be able to do. At the same time, though, if you're sharp, you'd be able to catch that it's not Jason because the marks on the hockey mask are blue instead of red and the dark blue jumpsuit he's wearing looks more like something you'd expect Michael Myers to wear. While it doesn't hurt the enjoyment of the movie, it is a rather poorly constructed and executed plot twist in the end.

I have mixed feelings about Harry Manfredini's music for this film. While it's not bad, I don't particularly care for the main title theme (the title itself, with the hockey mask exploding through Friday the 13th and A New Beginning appearing in front of it in blood red letters is cool) and I don't like how the, "ki, ki, ma, ma," sound now does come across like the often misconstrued interpretation of, "ch, ch, ah, ah," but I do, however, like a lot of his other cues, especially the eerie one that plays when Robin goes to bed right before she's killed. I also like the music that plays during the opening dream sequence and the final scene. This movie also only has one cue from any of the previous films, which is the frantic theme first heard in the original after Brenda got thrown through the window in front of Alice and, in fact, you hear it here at one point when a body does get thrown through a window. Nevertheless, all of the music still sounds like the type of music we'd expect to hear in a Friday the 13th film.

As I mentioned earlier, Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning did pretty well at the box-office but there was a swift backlash against it when audiences realized that Jason wasn't the killer. To this day, it still remains one of the most polarizing films in the franchise. As you've gathered, I think it's another solid entry: it's very fun to watch, has some great, memorable characters, a large body count, and some nice, fairly gory kills. While I was not so sure about it at first since going into it, I was aware that Jason isn't the killer, when I watched it a few times, I really warmed up to it. In fact, when I was starting to really get into the series, this ended up being the first one I saw all the way through. Anyway, to conclude, if you hate this movie for that reason, give it another chance. It's much better than you probably think it is.

Franchises: Friday the 13th. Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)

Here's a rule when it comes to horror movie franchises: whenever a movie is proclaiming itself to be the final chapter, it won't be. That certainly applies to this movie, which claimed to be the final chapter and yet, it's the fourth film in a franchise that, so far, encompasses eleven movies (twelve if you count Freddy vs. Jason) and counting. At the time, though, it was sincerely meant to be the last one. By this point, the slasher genre was beginning to peter out and as a result, as well as due to flack they were continuing to get from critics and many other groups who hated it, Paramount decided it was time to end the series. Of course, this movie ended up being a big hit (due no doubt to the proclamation that it was the last one) and they immediately decided to power on and make more. But, even though it doesn't live up to its title, this is still a great entry in the series. Believing it was the last one, they decided to pull out all the stops: you've got lots of brutal violence and gore, more nudity than had been in any of the films up to that point, some memorable characters, a very threatening Jason, and the ultimate death for him at the end.

It begins with a recap of the events of the first three films, centering around the campfire scene in Part 2 (the DVD scene selection cheekily calls this first scene, "Let's Review"). It's a great way to open the film and get you ready for what's coming. Then, we see Jason's hockey mask against a black background and Friday the 13th appears in blood-red letters in front of it when suddenly, The Final Chapter comes whooshing in from behind, exploding through the mask, and displaying itself front and center, as Harry Manfredini's main title theme goes crazy while the opening credits begin playing. It's the best title screen yet, perfectly setting the mood for an explosive final film. It really impressed my cousin and I when we came across the tape at my grandmother's house when we were about thirteen or so and put it in. As a result, this ended up being the first Friday the 13th I ever actually caught a glimpse of. We didn't get to watch it long, for reasons I'll describe later, but it was a great way to introduce someone to the series and get them excited and interested in it.

After the recap, the film really begins with the police and the paramedics removing all the bodies from the cabin and barn where Jason went on his bloody rampage in Part 3. Jason's body is taken to the nearby morgue, with everyone believing the psychopath to finally be dead. Of course, Jason immediately revives, kills an attendant and a nurse, and heads back to Crystal Lake. His targets this time are the Jarvis family, who live in a house in the woods near the lake, and a group of rowdy, sex-crazed teenagers who've rented the house next door.

