FRIDAY THE 13th: THE FINAL CHAPTER (1984)

Studio:       Paramount Pictures
Director:    Joseph Zito
Writer:       Barney Cohen, Bruce Hidemi Sakow
Producer:  Frank Mancuso, Jr.
Stars:     Kimberly Beck, Peter Barton, Corey Feldman, Erich Anderson, Crispin Glover, Alan Hayes, Camilla and Carey More

Review Score: 

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Summary:

Young Tommy Jarvis is forced to fight Jason Voorhees when the infamous killer threatens a new group of unsuspecting teenagers. 

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Police officers process the crime scene at Higgins Haven. The dead body of Jason Voorhees is taken to the Wessex County Hospital where morgue attendant Axel puts the corpse in a cold room after arranging a rendezvous with Nurse Morgan. Nurse Morgan abruptly ends her makeout session with Axel and leaves the room when Jason’s dead hand falls off the gurney and touches her. Shortly thereafter, Jason comes back to life and twists Axel’s head with a bone saw. Jason then finds Nurse Morgan and slits open her stomach.

Trish Jarvis jogs in the woods with her mother before they return to the cabin where they live with Trish’s brother Tommy and his dog Gordon. Mrs. Jarvis tells her kids that six teenagers have rented the cabin next door.

On the drive into the country, Ted teases his friend Jimmy Mortimer about Jimmy’s bad luck with women while Paul drives the station wagon. In the car with them are Doug and his girlfriend Sara, as well as Paul’s girlfriend Samantha. They stop in front of a cemetery where the grave of Pamela Voorhees is visible with the dates 1930-1979. They also ignore a hitchhiker along the road who is then stabbed through her throat by Jason.

Trish and Tommy introduce themselves to the teenagers when their station wagon arrives next door. Sara and Samantha have a private conversation about sex. From his bedroom across the way, Tommy watches Samantha undress through the window until his mother enters and pulls the blind.

As the teens hike to a picnic spot the next day, they meet bike riding twins Tina and Terri. Sara goes back alone for the car while everyone else walks ahead to Crystal Point. Trish and Tommy pull up to the spot at Crystal Point where the teenagers are skinny-dipping. Their car breaks down on the drive home. While Tommy works under the hood, a backpacker named Rob Dyer lends the boy a hand. Once the car is fixed, Trish offers Rob a ride. Back at the Jarvis home, Tommy takes Rob up to his bedroom to show Rob his homemade monster mask collection. Later, Trish walks Rob out to a hiking trail.

The teens return to their cabin for a party. Ted strikes out with Tina, who instead takes an interest in Paul. Upset when Paul returns Tina’s advances, Samantha goes outside alone. Samantha swims out to a raft where she is killed when Jason rises from the water.

Paul has second thoughts about dancing with Tina and goes outside to look for Samantha. Tina then decides to hook up with Jimmy. They go upstairs to have sex. Paul swims out to the raft and is harpooned by Jason after discovering Samantha’s body. From his campsite in the woods, Rob hears Paul’s death scream and moves to investigate. Rob looks back towards the camp and sees someone in his tent. He returns and finds his rifle destroyed.

Ted finds a vintage reel of nude dancing that he runs on the film projector. Terri decides to leave by herself when Tina insists on staying with Jimmy. Terri is killed in the rain while getting on her bicycle. Doug and Sara go to their room.

Mrs. Jarvis comes home and discovers that the power is out. She is then attacked while searching outside for Gordon. Trish and Tommy return to the cabin. Trish tells Tommy to fix the lights while she looks outside for their mother.

Jimmy comes downstairs and brags to Ted about having sex with Tina. Jason puts a meat cleaver into Jimmy’s face while he is alone in the kitchen. Tina looks outside and sees that her sister’s bike is still there. While she is at the window, Jason smashes through the glass from outside and throws Tina onto the roof of the station wagon below.

Trish finds Rob at his campsite. She learns that Rob’s sister Sandra was killed by Jason Voorhees and Rob is now stalking Jason for revenge. They rush back to the house to find Tommy, who fixes the power in the meantime.

Jason kills Ted through the projection screen at the teens’ cabin. Doug is killed in the shower. Jason chases Sara and puts an axe in her chest.

Trish and Rob return to Tommy at the Jarvis cabin. Jason sabotages the phone line. Trish and Rob tell Tommy to stay put while they investigate the cabin next door. Tommy finds Rob’s collection of newspaper clippings and learns the history of Jason and Crystal Lake.

While Rob searches the neighboring cabin’s basement, Trish finds the bodies upstairs. She rushes into the cellar where Jason suddenly attacks Rob. Trish flees, but foolishly returns to find Rob’s dead body. Jason reaches through the cellar stairs and grabs Trish’s ankle. She breaks free by hacking at his arm with a machete. Trish discovers more of the bodies as she runs back to her brother.

