Last year on September 13th, I’ve covered Friday the 13th Part 4, the so-called “Final Chapter” that, as I said before, it was originally intended at the final installment of the franchise and moved on, whether because of rise of slasher genre was declining or perhaps its due to resulting of many filmmakers are obsessed to making trashy slasher movies, ever since slasher was a huge trend in the 80s. But you know what they said “Money Talks”, hence when Part 4 made more money at the box-office, they killed off the “final installment” to make another one in today’s review, because hey, we’re in Friday The 13th as I recently posted.
“Friday the 13th Part 5: A New Beginning” is a 1985 slasher and the 5th installment of the franchise that was written/directed by the late Danny Steinmann, produced by Timothy Silver and co-written by Martin Kitrosser and David Cohen.
As I said before, since Part 4 made a lot of money at the box-office, its no stranger that they scrapped the final installment to make another Friday the 13th movie to making it as a new beginning for new story, as the title implies with the executive producer, Frank Mancuso Jr., appreciate for the title. Once its time to preparing Part 5, the director Danny Steinmann threw his hat in the ring when he did his low budget slasher film “The Unseen” (even though the budget costed $2M). Though unlike Part 4 was horniest and the behind the scene left a lot of questions on Joseph Zito’s involvement from bad attitude and/or negligent, Part 5 on the other hand is probably the most sleaziest that i’ve ever heard upon doing research (though the history the behind the scene is rather hard to find nor knowing), it wasn’t just a kills or horny campers, but this one has a lot of sexual tones with sexing and bunch of revealing nakey bods from ladies, especially with a lot of revealing boobies. This was all because Danny Steinmann was also been making porno movie called “High Rise” in 1973. And to add more sleaze, Danny was also flying high with cocaine when making the movie, pretty much means, the director is so coked up that he liked to see titties and sexing with zero control of his direction to letting actors do whatever they went, whether to just follow the script or making their own delivery, its almost like a free-for-all whether some actors can improvise while the director enjoyed himself with nose candy for sex and nudey scenes, leaving this movie had no direction from the get-go and it was Danny Steinmann’s last film he ever directed in his career. And from what I’ve noticed, Part 5 was meant to be the new trilogy of Friday the 13th franchise with some new characters and new villain without Jason.
But when this movie came out, it was widely regarded as one the worst film in Friday the 13th franchise due to its questionable directions, the tone and the movie that it’s almost barely followed from the previous installment, and the biggest criticism of all is the absent of Jason Voorhees himself, while Tommy Jarvis is left as a backseat character. The same can be said for the box-office, whereas the previous films were a success, Part 5 is a complete opposite that it was a box-office disappointment by earning $21.9M, sure it bypassed the budget of $2.2M, but still, the movie’s earning was a downhill. As time went on, Part 5 is still considered the weakest one of the franchise for many people, but there are some considered a “Guilty Pleasure”, whether you like it or not, I guess its not hard to know why Part 5 is regarded as the Friday the 13th version of “Halloween 3” for similar reasons.
So, with all that said, will I find this movie to be misunderstood, or is this film really that bad that it’ll be left forgotten?
Well, lets find out.
The Story
Since this the new chapter, you think the writing are trying to make something new while we have a killer on the loose? Well, yes and no.
The movie begins where our familiar main boy Tommy Jarvis who’s walking in a banana raincoat to see the gravestone of his nemesis that he killed him five years ago, Jason Voorhees. After the two idiots dig out the grave that they got killed by Jason, the dream ends when we see grown up Tommy in his late teen, who’s been in psychiatric hospitals from his personal traumatic nightmare from a familiar hockey masked killer. After been in hospitals, he’s brought into a new institution called “Pinehurst Halfway House” to meet the owners of this apartment, Dr. Matt Letter his assistant Pam Roberts, along with new teens like teens like serious blondie Robin, goth music-lover Violet, an awkward fella with stutter Jake, a lumberjack Vic (though they never met), a fatass chocolate eater Joey and two sexing teens named Eddie and Tina, the latter of two are brought back by the cop when they’re caught sexing in the wood, which happens to be property from madness neighbor Ethel and her son Junior, but at the same time, Tommy meets the reckless boy Reggie who’s also involved in institution thanks to his grandpa George. But while this is going on, Joey goes to annoying other patients for give chocolates, which pissing off both Robin and Violet, to in a brutal final straw, Vic, where after harshly refused to take a chocolate, he KILLS Joey with his ax (Jesus dude!!), which it quickly call 911 for cops to arresting Vic and ambulance to get rid of dead Joey, much to shock for Roy Burns, minus his partner Duke Johnson doesn’t give a crap about it. What we didn’t know is that a new killer is out there after killing off two greasers Vinnie and Pete, which is up to Tommy and perhaps some others in the institutions are find out where the killer is, so we think.
