45. Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988)

Directed by John Carl Buechler

Young Tina telekinetically dismantles a pier that her abusive, alcoholic father is standing on, causing him to drown in the lake. As a result, she spends her youth in a mental hospital. Now that she is a young adult, her shitty psychiatrist, Dr. Crews, thinks it is a good idea for her to join him at a cabin on Crystal Lake to work through her issues. Really though, he just wants to exploit her telekinetic abilities. Also, Tina’s mother, who apparently gets her hair done by a dog groomer, tags along for added decoration.

Meanwhile a B-story unfolds about some young people having a birthday party on the lake.

Tina telepathically frees Jason from his watery grave, and he gets straight to killing. And either he has opened up a charge account at True Value, or he is just finding all kinds of shit in the woods, because he uses a new tool for every murder he commits.

After the movie drags on for what feels like an eternity, Tina kills Jason with an electrical wire, Carrie style.

Compared to the movie preceding it, Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood is unimpressive. It is an obvious nod to movies about telekinesis like Carrie, and Firestarter, with Tom Savini-level practical effects thanks to director John Carl Buechler, who is a special effects master and has done work on at least one movie in every slasher series (and directed the first Troll movie). According to the DVD commentary, Buechler said that he was stifled by producers who demanded many of the scenes to be cut or heavily edited for their graphic content. One such infamous scene features Jason beating a woman in a sleeping bag against a tree. It is apparent that the conflict between director and producers hurt the film, because the audience is left with a rambling, dragging, derivative mess.

In direct contrast to Jason Lives, The New Blood wastes so much time. The beginning of the film is spent recapping the previous three movies, which is always a bad omen. We also have a return to nudity to make up for the lack of originality. The only novel thing they could come up with was to make a jazzy remix of the “Ch Ch Ch” whispers.

It also looks worse than Jason Lives. Although the practical effects are really advanced, the quality of the film is lower, and the style is more primitive. This movie is a step back for the series.

44. Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI (1986)

Directed by Tom McLoughlin (who also wrote and directed One Dark Night)

For the second Friday the 13th of the year, back in July, I watched a Jason double feature. The first movie in the double feature, Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI, continues where A New Beginning leaves off. Jason Lives is one of my favorite in the series because the cinematography is excellent for being this type of movie, and it is really entertaining to watch. You can tell the director and crew had a lot of fun making this thing. A soundtrack by Alice Cooper and slapstick gags performed by children add some levity to its morbid subject matter.

Tommy Jarvis and a pal who looks like a nervous Daniel Stern head to the town formerly known as Crystal Lake on a mission to find the place Jason has been buried. The residents of Crystal Lake have decided to give their town a makeover and rename it Forest Green to quote, “forget about that Jason stuff.” (Because a name change is going to erase the citizens’ memories of dozens of people being murdered in the woods for the better part of a decade.) Tommy and pal find Jason’s grave in the local cemetery. They dig up his body in an attempt to burn it, but magical lightning strikes, reanimating his maggot-infested corpse.

“What does he think I am? A fart head?”

Tommy goes to the police for help, but they lock him up for being a nutcase pulling a prank, then kick him out of town. Meanwhile, Jason kills a bunch of people in the woods, in highly ridiculous ways like punching through bodies with his bare hand. When the cops start to see a body count, they think it’s Tommy taking his prank waaay too far, so they re-arrest him. The sheriff’s daughter Megan develops a crush on Tommy, and blinded by limerence, believes his crazy necromancy story. She breaks him out of jail, and uses her badass sports car to try to help him hunt down Jason.

The sheriff gets word that some shit is going down at Camp Crystal Lake, I mean, Forest Green, and shows up to find a bunch of traumatized children and a gory murder scene. Surprise, surprise. Tommy and Megan show up at camp to try drowning Jason in the lake again (because that worked so well all those years ago…). They end up chaining Jason to a boulder that anchors him to the bottom of the lake. Clearly a metaphor for capitalism.

This movie inspires more questions than it answers. For example:

Who paid for Jason’s headstone?  I can only imagine a Boy Scout troop sitting behind a folding table at the entrance to the local Wal-Mart asking for donations to the Jason Voorhees Burial Fund.

How many years in a row have people been murdered at this summer camp? And they keep trying to have camp here? At this point it’s just irresponsible.

What is the symbolism behind all of the red-headed women in this movie?

Super sarcasm aside, this is one of the best movies in this series. Not only is the quality of the film excellent, but there are visual motifs that add an air of sophistication to this late-stage horror franchise sequel. One motif is a sort of chiaroscuro effect: the use of contrasting shadows and light in all of the night-time scenes. There is also a noticeable blue and peach color scheme.

This movie has a healthy dose of humor as well. It’s the first time in the series that campers actually stay at Camp Crystal Lake, and the children are put to good use for comic relief. In one scene we see a child asleep in his bed clutching a copy of Sartre’s No Exit. When a counselor tells the kids to hide from the murderer, they dive onto the floor in exaggerated, slapstick movements, and then make jokes about their own mortality.

“So, what were you going to be when you grew up?”

The director is a master of time economy. This movie is the shortest F13 film,  which works in its favor because every second is put to good use, and the movie never drags or becomes boring. Also noteworthy is that there is not a single naked woman. There are a couple of benign sex scenes, but again, the movie does not waste too much time on them.

If you are not convinced of this movie’s greatness yet, I’ll leave you with this: The trivia section of its IMDB page says that it inspired Kevin Williamson to write Scream, and that Tom McLoughlin was invited to direct it, but declined. I’m too lazy to verify if this is true or not, but it’s a nice thought.

Someone is not a fan.

25. Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985)

Directed by Danny Steinmann

I watched Friday the 13th: A New Beginning this past Friday the 13th because that’s what one is supposed to do, right? This was the only one in the series I had not yet seen. I think. But if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all, really.

A New Beginning finds an older Tommy Jarvis being released from a lengthy stay at a mental hospital and moving into a halfway house for emotionally disturbed teens…located in the woods. This halfway house is not very responsible because it allows a disturbed young man to chop wood with an axe, which he uses to murder a fellow patient who annoys him. As if these fragile people’s nerves weren’t already bad enough, a random redneck who lives in the woods keeps harassing them too.

Am I Debbie Harry, Siouxsie Sioux or Madonna?

Even though the violent patient with the axe has been arrested and carted off, the teens start disappearing from the halfway house (we see that someone is murdering them in the woods.) Tommy starts having hallucinations of Jason, whom he killed many years before. He’s on edge, and karate kicks anyone who makes him nervous. Turns out he was right to be paranoid because the hockey-masked killer finally reveals himself for the climactic showdown.

In my opinion, this installment begins the downward trajectory of the series (with Jason Takes Manhattan being the exception). Crispin Glover’s dancing in Part IV is a hard act to follow, and this offering does not cut the mustard. They tried to add more blood and gore to this one, I think to give it an edge, but to no avail. Even the ridiculous outhouse scene can’t save it. 

I have to be honest, though. Out of the three major slasher series (Halloween, Friday the 13th, and Nightmare on Elm Street), Friday the 13th is my least favorite. I’m not really sure why, but it’s probably because I lived in a suburban neighborhood as a kid and never went camping, so I was firmly in Michael Myers’ territory.

Let’s take a stroll down memory lane to the best this series has to offer:

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/ocgj9tewHso?rel=0