1985/18/87m
“If Jason still haunts you…You’re not alone.”
Director: Danny Steinmann / Writers: David Cohen, Martin Kitrosser & Danny Steinmann / Cast: Melanie Kinnaman, John Shepherd, Shavar Ross, Richard Young, Marco St. John, Corey Feldman, Carol Locatell, Jerry Pavlon, Juliette Cummins, Tiffany Helm, John Robert Dixon, Debisue Voorhees, Vernon Washington, Tom Morga.
Body Count: 21
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The parallel universe in which Friday the 13th exists is one where ones build, height and entire facial structure can change over a single day, where teen knowledge of current events is so minimal that they vacation in the same spot where dozens of murders have taken place a matter of hours earlier. Time jumps along at a merry old pace as well, as shown here, boy-hero of The Final Chapter Tommy Jarvis sprouts from a weedy 12-year-old into a super-buffed teen of no determinable age, but I’d guess between 16 and 18 - and only one year in real time since his last outing! A New Beginning is just that (unless you count the presence of old characters); Tommy is carted off to the Pinehurst Institute for troubled teens with bad hair.
No sooner does Tommy arrive then a particularly angry resident embeds an axe into the back of a porky fellow inmate. Shortly after, locals begin falling victim to a psycho killer. Is it Jason, who Tommy seems to keep seeing all over the show? The Sheriff seems to think so too, much to the chagrin of the dreadful actor who plays the mayor.
Murders continue and when only staff member Pam and cook’s grandson Reggie remain, the killer is revealed to be the hockey masked, machete bearing legend that is JV. Can Tommy save them and stop his arch-enemy all over again? And here comes the spoiler…
No. Because it’s not Jason, just some schmuck donning a hockey mask (complete with different design), taking revenge on Pinehurst and all who dwell there for the axe-murder…of his son!!! This is flawed for many reasons: if dad was so local, why was there no relationship between them? Porky’s killer was already arrested and carted off - why kill everyone but the assailant?
A New Beginning is commonly known as the worst of the Friday crop; which is a fair assessment on some levels - it’s one of the laziest films, with a body count so stupidly high (including dream sequences) that the killer virtually teleports his way around town, perfecting the chess game of slasher movie killers’ ability to always be hiding behind the right tree or picking the right bedroom to stalk a victim into…
According to the wonderful Crystal Lake Memories book, ex-porno director Steinmann’s intense paranoid moodswings made for a tense set. There’s a vicious streak to some of the homicidal dénouements, which personify abject cruelty as the troubled teens are brutally wasted: as with most of the earlier instalments, the MPAA insisted on several cuts, with the BBFC advising further shots removed.
It has the worst score out of all the movies, a swirling attack of strings that belongs in a made for TV hurricane movie and the most nudity in any of the series until the 2009 remake.
In the ‘for’ arena, Friday V showed a jump forward in terms of production quality; much of the grainy, underlit scenes of The Final Chapter have been replaced by clearer visuals. The pure 80’s-ness of it all is irresistibly amusing and Kinnaman makes for a gutsy heroine with the help of Ross, of Diff’rent Strokes, and Shepherd is suitably traumatised as Tommy.
Probably the cheesiest Jason venture (in spite of his absence) but definitely a fun ride if you don’t care about that minor fact.
Blurbs-of-interest: Juliette Cummins appeared in Deadly Dreams, Slumber Party Massacre II and Psycho III; Debisue Voorhees was in Appointment with Fear; Tiffany Helm is the daughter of Brooke Bundy, who was in A Nightmare on Elm Streets 3 and 4; Bob DeSimone (Billy) is the brother of Tom DeSimone, who directed Hell Night.
July 30th, 2010 at 2:56 pm
[...] two years later; Gillin and Browne both returned from Psycho II; Juliette Cummins was Robin in Friday the 13th Part V, Sheila in Slumber Party Massacre II and was also in Deadly Dreams; Jeff Fahey was in Fallen [...]