F13 Megareview: "Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning" (1985, Danny Steinmann)

Oh, "Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning." Without a doubt, a truly awful film in pretty much every way that a motion picture can fail - acting, directing, scripting, etc. Of course, when you realize that if you're really looking at the "Friday the 13th" series through the eyes of a snooty film professor you can say the same thing about almost every movie in the franchise, the criticism bears far less weight. I pin my dislike for this movie on one thing and one thing alone - this is the only movie in the series that I'm embarrassed to watch in the company of others.

*whew*

First things first - I've been looking forward to this review. Like, a real lot. I've been priming myself for the "Friday the 13th: ANB" manifesto ever since this whole marathon run of F13 reviews began. People forget just how difficult it is to be the Horror Nerd. It takes responsibility, not unlike Spider-Man. The power that I possess must be used for good, and if my God-given talents were to fall into the wrong hands, evil could rule the day and the terrorists could win. Or something. I guess all of the above (joking, I assure you) B.S. is a way of saying the following - here's hoping that this review doesn't disappoint in a premature ejaculation kind of way. Are you ready, horror fans? Are you ready for frantic running in the rain complete with wet shirts, impromptu R&B singing, nude scenes featuring not-very-good-looking women and a bunch of other crap way too goofy to even mention? You've come to the right place.

So, where did we leave off? In "Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter," we were introduced to the 11-year-old version of Tommy Jarvis, as masterfully (no joking here) played by Corey Feldman. A plucky kid with an interest in macabre masks, it shockingly wound up being the FREAKING KID who got the honors of being the first person in the series to honest-to-christ KILL Jason Voorhees. Nope. Not the usual virginal heroine. Not beefcake Rob, the Jason Slayer of "The Final Chapter." A kid, with dorky Coke-bottle glasses. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on the way you look at it), "TFC" had a semi-creepy ending where Jason, after receicing the coup-de-grace death blow from Tommy, begins to twitch his fingers, prompting the adorable little tyke to go absolutely batcrazy ballistic on Jason, mauling him over and over with a machete in a fit of psychotic rage. The movie then ends on an ambiguous note, with siblings Tommy and Trish still alive, but Tommy peering toward the camera in a move suggesting that not all may be right with our hero...

From here, we flash forward five years to this film. The movie opens with a rather stylish and scary nightmare sequence, with Tommy (version Kid, still played by Feldman in the one day he spent filming this movie) investigating Jason's extremely lonely tomb in the middle of the woods. Two grave-robbers show up to dig up Jason's body, at which point Mr. Voorhees promptly lurches back to life, kills the robbers, and advances on Tommy before he wakes up - now in his awkward teens and played by a guy named John Shepherd, who has more or less vanished off the face of the Earth since this film's release.

Yes, Tommy is a pretty disturbed guy. The incidents of the previous movie have left an indelible mark on his psyche. He doesn't talk. He likes to scare the crap out of kids with his still-pristine collection of devil masks (this is actually shown). He beats the holy hell out of people who make fun of him over breakfast (also shown). And he's generally a very greasy person. As in, copious amounts of actual sweat (see officially-licensed Flixter photo for proof). He's on his way to a safe haven for other troubled/mentally damanged teens.

In the opening goings of this movie, we meet a few of the secondary characters. Firstly, his charges. Matt (Richard Young, who puts way more acting effort into the role than director Danny Steinmann could have possibly asked for) runs the house, while Pam (Melanie "AFOREMENTIONED Wet T-Shirt Wearer" Kinnaman) is the second-in-command.

The official "Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning" Secondary Character Rundown (I really need the "2001" theme song to play every time I do something like this):

Reggie - Our kid hero for this round, Reggie "The Reckless" is a brash smartass, played by Shavar Ross (who would go on to play "Weasel" on "Family Matters"). As our movie's starring bro, you'd also expect him to die, but shockingly, Reggie winds up being the main hero of this thing since Tommy spends most of the movie sulking by himself and doing shockingly little in the way of, you know, killing the murderer. While he starts off abrasive and dislikable, trust me, this kid grows on you like Kentucky Bluegrass *bad metaphor drumroll*.

Jake and Robin - Most F13 films include a "secondary" couple who mack it for the first time during the course of the movie. Also, most F13 films include one extremely sympathetic character. "ANB" made the bold move of combining these archetypes into one, as stuttering, awkward Jake (Jerry Pavlon, who also puts way more into his role than Danny Steinmann deserved) pines for redhead Robin (Juliette Cummins of "Psycho III" fame), who rebukes his advances with the single most COLD shoot-down scene in the history of cinema. And then shows us her tiny funbags.

