No lie, Friday the 13'th: The Final Chapter was actually supposed to be the conclusion to the Voorhees saga. Paramount was getting major heat from critics and parents group at the time about violence in film, and I think the studio execs were embarrassed to be associated with such blatant exploitation fare. So, with this being the "end", they decided to go out with a bang and, in doing so, hoards of appreciative fans ended up with the Rolls Royce of the franchise.
If you read my reviews of Part II and III, you know how much I despise the "previously on Friday the 13'th" recaps that kick off both of those films. The Final Chapter has one as well but, since this is supposed to be Jason's final film, the opening clip show feels less like padding and more like a "greatest hits" package. It does a really great job building Jason up as an unstoppable modern urban legend.
The story proper picks up just moments after the conclusion of Part III. Police and ambulances swarm Higgins Haven, finding a plethora of dead bodies and one goalie-masked killer laid out in the barn. Instead of using a series of boring, static establishment shots, director Joseph Zito immediately gives the film a big-budget pedigree with a circling helicopter, an ambitious crane shot and then a single, travelling take that nicely documents the surrounding carnage.
The early goings of the film are really well-paced and the tension ramps up quickly. Aside from a few jump-scares featuring Jason's filthy, clawed mitts falling unexpectedly into frame, Zito and screenwriter Barney Cohen show considerable restraint in getting our favorite killing machine up and about. They even go so far as to include a few blink-or-you'll-miss-it visual clues, such as the blanket shifting incrementally on top of the Jason's body and a cloud of breath as he's slid inside the refrigerated morgue.
The entire hospital sequence sees Zito and Cohen lavish considerable attention on otherwise disposable characters. As far as I can tell, Bruce Mahler's Axel is the first appearance of the "lackadaisical coroner" trope in film history. He's nonplussed, unprofessional and gross, at one point casually resting his half-eaten sandwich on Jason's dead body as he signs the release papers. The scene where he reacts to Jason's limb falling down on him and his snoggin' partner echoes the audience's sentiments perfectly.
But alas, we can't have Jason in repose for the entire film, and pretty soon he gets the jump on poor, oblivious Axel. It's at this point when we realize that special effects maestro Tom Savini is back, delivering two memorable kills back-to-back. First off he does the ol' "saw n' twist" on Axel while he's perving out over an aerobics vid, which, side note, used to pass for erotica back in those heady pre-internet days. Then, before we get a chance to recover, Jason fillets poor Nurse Morgan in his own riff on the pinning board kill in Halloween.
At this point we meet this movie's fresh crop of dead teens a-walkin'. Thankfully, they're all well-cast and none of them reach the annoyance level of Shelly in Part III. Right out of the gate, Crispin Glover's Jimmy is immediately sympathetic and likable, especially with his so-called bro Ted (played to cocky perfection by Lawrence Monoson), selling him down the river as a "dead fuck."
Next up, us Friday fiends are treated to a little tidbit of lore-building. En route to their Air B&B, the kids drive by the gravestone of one Pamela Voorhees and, for the first time, Jason's beloved mum is finally given a first name. As cock-eyed as the continuity is for this series, I still appreciate any reference to Betsy Palmer's Mrs. Voorhees as the progenitor of all this madness. Seeing her tombstone, you can't help but wonder who requisitioned but, sadly, the series never followed up on this intriguing question.
As the kids motor towards a slightly portly, neo-hippy hitch-hiker, she reveals an initially-charming sign which reads "CANADA...AND LOVE." But, when they blow past her with Teddy screaming "Hey, honey...you got a sister?!?", she promptly swivels it around to show a decidedly-antithetical "FUCK YOU" scrawled on the flip-side. It's a rare moment of cynical levity, especially in light of what happens next.
After the hitcher-hiker takes a load off to nosh on a 'nanner, Tom Savini goes to work again. We see Jason sneak up behind the hiker and jam a knife right through the back of her neck, which then emerges from her throat. It's a pretty darned convincing illusion that actually trumps the now-kinda-sketchy-looking Kevin Bacon "arrow through the neck" kill in Part I.
With Jason slowly and inexorably making his way back to his 'ol stompin' grounds at Camp Crystal Lake, we're then introduced to the Jarvis clan. This includes perpetually-sweaty mum Tracy (Joan Freeman), her older daughter Trish (Kimberly Beck) and younger son Tommy (Corey Feldman). Their collective family dynamic is such a refreshing change to see in one of these movies and the three actors inhabit their roles very well. Just the presence of a non-annoying and very likable kid in the story is more than enough to raise the stakes exponentially.