The Final Chapter is an interesting film in the series because it introduces one of the few recurring characters other than Jason himself: Tommy Jarvis, who ultimately kills Jason at the end and would be the main character in the next two films. Here, he's a twelve or thirteen year-old horror film nerd played by Corey Feldman in one of his first lead film roles and, I must say, I really liked Feldman as Tommy. I didn't find him annoying at all, he was a bit nerdy but not too much, and during the climax where he and his sister Trish are running for their lives from Jason, he looks believably scared. Plus, I like that in order to subdue Jason, he does something similar to what Ginny did back in Part 2. He shaves his head and pretends to be Jason as a young boy, distracting him enough so that Trish can whack him. Even though at the end they believe that he's potentially lost his mind with how he violently attacked Jason even after he was clearly dead, we know that Tommy saw Jason's hand move and, in order to protect his sister, stabs him again and again with the machete. That movement was probably just a reflex action but I like that Tommy loves his sister enough to make mincemeat out of Jason to make sure that he is dead. And, of course, the final look that Tommy gives at the end, which follows the infamous, "ki, ki," playing, suggests that maybe he isn't quite right after all (and as we'll see in later films, he wasn't).

Trish, Tommy's sister, played by Kimberly Beck, seems like your typical nice girl next door and while she doesn't have much to do, you really get the feeling that she loves her family with how puts herself in extreme danger by letting Jason chase her in order to save Tommy. She's also tough enough to take a fall out a window, get back, and fight off Jason with a machete, which is just awesome. Mrs. Jarvis, played by Joan Freeman, is a real mystery in that she disappears about halfway through the film. We never see Jason kill her; all we see is her wander outside, see something off-camera (Jason, no doubt), and gasp in terror. From what I hear, there is a deleted scene on one of the newer DVD's that does show them finding her body. Other than that, there's not much to say about her other than she does a fair job as a loving mother. The most wasted character to me is Rob Dyer, played by E. Erich Anderson. He appears out of nowhere, claims to be hunting bear, and inquires about whether there are any people at the lake, making it obvious from the get-go that he's actually after Jason. We later learn that his reason is that he's the brother of Sandra, one of Jason's victims in Part 2, and has a score score to settle with our hockey-masked antihero. And what happens when he finally encounters him in the basement of the teens' rented cottage? He just stands there, screams, and lets Jason stab him to death with some gardening tool. I know Jason came out of the darkness and caught him by surprise but you'd think he'd at least fight back, instead of just screaming, "Oh, God, he's killing me! He's killing me!", going out like such a bitch after all that buildup. Some people have compared that to a real crime that happened around that time but I don't care; he should have at least put up a fight. This is the guy that killed your sister, man! If you're going to go down, at least go down swinging!

The teenagers who rent the house are pretty run-of-the-mill for the most part. There's Doug, the handsomest guy in the group, played by Peter Barton. Nothing to say about him other than he's one of the few guys I've seen get killed in the shower in a horror film. There's not much to say about Paul, played by Alan Hayes, either besides the fact that he has a real bitch of a girlfriend. Said girlfriend is
Samantha, played by Judie Aronson, who apparently has a really bad reputation as a slut in her community and more or less henpecks Paul to death. When all Paul is doing is being nice to one of the twins they meet up with, she gets all jealous and stomps outside, deciding to go skinny-dipping in the lake (and get killed). She's a real bitch. Sara, played by Barbara Howard, on the other hand, seems to be the typical nice girl... and then she dooms herself in this movie by having sex with Doug in the shower. We can't have
that, now, can we? My two favorite characters by far are Jimmy (Jimbo) and Ted, played by a young Crispin Glover and Lawrence Monoson. These two guys kill me. I love how depressed Jimmy is after he broke up with his girlfriend and moans about how horny he is, as well as how Ted taunts him by calling him a, "dead fuck", and asks every girl if they want to give, "Teddy bear a kiss." It's
hilarious. Jimmy's stand out moment is this crazy dance that he does to this rock song during the party, which is one of the funniest things I've ever seen. He looks like he's having a seizure! (Apparently, Glover made that up on the spot and actually danced like that at clubs around the time.) As for
the two twins they inexplicably run into, Tina and Terri, played by real-life twins Camilla and Carey More, all I can say is they're two English sluts. I can't even remember which one is which. I know Tina's the one who ends up sleeping with Jimmy but is she the one who gives Ted a taunting look as she dances with Paul? I don't know and, honestly, who cares?