As Trish and Tommy nail doors and windows shut, Jason throws Rob’s body through the window from outside. Jason reaches in and grabs Tommy, but Trish breaks his grip with a claw hammer to Jason’s neck. Trish and her brother hide in Tommy’s room. When Jason breaks through the bedroom door, Trish knocks him out by smashing a television over his head. Trish tiptoes over his body, but Jason recovers and chases her back to the other cabin. Trish runs upstairs to a dead end where she is forced to jump out a window onto the ground below.

Back at the Jarvis cabin, Tommy shaves his head in order to resemble a young Jason. Trish returns and Jason follows her. While Jason struggles with Trish, Tommy comes downstairs and distracts him by pretending to be Jason’s younger self. Trish attacks Jason from behind with the machete and sees his face when the mask is knocked off. Tommy picks up the machete that his sister drops and drives it into Jason’s head. Jason collapses onto the upturned blade face first and it drives further into his skull. Jason recovers while the siblings embrace. When Tommy sees that Jason lives, he picks up the machete and continually hacks at Jason while shouting, “die!”

From her hospital bed, Trish asks the doctor about her brother. The doctor tells her that Tommy was acting under duress and should ultimately be okay. Tommy is sent into her room to reunite with his sister. As they embrace, Tommy stares wide-eyed and emotionless.

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Review:

“The Final Chapter,” which of course this movie was not even close to being, is the first installment of the “Friday the 13th” saga to feature a definable story with more meat on its bones than just hapless teenagers meeting the pointed end of a killer’s weapon.  It also has one of the series’ most capable casts with a roster of names whose resumes did not begin and end with a toe tag courtesy of Jason Voorhees.  That includes Crispin Glover providing a distinctly “Crispin Glover” moment with a dance that resembles a coked out Fraggle channeling Elaine Benes.

As usual, a gaggle of oversexed and boozing teenagers brings their city slicker partying ways to a country cabin that sits a bit too close to Jason’s haunted stomping grounds.  This time around, the neighbor in the cabin next door is a single mother raising her two bright and respectful children in a forest near a cursed summer camp.  About to begin cresting towards the zenith of his child star fame, Corey Feldman stars as creature feature junkie and aspiring FX magician Tommy Jarvis, a character who featured prominently in two more “Friday the 13th” movies.  Tommy’s sister Trish is the well-mannered young woman who may as well be wearing a sweatshirt emblazoned with the words “Final Girl” when she appears onscreen.

Yet like a late night infomercial advertising a too good to be true set of cutlery, there is still more.  Erich Anderson, who would go on to a prolific acting career, not the least of which included a stint playing Keri Russell’s father in TV’s “Felicity,” co-stars as Jason hunter Rob Dyer, whose sister Sandra was slaughtered by the bagheaded Jason in “Friday the 13th Part 2.”

Earlier “Friday the 13th” films demonstrated a predilection for disregarding previous story threads whenever they posed inconveniences for scripting a sequel.  The most blatant example is the second movie’s complete scrapping of the fact that Jason was a boy who drowned and died at the bottom of Crystal Lake in 1957.  Dollar signs prevailed and the original film’s ending, which was always intended to be nothing but a dream sequence, instead became the springboard for a new franchise.  “Part III” had similarly willful blindspots that capitalized on the murky ending to “Part 2” without regard to Jason’s whereabouts or to continuity on things like the condition of Pamela Voorhees’ corpse.

“The Final Chapter” genuinely respects what came before and even draws connections to the established mythology beyond just having Jason take revenge on the girl who beheaded his mother.  The film opens just moments after the conclusion of “Part III,” rivaling “Halloween II” in how fast it picks up where the previous chapter left off, with Jason lying in the exact same position where he was left at that film’s end.  There really is no creative explanation for his sudden resurrection, but at least the filmmakers hide their cheats a little more discreetly on this go.

What sets “The Final Chapter” apart from other slasher films in general, and not just its namesake series, is the varied roster of characters and the performances that bring their personalities to life.  This is a group of machete fodder that elicits sympathetic frowns upon having their throats cut because the script exerts the effort to make them likeable.  Beyond hormonal bunking up, the couples on hand have various entanglements and backstories.  The friendships have a realistic feel.  Crispin Glover and Lawrence Monoson connect their characters as buddies with a lengthy background and a sense of familiar camaraderie.  This is not a thrown together group of teens used to fill a quota of cup sizes or purposeless actions.

“Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter” has stood the test of time for good reason.  The franchise found its initial groove with “Part III,” but this was the installment where the production could capitalize fully on the personalized formula it had just perfected.  It is still a delivery device for sequential murders by a faceless killer, albeit with a fuller sense of story.  An unlikely hero exists in the form of young Tommy Jarvis.  The teens are not so dull or so cookie-cutter that an audience wishes for their immediate deaths.  And the splatter and the tension is on the money for a distinctly “Friday” tone.  If this is not “Friday the 13th” at its peak, it is certainly close to it.

Review Score:  75

Friday the 13th Part III Review

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