Yeah, its a same old, same old who’s involved of killing anybody on the way, except this one is a follow up with Tommy Jarvis is struggling to get over his traumatic past ever since he killed Jason five years ago, its like nothing new that what we expect. But in this movie, the horror feels like its forgotten, cause like I said at the film’s origin, because the director loves sex instead of horror slasher, the movie plays on its own crazy antics, especially with the dialogue and even their own character developments, otherwise, it feels like Jarvis is gonna be in the backseat from the craziness it has. This left the writing feels like an afterthought that it nearly has no story, but rather go crazy on it from, again, the lack of direction. Which I think its safe to say that because of the lack of direction, it left some actors going improvised and slightly follow the script, which its understandable because of director’s been busy enjoy sex and coke, but despite the craziness from behind the scene, I enjoy some actors to having their own fun to improvised developments or fun dialogues, which I find t them to be both fascinating and even chuckle worthy, I know it sounds like im turning off my brain to have fun with it, but then again, without the direction, the actors can make their own fun and their ideas, ranging from greasers hilarious broken down relationship while their car is jammed (“Crap my ass!”), Ethel’s going full on Karen about horny teens in the prop, Reggie and his bestie Demon or other stuff going on, which I feel like im watching a sleazy comedy movie than a slasher movie because of… Obvious reasons from behind the scene. Not to mention, since the slasher in the movie is lacking, we never be able to see more with Tommy Jarvis, again, this left Jarvis in the backseat until the 3rd act.
While the story felt like no originality and no direction means no story til the 3rd and final act, the writing is pretty much a mess from the get-go, but at least it has a fun moment that I was chuckling from fun moments, even if it could get over-the-top.
The Presentation
The movie’s budget happens to be shared the same number as Part 4, mainly the $2.2M of budget. Despite the same number, the presentation looks nice and standard as what we expect, except the movie is downhill compared to Part 4.
For starter, instead of taking place in the camping spot, this one takes place in the institution Pinehurst, though we can see the extra location like the restaurant and the farm, which some fans theorizing Pinehurst takes place close to Camp Crystal Lake due to similar presentation spot and possibly the similar pattern about Jason Voorhees, it can be true since its like in the forest spot, even if Pinehurst is like a small town next to the forest, which is why this movie was filmed in Camarillo, California.
While the presentation looks nice, the lighting quality is lightened a bit, which I can easily tell the quality is somewhat bigger than Part 4, which I appreciated a bit, but I find it be a bit ambitious for the lighting and flat, which is bigger budget of the previous films, but only forcible to look bigger and better, but in fairness, some filming shots are pretty nice as always, even if, like always, there’s plenty of nude revealing shots from Lana’s exciting to hanging with Billy by showing her bewbs in front of mirror, which Rebecca Wood (who played Lana) came up her performance idea as a reference from “All that Jazz” from 1979, I never seen it, but touché, or the most gratuitous of all, is when Eddie and Tina going out in the woods to, in typical slasher fashion, smoking dope and sexing, but outdoor and indoor, which it probably explained why the director, Danny Steinmann, is way too excited (probably in nose candy) for this as the first day of production of this film, which he wanted it to be explicit and extensive, along with wide shot of Tina’s birthday suit, again, only for showing her Ts, which it felt like we’re watching porn film, much to both uncomfortable and asked so much questions from the crew members and the aforementioned executive producer Frank Mancuso Jr. But on the bright side, at least its not as negligible as Part 4’s behind the scene.