Joseph Zito is the director this time. He'd just done a slasher movie called The Prowler, or Rosemary's Killer in some territories, which featured some great work by Tom Savini (the only reason to watch that particular film, I might add) and was what led to Savini doing the effects for this film. In addition, the look that Zito brings to this movie is different from the past two films. It seems to be a bit grittier, not as polished as the previous two, and, along with the sheer brutality of the killings, makes this one feel much darker and more mean-spirited than the ones before it. Also, this movie could easily be mistaken for a porno by someone who's channel-surfing and stumbles across it at certain points because there is a lot of nudity. All of the teens who rent the cottage and the twins get naked, some even more than once, making this one of the "barest" of the series along with Part V: A New Beginning and the 2009 film. (Incidentally, the nudity was the reason why my cousin and I had to turn it off at our grandmother's house lol.) Feeling that this was the last one, I guess they wanted to get as much skin as they possibly could into the film.

I've always felt that this is the movie where Jason is genuinely intimidating and scary. From his threatening movements to the violent kills and whatnot, Jason seems to be absolutely pissed here. Ted White, a veteran stuntman and body-double, plays him here and it's no secret that he did not feel comfortable doing the role and also had many fights with Joseph Zito. He disliked the experience so much that he made them take his name off the ending credits. Looking at the movie, though, I think White's hatred of Zito and his not really wanting to be there actually helped his performance. Whenever he attacks someone, it's absolutely ferocious and violent, giving the sense that Jason is filled with rage (given the week he's had in the events from Part 2 to this movie, he should be angry!) It seems like he does a lot of damage whenever he attacks someone here and the final chase between him, Trish, and Tommy is quite scary. It really feels like he's going to kill Tommy when he crashes through the window behind him and grabs him (White has said that he hated Corey Feldman, so he probably did want to kill him) and when Trish puts a hammer in his back, Jason pulls it out, immediately smashes through the door and throws the hammer back at her, chases them up the stairs, and furiously chops down the door to Tommy's room. When he's about to get in, Trish smashes a television over his head but that, of course, still doesn't stop him. After he gets back up, he relentlessly chases Trish to the next house, now determined more than ever to kill her, and eventually forces her to jump out a window to escape. One of my favorite moments is after that when Jason follows Trish back to the house and she starts swinging Rob's machete at him. You can see him try to fake her out at one point as he tries to take it away from her and when he does it again, she puts the blade right between his fingers. I like the curious, bewildered look he gives to his bleeding hand before continuing his attack.

Jason also makes a lot of noise in this film. He gives some fierce grunts when he kills the hitchhiker and he also yells quite a bit when he attacks Trish at the end. The most interesting moment with him is when he sees Tommy pretending to be him at a young age. Tommy keeps telling him, "Remember, Jason. Remember,"  and Jason looks real perplexed upon seeing this. You can see him blink behind
the eye-holes in the mask if you look closely and he also does a curious, dog-like head-turn. I always wonder what's going through his head at this moment and what he makes of what he's seeing. He tries to touch Tommy, maybe to see if he's real, when Trish hits him with the machete, knocking off the mask. That leads me to the design of Jason's face this time around which, to me, out of all the different looks he takes on throughout the series, looks the most like an adult version of the young Jason at the end of the first movie. (Since Savini was involved, I'm sure that's no coincidence.) The only thing about his design that perplexes me is that he seems to be having some manicure problems here. His fingernails are long, black, and jagged on the tips, and I've always wondered what the purpose of making look that way was. It does make him more disgusting but why didn't he have that problem before? Why did he just develop it now?

