One year after the "Final Chapter" of the lucrative Friday the 13th franchise had come to pass,we were promised "A New Beginning",but served up a regurgitated,poxy load of the same ole formulaic cobblers trying to pass itself off as a psychological gialloesque endeavor instead.Yuen Biao would tear a ligament making all the stretches this film's producers expect of its audience.If Jason Takes Manhattan or Jason Goes to Hell were never made,this entry would stand as my least favorite of the series.There's all of one decent splatter piece,the horny machete fodder is less likeable than usual(there's at least six characters here that give Shelly from Pt. Three in 3D a run for the annoying samoleans)forcing the audience to pray for quicker,more inventive suffering and death for all of them which never comes due to the gunshyness of the studio after four movies worth of brutal censorship at the hands of the MPAA,Barry Cohen's screenplay is weaker than six granules of tea mix in a high school swimming pool,and director Steinmann's ineptitude is so glaring that even if those other factors were somehow remedied,I doubt he'd be able to pull the whole thing off(or find his own asshole without a search party,fpr that matter).I've heard some people claim to dig this one,in some cases more than the other releases,but frankly,that's just crazy talk right there.The fact that apart from a few dream sequences,Jason is almost entirely exempt from this dramamine in celluloid form doesn't even enter into it for me either.
That wasn't just some fat,obnoxious chocolate-pussed waterhead,that was my boy!
A twelve year old Tommy Jarvis(Feldman on weekend loan from The Goonies)witnesses two grave robbers boneheadedly ressurect Jason Voorhees(you REALLY musta dug this part,eh,Part Six?)only to turn out to be another nightmare in Tommy's shellshocked subconscious.Only the bespectacled twelve year old special effects nerd with a mean machete hand is now a bespectacled seventeen year old buff near-mute whose mask-making skills seem to have greatly diminished(No Savini,and it shows)while apparently teaching himself martial arts(?).Hey continuity,who needs ya,ya bastihd.Tommy's on his way to to a mental health facility with a laissez faire policy for young people who all seem to suffer from obnoxiousness and/or nymphomania.Chocolate-gobbling fat retarded orphan(Dominick Brescia)bickers with new wave headphones-wearing robot mime girl(Tiffany Helm) and sleeveless bitter loner chopping wood with an axe until an obnoxious white trash mother-son team pull up on a sidecar motorcycle to complain about two young loons caught fucking on their property.Afterwards the loner snaps from the fatso's pestering and buries his axe repeatedly into the chocky chewer,and when the ambulance arrives on the scene to clean up the bloody pieces,the paramedic Roy(Dick Wieand)'s facial expression screams out,"That's MY fat retarded kid mutilated under that sheet,and though I may have put the kid into foster care because I couldn't be bothered to raise him myself,I'm enraged enough to dress like Jason Voorhees while committing multiple copycat murders over it."But,nah,that couldn't happen.Afterall,Tommy is exhibiting strong signs of potential sociopathic behaviour carried over from the last movie,so when the bodies start hitting the floor,it's gotta be him.
Why,I'll be Grandpa's rocking chair in the woodchipper if'n ignorant,dirty hayseeds ain't funnier than Chris Reeve facedown on a conveyor belt.
Then the bodies start hitting the floor.Two throwback greasers get snuffed,and Roy's face pretty much confesses to the crime afterwards.Couldn't be.Then a Frank Oz-lookalike with a penchant for booger sugar that works at the halfway house and his waitress dame are made to be dead.Then the young sexaholics get whacked after a tryst in the forest.Then Pam(Melanie Kinnaman),a home supervisor,takes young black Reggie(Shavar Ross) who be's hangin' out,you know, because his grandfather is a stereotype...uhhh,janitor at the home,to see his ridiculous older brother Demon at the trailer park he drops anchor for his conversion van at.Yeah.A black guy who looks like Michael Jackson and Boogaloo Shrimp collided at high speed and lives in a trailer park.He dies,his girlfriend dies,the hayseed sidecar son gets beheaded,then his batshit crazy ma eats a meatcleaver.Back at the home,J-j-j-jake the stuh-stuh-stutterer(Billy Ba-ba-Babbitt anybody?)stuh-stuh-strikes out with Robin and eats the same meatcleaver.Robin gets skewered from under the bed like so many other kids in the series.Violet's too busy listening to Depeche Commode or some equally annoying gay synth pop practicing her robotics and mimicry when she gets shanked in the labonza and choked the fuck out.Lil' homebody discovers the growing pile of bodies,then faces off against what appears to be Jason Voorhees,back from the dead,with Pam.While cornered in the barn,they're joined by Tommy who gets slashed across the breadbasket but still manages to knock the would be Jason out of the top of the barn onto a bed of spikes that conveniently lies below for when farmers,you know,wanna impale somebody on spikes or somethin'.It was Roy the ambulance driver all along.Son of a bitch,how didn't I see that coming.Afterwards,Pam visits Tommy at the hospital,but he's gone and the window's open.Oh wait,he's poised behind the door,wearing Roy's hockey mask(how'd he get his hands on that,by the way)and ready to take up the Voorhees mantle from here on in.Or not,you know,whatever you idiot movie patrons wanna do with this,it's cool.
What's that you say?Something wrong with her eyes?I hadn't noticed for some tits...uhh,reason.
Director Steinmann had a better time keeping Linda Blair in the frame in 1984's Savage Streets.You'll remember Shavar Ross from the time he and Arnold Drummond had the paedo party at the bike shop in Diff'rent Strokes.This movie is probably a more painful memory for him.Dominick "chocolate bar" Brescia went on to 1988's Evil Laugh,and that's about it.The aptly named Debisue Voorhees also appeared in 80's exploitation fare like Avenging Angel and Appointment with Fear.Tiffany Helm who plays the spun out new wave mime,Violet,went on to Reform School Girls.Tiff and Debisue have the dubious distinction of sharing the J.V.I.L.F.(Jason Victim I'd Like to Fuck)Award for this entry.Neither one's a Marta Kober,I'll say that much.Miguel Nunez who planted his genre flag,looking equally ridiculous and dated,in Return of the Living Dead,went on to Carnosaur 2 and the hilarious Black Dynamite.The best thing to come out of this sequel,is that the huge profit it returned virtually guaranteed the next movie in the series,one of my favorites,which we'll examine here soon.If the scale had a half wop,this movie would deserve it.As it stands though,one is the score,and that's mighty generous.
"Great,now you show up,after an hour and a half of audience cries and/or snores!"
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