Ugh, another "Friday the 13th" review? I'm really coming to regret the day that I agreed to tackle this series one at a time. My eyes are starting to bleed, and I hear the stupid "ki ki ki ma ma ma" thing in my sleep. The days are starting to blend together, not unlike some nightmarish reality in a David Lynch film. Only this series features directors who, by and large, did nothing after their turn at the Jason Voorhees table. Can you tell that this review is going to be pretty scatterbrained?Perhaps the most depressing thing is that I'm just now crossing the HALFWAY POINT with this friggin' series. Yes, folks, there's three more official sequels after this one...AND THEN...the long-awaited throwdown between Jason and everyone's favorite claw-handed miscrient Freddy Krueger...AND THEN...last year's remake tour-de-force from Michael Bay's production team which, also ironically, is my favorite thing ever associated with the Antichrist himself. Just thought I'd give everyone a little head's up, in case anyone's wondering just when the hell this thing will be over.
Alright, so where we? Oh, right - "The New Blood," which has got to be one of the most nondescript titles ever given to a horror sequel. The New Blood what? One can argue that every single "Friday" sequel ever produced featured new blood in the form of prime new pieces of hot teenage ass lining up to get sliced by our hockey-masked hero, but I digress. The story has been repeated many times, but this movie came out in the summer of 1988, when pop culture was getting rocked by the AFOREMENTIONED wisecracking antihero Freddy Krueger, whose "Nightmare on Elm Street" films were leaving the old stalwart "Friday the 13th" films in the box office dust. So, what was the low-budget, lowly slasher series to do? Obviously craft a movie where the two icons met and have THEIR hero beat that burned Sam Kinison once and for all. Alas, it was not to be, as the two studios (New Line Cinema owned the "ANOES" series) couldn't agree on a script that made both characters look strong. Thus began the long, long, incredibly long history of the "Freddy vs. Jason" film project, which was first talked about in earnest way back then and continued well into the 21st century. I swear, when I walked into the theater that sweltery August day of 2003, I briefly had to thank my personal deity for finally pulling the creators' heads out of their asses and allowing them to spend three months of reasonably productive time together to finally put the f***ing thing on film.
So, "Freddy vs. Jason" circa 1988 was scrapped, so what did we get? Plan B - Jason vs. Carrie. Pretty much the entirety of this film can be summed up with those three words. The plot is pure "Friday the 13th" moronicness all the way around, but coming from someone who will be there on opening day for every "Friday the 13th" film that ever gets released, I can't say that I blame the creators for their lack of originality. So, do you really want to know what the plot is? A group of nubile, attractive teens/college students shows up next to Crystal Lake, now curiously reverting back to its original name after its "Forest Green" renaming in the previous movie, where Jason springs back to life, kills a bunch of them, and eventually is destroyed by the Final Girl. That, in essence, is your plot.
To its credit, "The New Blood" does throw a few interesting wrinkles into the formula. For starters, this movie has a very detestable human villain in the form of Terry Kiser's Dr. Crews character. When this guy gets it from Jason, you stand up and cheer - it's that satisfying of a moment. See, the movie's main character is a telekinetic young girl named Tina (Lar Park Lincoln), who accidentally killed her father as a child and has lived with insane guilt ever since. Sensing the power within the girl, Crews poses as a sympathetic soul trying to help her, but really is only trying to use her for his own monetary gain (in the form of books, reports, and what not). It's certainly a nice twist and a fresh spin on the usual "F13" formula, I'll give them that, and actually makes it a bit logical that our final girl is away at Crystal Lake, seeing as Mr. Evil Psychologist took her back there as it's the site of the infamous father killing, and thus is "part of her therapy."
What else am I missing? Oh, right - this is the first movie in the series with Kane Hodder, Mr. Awesome himself, as Jason. Up until this point, big J had been played by a different stuntman/actor in every film, but Hodder did such an amazing job with this film that he would reprise the role three times after this film, making him easily the most prolific man ever to don the jumpsuit and grab the machete. Much like Robert Englund does with Freddy, and Takako Fuji does with Kayako of "Ju-On"/"Grudge" fame, Hodder took a role and completely made it his own, giving Jason a truly imposing menace, gait, and even EMOTING through the pounds of goddamn makeup that he is required to convincingly play a monster. As such, the Jason in this go-round is extremely pissed off and angry (and if you listen to the DVD commentary on this beast, you'll get more than a few gut-busting stories from Hodder himself about how various actors were terrified of him on the set). In short, Hodder deserves all the praise that hardcore F13 fans heap on him, so five gold stars for Saint Kane.
In addition, I also have to give a major shout-out to director John Carl Buechler for his handling of the Jason makeup within this film. Buechler was a noted horror makeup master before landing the director's chair on this film, and it shows. It was his idea to give the Jason of "New Blood" every bit of battle damage that he had absorbed throughout the "Friday the 13th" films, and it's a real treat for the series' hardcore fans to spot all of the wounds and give the reference to any poor unfortunate soul sitting beside them on the couch. The axe shot from "Friday the 13th Part III," the machete-to-the-head from the finale of "The Final Chapter," not to mention the years spent at the bottom of Crystal Lake following the previous movie...it's all accounted for and visually referenced throughout the course of this movie, granting the Jason character a truly mythic status, and signifying to us fans that SOMEBODY at the helm of a movie in the franchise believed in the character enough to call him something other than a camp icon.
However, in the end, this is a movie that has to stand on the merits of what is on the screen, and if you've read any of my manifestos, you know that the Horror Nerd gets his rocks off based on emotional response to said films...and in this regard, this movie is a big letdown. All of the previous movies in the series (with the exception of the woeful "New Beginning") had elicited SOME emotional reaction from yours truly, be it because I identified with a character, or a death was particularly meaningful, or I just really, really thought Jason was badass. This movie, though, is pretty blase. While Tina is a fairly deep character, she isn't played particularly well by Lincoln. Obviously, the movie is building up to a showdown between these two characters, and while the special effects and action scenes in this movie's "Final Girl" sequence are electric, I wasn't terribly involved in it. The secondary characters are vanilla at best, and overall, I just found myself very indifferent toward the maelstrom of decay (credit "The Road Warrior" for that line) found within this movie. Well, except for Heidi Kozak and her amazing body. Her skinny-dipping scene has gotten a hearty workout from my DVD player.
Final verdict: good, definitely a solid '80s slasher film, but definitely not as good as the earlier "Human Jason" films, or the highly underrated "Part VI," for that matter. One final note of praise for this film, though: the sleeping bag kill is awesome. Still easily my favorite death in the history of the "Friday the 13th" franchise.:)
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