But you know what’s negligible? The kills. While I like to see the kills in many slasher films, but in case for Part 5, its sadly the weakest of all, we never be able to see the action kills for what’s going on from POV butcher knife to the face, a camera bellow the bed of copy-paste Kevin Bacon’s death in Part 1, slit throat with zoomed to the face and the blood feels rather minimal, making it rather the least gory film in Friday the 13th film which will unfortunately suffered the same way in the later installments, all because once again, MPAA are constantly threatened the movie to be X Rated, forcing them to cut or edited to be safe to be an R Rated film. Again, its easy to blame MPAA for their sensitive rules. Though the makeup of dead bodies are not bad to say the least, but again, its the least gory when the director is interest of skins instead of gore.
As for the body counts, like always, based on watching Dead Meat’s Kill Count (I know im cheating, but I love watching this show on Youtube), it has 21 dead bodies. If I have to pick which one is my favorite kill in this movie is when Eddie got wrapped in the head and crushed to death by a belt from behind the tree, pretty painful to look, but also creative kill. But the weakest will be almost everything, though il go with Duke’s death which is we never see how did he died along with kill and blood makeup is about to washing away due to fake raining.
The presentation of this movie looks alright at best, but it felt more like we’re in a soft-core porn with less gory kill because MPAA said so.
The Characters
I think its easy to say that unlike the previous films, the characters in this movie have their personalities, a pretty crazy personality based on actors’ improvisation, I guess I can say the actors had fun with.
Lets start off with Jason Voorhees. Though I know you’re like “Really Anthony? Why bring Jason in Part 5, he’s already dead in Part 4.”, well yeah, I understand that, though in this movie, we only see Jason as a jump scaring ghost in Tommy Jarvis’s mind when he’s trying to clearing his head. However, Jason is played by two actors instead of one, some moments (commonly) that he’s played by stuntman Tom Morga, while the opening dream was played by unknown John Hock when Morga was unavailable. Which Im assuming Jason is meant to keep looking at Tommy that if he wants to get off his mind is to be like Jason Voorhees, more on that later.
And as for Tommy Jarvis, he’s played by both John Shepherd and reprised by Corey Feldman in cameo. In this movie, Tom is no longer being a fun artistic kid of creating monster mask that we all know from the start, here, his fighting and killing Jason is hunting his mind that Tom is been struggling. Not to mention, he’s also feeling uneasy to be social with other patients around that whenever he’s mocked or put to blame, he flat out fights them in a threat in his minded trauma, especially some of his attack feels like he learns from either MMA or pro-wrestling. I think its safe to say that Shepherd’s Tommy is less crazy, but rather both struggled and disturbed, which probably explained John Shepherd is going into method to taking his own role seriously from doing research in mental institution in Camarillo and buying monster masks from various stores. While its a damn shame that Shepherd’s role is minimal that he’s meant to be the main role, I think he did a nice work for playing as Tommy, but then again, he’s pretty much into a backseat character than others.
So lets get to the survivors/victims in this movie.
First up is Pam Roberts (played by Melanie Kinnaman), she’s the main final girl in the movie as Dr. Matt’s assistant. She’s almost like a chaperone in the institution that she’s always watching over people, even if there’s some moments she constantly calling her own name and as far for her… She’s just a forgettable final girl in the movie, she constantly trying to surviving herself or even fight back at “Jason”, like any clumsy victims in any slasher films for all of cheap build up or clumsy purposes. While il give a nice credit for her performances, but she’s just a lame final girl compared to some previous final girls that I like.
Next up with with Reggie Winter, or Reggie The Reckless (played by a then 13 year old Shavar Ross), he’s another surviving kid like Tommy Jarvis, but unlike Tommy, Reggie is such a memorable kid, being fun, energetic and surprisingly charming, especially that I like his either dialogue or delivery whenever he interacts with patients or even some other characters, which makes Reggie, for me, the best character in Part 5 and Shavar did a fun work of his role, as long as he doesn’t swear what he promised to his parents. Aw well, understood, but still fun work for him.
Next, we have Roy Burns (played by Dick Wieand) who’s a lone paramedic who seems to be an average and awkward man when we saw him in the introduction with his A-hole partner Duke Johnson (played by William Caskey Swaim), not before when he sees dead Joey, this left us fishy what happens next to him, but again, more on that later.