On the topic of Corey Feldman, a lot of people give him shit nowadays but, back then, he really raised the bar for child actors. He's earnest, natural and incredibly charismatic. His "reactions" to seeing skinny-dippers and horny teens making out are so genuine that you begin to doubt that the film-makers spared him the "horror" of witnessing such things. Clearly inspired by Tom Savini, Tommy's aptitude for special make-up effects is already so advanced, you're left wondering why the kid isn't working in Hollywood already.
When the Jarvismobile breaks down, backpacker Rob Dier (E. Erich Anderson) shows up, first providing a fake-out scare before affecting repairs on the car. In a nice nod to continuity, it's revealed that Rob is actually the brother of Sandra, who was skewered along with her boyfriend in Part II. Just don't think about it too much, 'cuz the events of that film, along with Part III and The Final Chapter, all technically occur within four days of each other! Whoopsie!
Despite being some rando that just wandered out of the woods, the Jarvis clan immediately adopt Rob, with Tommy oddly entreating him to "see something cool up in my room" while Trish seems immediately smitten with him. In time, Rob explains that he's on the hunt for his sister's killer, an interesting story element that's sadly scarcely explored.
Segueing back to our group of long-in-the-tooth teens, we see that they're now partying it up across the road from the Jarvis residence. After we're treated to Crispin Glover's immortal spazz-out dance to the melodic strains of Lion's "Love Is a Lie", we're forced to sit through some pretty tired drama to get the kids to split up. When Samantha (Judie Aronson) sees her boyfriend Paul (Alan Hayes) flirting with horny twin Tina (Camilla More), she does what any normal women would do: she goes skinny-dipping in a cold New Jersey lake in the dead of night to hang out alone on an inflatable raft.
Bless Judie Aronson, what a trooper. Even though most of her lines are delivered with a pronounced "deer-in-the-headlights" quality, she deserves ample praise for suffering for what we horror fans legitimately consider to be art. By all accounts, it was absolutely freezing when they shot this sequence and the poor girl ended up with hypothermia. Stuntman Ted White, who played Jason, was so incensed by director Joe Zito's treatment of Aronson that they nearly came to blows over it. In fact, their on-set relationship was so contentious that White asked for his name to be struck from the film's credits.
It might not be much consolation to Aronson, but the scene itself is one of the most iconic in slasher cinema history. Jason pops out of the water, grabs her shoulder and then skewers her from down below with a knife in a shocking and squirm-inducing moment. Minus Aronson's inadvertently goofy facial expression, it's one of the most harrowing and intense kills of the entire series. Mere moments later, Tom Savini piles on the horror by having Jason stab n' launch Paulie right in the crotch with a spear gun. Yikes!
Side note, I know the film was shot in California, specifically around Topanga Canyon, but at least the producers tried to make it look like it was set in New Jersey. Whereas the environs of Part III were sun-baked and sunny and "Crystal Lake" was more of a duck pond, the trees in this film look temperate and the water looks legit cold and sludgy. Also, bonus points for drowning the finale with a massive downpour, which mirrors the miserable endgame conditions of both Part I and II and really ramps up the atmosphere.
What follows is an unrelenting tsunami of kills that range from subtle to creative to downright vicious. As if to lull us into thinking that the film-makers are going soft, chaste twin Terri (Carey More) is shishkebab-ed in stylish shadow and mom Tracy is just shown reacting to some imminent threat. I think director Joe Zito just wanted to show a bit of restrain so that, when the shit really hits the fan, it'll be extra-shocking.
And we don't have have long to wait for the jolts, and the bodies, really start to pile up. After Ted's pushy, obnoxious attitude unsurprisingly fails him, Jimmy gets the girl with his understated charms. Unfortunately, he commits the cardinal sin of bragging about this conquest and he immediately gets (cork) screwed and then takes a cleaver to the mush. A few beats later, Jimmy's "dance partner", Tina, is unceremoniously yanked through the window and hurled down onto a parked car. Her impact is palpable and you can't help but wince when she caroms off that roof, blowing out the windows before crashing to the ground.
Of all the characters, only Lawrence Monoson's "Teddy Bear" gets on my nerves, but he's just a minor blip when compared to past irritants. As soon as he tries to coerce Terri into kissing him and then exclaims "What a pig!" while watching a nude woman dance in a vintage stag movie, the dude immediately goes to the top of my shit list. Ergo, I'm not particularly broken up when he inevitably gets his gourd perforated. This also gives Zito and Cohen a chance to a sly commentary about violence in film as his blood runs down the pristine white projector screen.
We then get to spend a few fleeting moments with potential paramours Sara (Barbara Howard) and Doug (Peter Barton), the latter of which signed onto the film only because his starring television vehicle, The Powers of Matthew Star, had just been cancelled. Seeing Jason mash Barton's impossibly-pretty face into the shower wall is a particularly grisly moment. And even though Barbara Howard's performance makes her sound like she was already struck in the head with a two-by-four, she's still comes across as earnest and sweet and it comes as a genuine shock when Jason suddenly pops up to axe her a question.