As I've said, the kills in this movie are some of the most brutal in the series. Hearing that he could kill Jason off, Tom Savini decided to return for this one and he joined some up-and-coming makeup artists like Kevin Yagher and Alec Gillis in creating the deaths. The first one is the death of Axel, a pervy morgue attendant who likes to watch women exercise videos with the sound off. Jason slices his throat with a surgical saw and then twists his head all the way around. He then kills Axel's girlfriend, Morgan, by stabbing her in the stomach with a knife and then slicing downward. He kills this fat lady who's hitchhiking by putting a knife through the back of her neck and out the front. That one always makes me wince, especially she's still got some of the banana that she was eating in her mouth at the time. Samantha is killed when she swims out to a raft on the lake and Jason explodes out of the water right next to her, shoving a knife up through raft and out her back. Paul follows her out to the raft, panics when he sees her dead body, and right before he gets to shore, Jason stabs him in the crotch with a harpoon gun and then pulls the trigger! Ow! Teri's death is interesting because it's all in shadow: we see Jason stab her in the back with what looks like a harpoon before throwing her against the side of the house (how did nobody hear that?) Poor Jimmy gets a particularly nasty death and continues to get brutalized even after he's dead. First, Jason puts a corkscrew in his hand, follows it up with a meat cleaver to the face, later nails his body by the hands to the outside of the house, and finally rips them off when he's chasing Trish. Jason must hate

Crispin Glover! (He was probably mad that he didn't come back for Back to the Future Part II later on.) He smashes through a window, grabs Tina, and throws her onto the roof of a car. Ted gets a butcher knife to the back of the head. As I said, Doug gets killed in the shower when Jason smashes his hand through the glass and crushes

his face. He also gets nailed to a wall later. (Jason has a habit of hanging his victims' bodies up, doesn't he?) Finally, Sara gets an axe to the chest. I've already talked about Rob's pathetic death but shortly afterward, Jason throws his body through a window of the Jarvis house and you see a hammer sticking out of the back of his head.

The death of Jason himself is a high point in this film and, like that of Mrs. Voorhees in the original, it's the best comeuppance he could receive after everything that he's done. After he's unmasked, Tommy puts a machete right in the side of his face. That would be where most movies would end the death but here, they go even further. Jason falls to his knees and then face forward with the machete still sticking out of his head, causing it to go all the way through his skull and come out the other side! It's such a wonderful, gory death that you really couldn't ask for a better send off for Jason.

One thing that I'm sure anybody who sees this film wonders about is the fate of the Jarvis family's dog, Gordon. He disappears for a while and then suddenly shows back up when Trish and Rob go over to investigate the rental house. Gordon goes upstairs and then, we hear him whine and he suddenly smashes through a window. The question is: did he jump or did Jason throw him through it? To me, it looks like he jumped out but I'll let you decide for yourself. On another note, when the kids are lost and looking for the way to the cabin, they pass by some gravestones, one of which happens to be Mrs. Voorhees'. I thought it was cool that they came up with that connection to the original but here's the thing: it says she died in 1979 instead of 1980. I always assumed that the original film took place in 1980 when it was released but then again, it was filmed in 1979, so I guess the date makes sense in that regard.

Harry Manfredini's music for this one comes across as much darker and a bit more somber than the ones he composed before. I like the main title theme, the music that plays during the climactic chase and battle with Jason, the eerie music that plays when Tommy gives that strange look at the end (which you first hear during the opening when the police are investigating and taking evidence and bodies from the crime scene of the previous film), and the ending credits music. Of course, we have much of the classic cues from past films here as well and, until Part VII, this would be the last time we'd hear a majority of them.

While it may have eventually ended up not being the last one, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter is definitely a fun, memorable film in the franchise and a great slasher movie in its own right, with some memorable characters, a darker tone and atmosphere than its predecessors, some truly grisly death scenes with some of the best makeup effects the series has ever seen, and a particularly ferocious Jason who goes out in a gloriously gory way. If this had actually been the last one, it would have made for a nice cap on the series. But, as we know, money talks and after the big success of this one, Paramount decided that there would be a lot more mayhem to come.