Portly Adolescence

Rating: B+

1984’s supposedly Final Chapter, which ironically spawned a new trilogy, finally gets us caught up to 1984, in the series’ timeline, and now everything is totally 80s. Goofy 80s clothes, a love for primitive tech gadgets, and notable appearances from Crispin Glover and Corey Feldman. 

Here we’ve gotten away entirely from the core team of the first movie with director Joseph Zito taking the helm. Zito directed a bunch of grindhouse low budget films in the 70s and 80s, most notably early WWII-themed slasher The Prowler. Zito’s version of Friday is a lot colder, crueler, and meaner than the goofy fun of the last few movies, which helped make the film one of the fan favorites in the series. 

While we’re no longer right by Crystal Lake, I think, we’re still in the woods and cinematographer João Fernandes does a great job at finally getting across the unknown menace. All the exteriors have this really dark, chilly look from the hills filled with dense foliage to fog rolling over the lake. There’s definitely more attention paid to atmosphere here and less on continual jump scares. 

At this point, Friday the 13th reaches the point of stopping to care about teenage protagonists as anything other than stuff for Jason to kill. The film seems to actively despise Crispin Glover and his friends (most of whom are total assholes) and invalidates the experience of the virginal “final girl” stereotype who gets immediately killed after admitting she’s fallen in love with a guy and loses her virginity. The kills are more simple and brutal (Glover getting a wine cork to the hand and butcher knife to the face is a notable one) while the sexual content comes back with a gratuitous vengeance (there are two skinny dipping scenes!). 

Instead, the focus is put on a mother, daughter, and son (an excellent Feldman who reminds you he was a gifted child star) living out in the woods next to the teenagers who are there for a vacation. The mother’s going through a divorce, the kid is obsessed with making monster masks, and the daughter starts a flirtation with a mysterious camper who is out to take revenge against Jason. Though the teens are just there to die, the film succeeds by finally giving us characters we’re invested in.

Feldman is eventually the one who “kills” Jason with a machete through the face in a particularly gruesome sequence. While Friday the 13th till this point definitely lacks any character connections like the Halloween and Nightmare films sometimes had, it does seem appropriate for a character that is essentially make up effects artist Tom Savini to kill off his creation. 

The Jason here was played by a nearly 60-year-old Ted White who famously was John Wayne’s stunt double in many films. He plays a very brutal Jason who starts to become more of a monstrous bogeyman in this film than the wilderness hillbilly. His hands are more corpse-like with these thick, ugly fingernails and his face is truly ghoulish. 

During this one I was thinking about why these movies always have that part where the final girl character sees the bodies of everyone that Jason has taken the time to lovingly display for her to find. Plot wise this is to get the final girl caught up to speed because she’s usually kept in the dark until the last 20 minutes or whatever. But why does Jason go to the trouble of setting up the bodies everywhere? What’s the point? I have to give this some more thought. 

-James P.

Next up: Jason Lives, or does he? 

Body Count: 13