Last but not least for talking about is Ethel Hubbard (played by the late Carol Locatell), she’s basically a local Karen in Pinehurst, but at least she’s a lot memorably funny than real life Karens, being quickly pissed whenever it didn’t go on her way or possibly crazily have fun in the kitchen. While I enjoy Reggie, but when it comes to Ethel, man she’s like all over the place for her delivery with the dialogue from she’s got a bomb on herself to pissing off at anybody or even her son Junior (played by Ron Sloan), when her son is a lunatic fat kid with her motocross. As I said before, she took improvised performance in fun way from her delivery from the script that she thought its funny (which I can’t blame her that she’s probably had fun with), along with her method that she bought her own wig since she’s been in “Sharky’s Machine” in 1981 and doing her own makeup by rubbing her face with dirt from the side of the road to make her look like an angry dirty old lady, which again, il give a credit for her idea. But its a damn shame that she’s tragically passed from dealing with cancer on April 11th 2023. Rest in Peace Carol, you were both great and funny in this movie.
As for the rest, most of them are obviously shown for potential body counts, but then again, they had their own unique look and personalities, but like always, some are just… There.
There’s Matt Letter (played by Richard Young) is the manager of Pinehurst institution, Robin Brown (played by Juliette Cummins) a patient who takes it seriously to do the chores and kinda didn’t seems to care, Violet (played by Tiffany Helm), a music loving gothic girl, with one scene that she does a fascinating robot dance with the song “His Eyes” by Pseudo Echo (while she did a fun performance, but I heard when it was premiered, Tiff admitted for being a party girl by tripping on acid. Yeesh…), Jake Patterson (played by Jerry Pavlon) is an awkward stutter patient, Vic Faden (played by the late Mark Venturini), Eddie and Tina (played by John Robert Dixon and Deborah Sue Voorhees, I like your name, Sue) are obvious sexual patient for illegally sexing in the woods, Joey (played by the late Dominick Brascia), a fat patient from eating disorder, and lastly is Demon (played by Miguel A. Núñez Jr.) another memorable character with his also fun personality and being best pal with Reggie with his babe Anita (played by Jere Fields), especially with the outhouse scene.
While most of them have their fun acting for their improvisation, but the characters, while they’re pretty good to have their own personalities, but they’re pretty minimal for their appearance for either just.. There or potential body counts.
SPOILER ALERT for those who haven’t seen it or didn’t care.
The third and final act felt like a copycat from some previous installments, but has an underwhelming twist and one of those BS cliffhanger that’ll never happened in later films.
After almost everybody died, along with Tommy Jarvis disappears from his emotional beat down at the late Junior as his own defense mechanism, Reggie goes back to the second floor to checking in after sleeping in the couch, he discovers dead body in the room in a shock, right before Pam shows up with shacking and question him to reminding she’s Pam Roberts with “What’s the matter? Its me Pam! What is it?? What is it???” (Like chill out missy, there’s couple of dead body in the house!). But once she sees the dead bodies, its a perfect time to panic when “Jason” breaks the door down for rainy forest chase! Upon arrive at the ambulance (along with weirdly different shots when Pam either has a pink sweater or others not), they see Duke died from throat slit by “Jason”, this resulting Reggie disappears in running away, leaving us forced to see Pam act like a klutz as a final girl (along with her buttoned shirt being wet with see-through with bare chest nips, because the director wants it), as well as seeing more dead bodies like her partner Dr. Matt is killed by stabbed in a head by a railroad spike and Grandpa George being tossed in the building with no eyeballs from his sockets. As she left the building and tripped in the mud (again, because the director said so), Reggie finally shows up to driving a tractor to knocked down “Jason” (which yes, the young Shavar said he did drove the tractor for his own stunt). This led to the copycat battle in the barn from Part 3, also Part 2 when Pam uses her chainsaw, but at least “Jason” blocks it with his machete like a duel swordfight. But the chainsaw fuel has ran out, but she decides to drop it instead of keeping like a sword like a F(OOF)ING Coward! That is until Tommy Jarvis FINALLY shows up for help, but he’s frozen of fear in Vietnam Flashback when “Jason” slash him opened (though not suffering, though he did fightback with his pocket knife, but not good enough), but he did follow Pam and Reggie up to chasing away from “Jason” to the loft of the barn. As “Jason” tries to kill Pam, Reggie jumps out to body check at the masked killed off the loft, but “Jason” holds the ledge in attempt to kill Reggie, but Tommy gets back up to dismember the killer’s hand, leaving “Jason” fell flat into spike tractor parts with mask flopped off, revealing to be… Roy Burns!