Moments later, we get to see the big "showdown" we've all been anticipating, which pretty much boils down to Rob back-tracking down to the basement for some stupid reason and then getting hoe-ed to death. His warning screams of "HE'S KILLING ME!" to Trish might seem scoff-worthy to some but Joseph Zito wanted to include the line after reading a newspaper article about a man being attacked on the streets of New York City and screaming: "Please stop hurting me, please stop killing me!" So disturbed was he by the concept of a victim trying to reason with his crazed assailant, that he decided to include a similarly-disturbing sentiment, resulting in a scene more memorable and harrowing than your average slasher slaying.
As you watch the film's climax, it's pretty evident that Zito and Cohen actually care about the Friday continuity and tropes. For example, Jason still delights in hurling dead bodies through picture windows, shot-putting poor Rob into the living room at one point. His penchant for leaving his kills strewn around the house to ramp up the terror level is also on point. In an amusing twist, this actually comes back to bite Jason in the ass when he's forced to rip poor Crispin Glover's body down from out of the doorway like some cheap Halloween decoration while pursuing Trish.
At this point, we get our first good look at veteran stuntman Ted White's take on Jason and it's well worth the wait. Jason is an absolute goon in this movie, effortlessly crashing through doors like some murderous Kool-Aid man. Still human at this stage, the dude has a relentless lumbering run, like the slasher equivalent of the killer truck in Steven Spielberg's Duel. The dude's also distressingly-good at hurling deadly weapons, scaring the crap out of Trish, as well as the audience, with several close calls.
The goalie mask is another example of the film-maker's attention to detail, serving up silent testimony to all of the cumulative damage he's sustained during this film and the two previous entries. Jason's misshaped head and drooping eye hint at a future unmasking that most sane people would wisely dread, but has every die-hard horror fiend rubbing their hands together in anticipation.
As for his main opponent, I think Kimberly Beck is one of the best final girls in Friday's storied history. The character takes an absolute beating during the course of the film, even desperately launching herself out of a two-story window at one point. But what makes Trish so amazing is that she gives even better than she gets, smoking her assailant repeatedly in the head with a hammer and then braining him in the melon with a computer monitor. The scene where she virtually splits Jason's hand down the middle with a machete gives Tom Savini another chance shine, and the effect he produces is incredibly gnarly.
I've already gone way too far into this review before talking about the music, so let me rectify that right now. From the twinkling, funereal tones of the film's first few establishing shots, to the driving strings and chill-inducing stings of the final battle with Jason, the Harry Manfredini's orchestral score is, arguably, one of the best in all of horror history. Yes, certain elements are highly-evocative of Bernard Hermann's Psycho score, but his arrangements are still wildly original and ambitious and really serve to elevate the intense action and put the viewer's nerves on edge.
There's no better example of this than in the film's final moments, when Tommy suddenly appears in his L'il Jason cosplay, confusing the murderogre long enough for Trish to remove his mask. This is a great scene since it hearkens back to Ginny's fake-out in Part II and it also gives Tom Savini an opportunity to show us an adult Jason that's a direct evolution of his memorable appearance as a boy in Part I. With his twisted maw, drooping eye and skewed ear, this makeup is the best unmasked Jason in the entire series, save maybe Parts VI and VII.
From thereon in, it's the Corey Feldman show. His performance brings Tommy's arc full circle from a wide-eyed kid interested in monster effects to an actual homicidal monster. Between him silhouetted in the door of Trish's recovery room and the dead look in his eyes when she hugs him, the vaguely-meta suggestion being communicated really lingers with the audience.
Clearly the film-makers are suggesting that the l'il tyke will take up Jason's murderous mantle and a very large part of me really wishes that they' d followed up on this whole "Dark Tommy" story line. Sure, they kinda flirted with the idea a little bit in Part V, but it's terribly mishandled and movie itself is * spoiler alert * a giant piece of shit. Plus, if they'd leaned into that particular story line, we might not have gotten the glorious heights of Part VI...but I'm getting ahead of myself here.
So, even though Friday the 13'th: The Final Chapter doesn't break radically from the tried-n'-true formula, it's a natural "conclusion" to the series with a presentation made razor-sharp by a legitimately-talented director, a decent script and a winning cast of characters. As such, fans flocked to it in droves, so much so that even those snobby Paramount execs had to admit that this cash cow still had the ability to fuel their raging cocaine habits.
I give The "Final" Chapter three stars outta five with a massive tilt up toward the window that Trish just flew out of!