Eddie and Tina - I can't really call these two a secondary couple, since they're already well-entrenched in their sexual flailings long before the epic storyline of this film begins. These two really love sex. Really. Just why they're stationed at the halfway house is kept a mystery (just as it is for every other character in this movie besides Tommy - I can only assume that these two are here because they're nymphomaniacs), but they like to sneak out in broad daylight and do it in the surrounding woods. Tina, the brunette bombshell in the equation, is played by Debi Sue Voorhees, who has massive...assets, in her acting, if you catch my drift. Just...really...massive.

Violet - In a movie with smokin' hot chicks like Robin and Tina, it amazes me why punk-rocker wannabe Violet (Tiffany Helm, who also has a good role in "Reform School Girls") seems to enjoy the amazingly popular cult status that she does among horny fanboys everywhere. To me, she's not that attractive. She's not cute. And she's the only girl in the movie to not show us her cans. However, the one thing she DOES have going for her is the best dance scene since Crispin Glover's epileptic seizure in "Friday the 13th Part IV," set to the new-wave minor classic "In His Eyes." Add this to the list of truly great "WTF" moments in a film full of them.

Demon - I really shouldn't be doing a character write-up for a guy with such little bearing on the overall plot, but it's not like the vast majority of the above charlatains did, anyway. And that's a damn shame, because I really, really liked Demon. The one character in the movie that I genuinely wanted to escape with his life intact, Demon is Reggie's older brother coming by to visit his little bro and eat a few enchiladas (this is conveyed by the movie's masterful dialogue). He also has the greatest jheri-curl in movie history, and the single best movie song ever in the form of his touching ballad "Oooohh, baby....oooooh baby!" lovingly sang while taking a dump. Again, not joking. I should also point out that Demon is played by the same guy that would go on to play Juwanna Mann.

Roy Burns - *SPOILER ALERT*

Yes, Jason Voorhees really did die at the climax of "Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter." And, indeed, this death was supposed to be final. Of course, I should also point out that they tried to do this on two separate occasions, as well, as originally "Friday the 13th Part II" was to be the only movie with Jason as the killer. The script for THIS film was originally slated to be "Part III," with Ginny, the surviving heroine of "Part II," to be in the Tommy Jarvis role as a disturbed survivor at a halfway house.

Alas, it was not meant to be, as Amy Steel (that's Ginny, for those too damned ignorant and/or lazy to be following this series of reviews religiously) backed out of the movie at the last minute, throwing that plan in a knot. And if you look at "Part III" (or "3D"), you can definitely see the similarities between that film and this one. The lakeside house. The bits in the gas station. And the final showdown in the barn. But the point of "Friday the 13th Part III" (or "3D") was meant to be the same as the previous movie - set up a crazy survivor for a "passing the torch" movie. And Chris, the screechy heroine of "Part III" (or "3D"), definitely does go criz-azy in the finale of the movie.

Only Dana Kimmell (that's Chris) wasn't quite the horror aficianado that the producers thought. So then, they had to do ANOTHER "set up a crazy survivor" movie in the form of "The Final Chapter." The character of Tommy Jarvis is actually pretty skillfully done, as he has certain parallels to Jason (no friends, the absentee father, fascination with the macabre, etc.).

So then we get this movie - finally, the movie where the "set up a crazy survivor" move pays off, with Tommy Jarvis as the mentally disturbed survivor in a halfway house where someone else not named Jason Voorhees is offing his fellow inmates.

So, you wanna know who he is?

Well, I'll tell you - it's the Paramedic who picks up the body of his long-lost son in the opening trimester of the movie, after said son is brutally murdered by another inmate in a fit of rage. Blaming all crazy bastards and everyone else in the surrounding vicinity for his son's death, crazy ol' Roy Burns dons the Jason mask and does a pretty commendable job, tossing off no less than 19 warm human bodies in the course of this movie.

*END SPOILER*

And thus concludes the "Friday the 13th: A New Beginning" Secondary Character Rundown. Hope you all enjoyed that, and please, enjoy the veal.

What's better, the Secondary Character Rundown serves in place of my usual plot description review portion, effectively killing two birds with one stone and enabling yours truly to fire out one more bad cliche. So now, I've come to the sad realization that I must pass judgment on this movie. It's a section of the review that you're no doubt dying to read, as your sophisticated, nuanced host uses his official smart guy armor to read into the impenetrable metaphors and symbolism of this film, pick apart its camera techniques and use of light and shade, and in other words sound like snooty film professor #101.