Yup, that’s right, Roy Burns, the paramedic from minutes ago, was the killer by copying what Jason did before. “But for what reason?”, you asked yourself, its all because from before, Roy was devastated over Joey’s death, who happens to be Roy’s lost son, taking his own revenge as knockoff version of Jason Voorhees, based on a different shape and color from his hockey mask compared to Jason’s mask. Yeah, I find this one to be underwhelming, mainly because Roy didn’t know about his son’s death since… Well, they never see each other again for a long time (I guess…?), and not to mention, Mrs. Voorhees did first when she did a personal vendetta to killing anybody just because they never checked Jason when he was “drowned”, which is a memorable plot twist and understandable why she did this before Jason do the same what her late mother did. Roy on the other hand, just came off as out nowhere without proper development and again, a pretty underwhelming twist. Though I kinda give a credit for the idea of copycat killer, mainly when someone took inspiration for what they saw, though the idea of slasher reference wouldn’t be until we have Scream for about the next decade, but, hate to say to bring in real life, some killers decided to do a “life imitates art”, by doing a real life copycat slasher, which I do NOT recommend this, otherwise you’ll get yourself into a serious legal trouble for killing real life people like what some people did for being inspired from slasher movies. So if you love slasher movies, just do a cosplay or doing a role play instead of doing a real life killer, again, I do not recommend. Though I should also mention Roy’s killer appearance just didn’t match accurately between from the aforementioned Tom Morga (yes, he played Roy under disguise as Jason) and Dick Wieand
After giving us the most underwhelming twist ever, Tommy has a hallucinating dream of killing Pam, but only wake up to see ghostly Jason one more time, but this time, Jason (in my imagination) is all like “You know what you must do… Make them suffer, make then wish they were dead…! First, we attack their hearts!” before vanishes, leaving Jarvis grabbed Roy’s hockey mask, starting to imitating what Jason has done in a plan to kill Pam in a cliffhanger.
But as we all know, it was all BS cliffhanger that the next installment won’t followed up from Part 5’s ending, like completely thrown in the bin like all nothing happened in a similar fashion as Halloween 4 (yes, I saw it, even I knew when I watched the reviews, the ending is BS) to having a protagonist becomes a killer, but never happened in the later installments. But the final act itself, while it may have some fun attack, but the rest felt like its been done to death, unoriginal, underwhelming twist and the ending might well said “Everything what you seen the ending is all Bullcrap!”.
And now for my final opinion of this movie.
Overall, Friday the 13th Part 5: A New Beginning is a very mediocre film at best to describing it.
In fairness, il give a credit for giving us some characters making their own personality and some acting are fun for their own ideas along with some dialogues or deliveries that made me laugh, almost like something out of parody movie, except this is Friday the 13th movie, which it felt like a missing identity compared to previous installments. Though it has a nice filming locations and the idea of copycat killer is not bad, if the execution could’ve done right.
Because everything else is a mess with bad writing, lackluster story, some characters are lackluster and the final act is just underwhelming of how unoriginal it is, and even the ending is all left to nothing.
I know many people called it the Friday the 13th version of “Halloween 3: Season of the Witch”, due to some similar concept and even no focus of our familiar slashers. Im very mixed for this movie, I maybe recommend to watch it for once, mainly if you like to see the characters and probably ignore the third and final act. Though perhaps there are some may like Part 5, that’s fine for their own, but for me, its okay, but it doesn’t feel like a Friday the 13th film. Again, just watch this movie ONCE, whether you like it or not.
For my rating, im gonna give this one a 4.5/10.
Next time, we’ll be back to check out Part 6, aka “Paramount’s apology” to bringing Jason back from the dead. But I hate to say my friends, when I checked in 2025’s calendar, we never have the 2nd or third real Friday the 13th, which means il come back to see Jason again next year as always.
But as always, if you guys have your opinion or any suggestions, let me know at comment bellow and support me on KO-FI.com/blackevil.
Thanks for reading, and im Anthony, signing out.
No comments:
Post a Comment