Before I do so without all the English major trappings (I promise), I have to state the following FACT: I love this movie. Don't get me wrong, it's absolutely terrible when held alongside the other movies in the "Friday the 13th" series, makes pretty much zero sense and has a bunch of scenes that make you want to throw your remote at the television, but it's undeniably fun to watch. By yourself, that is. This is a movie that just doesn't work in a crowd setting, unless your idea of a fun time is a whole bunch of awkward silence while everyone on the couch isn't quite able to muster up the correct words to make fun of a Michael Jackson clone singing his signature top forty hit "Ooooh baby." In which case, go for yours. I love this movie because it used to be shown ad nauseum on USA Up All Night, accompanied by Gilbert Gottfried's wacky skits serving as buffers in the commercial breaks. This film got a ton of airplay on the Fried's moviefest, and as such it's probably the movie in the franchise that I've seen the most. So, on a personal nostalgia quotient, I have to give this movie five stars.

Make no mistake, though, this movie is terrible, and has many things that will downright irritate you. For starters, this movie has a TON of characters. Way more than I mentioned above. This movie's fatal flaw is that it uses the following formula no less than five times - it introduces wholly dislikable sleazebag characters, spends approximately ten minutes building them up, and then has Roy do his Jason impersonation on them, which means that we just got annoyed for ten minutes for no good reason other than just the fact that director Steinmann felt like wasting time.

While I've mentioned it as a positive previously in this review, Steinmann came from the world of porn directing - and man, can you tell. The nudity is everywhere in this movie, and rather than arousing you fellow sad males out there, they inspire laughter. I realize that nudity is an essential part of the slasher movie experience, but "ANB" takes it to comedic levels. Sex, sex, and more sex appears to be the Danny Steinmann mantra. In fact, it is - I've heard him talk at a horror convention, and he's just as much of a sleazy sycophant as you'd expect him to be considering that he directed this movie (and wrote much of it).

What else am I missing? Oh yes - the hilarious non-mystery that is Roy Burns the mystery killer. If nothing else, it's another laugh-out-loud moment, but after Roy picks up his son's body, the action slows down, the camera zooms in on his face. Dick Wieand, the actor playing Roy, gets a deadly serious, steely gaze in his eyes, and we're left to wonder why this nonentity of a character is being given such a dark, impactful scene. The camera even fades out in a TV-style editing trick, and since the bodies begin cropping up immediately following this mystical "dum dum dum" moment, we spend the rest of the movie looking for the "real" killer since Roy seems like such an obvious choice. Only, the "real" killer never pops up, and we're once again left with Roy.

However, I must leave this hard-hitting analysis for a moment and get back to the story. As mentioned previously (I suppose one could say that it was AFOREMENTIONED), this movie, like "Part III" (or "3D"), has a final showdown in a barn. After all of the murder and mayhem in this film, it's down to Tommy, Reggie and Pam vs. Roy in Jason disguise. In a move that shocks no one, our three heroes are triumphant. The film has a creepy closing, however, as Tommy sees an apparition of Jason over his hospital bed, which makes me remember that I forgot to mention that Tommy has been having vivid hallucinations involving his childhood tormentor throughout the course of the movie, but it probably should have been implied. Anyway, Jason leans down, not menacingly, but approvingly, toward Tommy, whose face passes from fear to calm to acceptance. It's actually some very good acting by Shepherd, and a stunningly well-done and subtle scene meant to convey the "passing the torch" moment. The movie ends with Pam coming in to check on Tommy, who isn't in his bed. The door closes behind her, and standing behind the door is Tommy, now wearing the hockey mask. It's quite obvious that this was meant to be "it" - Jason was meant to stay dead, and the series was to continue, with Tommy Jarvis in the role of killer.

But remember that lengthy and boring explanation of the previous movies that tried to set up a crazy survivor for a villain switch? Three movies is how long it took due to various circumstances. Three movies where people saw Jason run, stab, slice and dice. People were used to Jason by that point. And when this movie came in 1985, the fanbase - both casual and hardcore - collectively let out a massive "F**K you" to the powers-that-be at Paramount Pictures, leading to this movie's transition ending being retconned in the next film. And yes, we got Jason back.

"Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning" is a fascinating movie to watch, for many reasons. It's a wonder that a movie can be so terrible yet so fun to watch, and it's a wonder that a series can not only recover from an abortion as horribly botched as this one, but be massively popular and profitable to this very day. Even factoring in the completely ridiculous pair of New Line films, this remains the series' low point, however, so if you're looking for effective characters, creative kills, badass Jason or any of the other hallmarks of my favorite horror series, you won't find them here. Still, this movie is essential viewing merely on the merit that you can ponder the series that could have been, if the producers hadn't caved in to fan demand and actually went with the new killer angle in the ensuing sequels. Just think how different the horror landscape would be today. "Freddy vs. Tommy" just doesn't have the same ring, does it?