Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning (1985)
Here's where it begins. Or it is when you ask most fans of the series. I agree with them. This film started the gradual death of the Friday the 13th franchise. The Final Chapter, which was the film before this one, decided to kill off Jason once and for all. That was going to be the end of the series, no more, bye-bye, gone! Oh, the movie made a good amount of money? Well, when we said 'the end', we didn't mean the end! I mean, obviously people still want more of these!
Yes friends, the series would go on. (And on, and on, and on!) But they killed Jason... But fans will surely cry foul if we don't give him to them... Hmm... I know! Let's make the story about the boy that killed Jason! I mean, it was obvious at the end of the last film that he'd become mentally disturbed! I mean, he stared straight into camera while hugging his sister! Who does that?
And that's just what the studio decided. The new movie would center on Tommy Jarvis, the kid played by Corey Feldman in the last film. The movie is set years after the last film. Tommy is now about 17 or 18 years old, having been shifted from the mental institution to a new group home for disturbed teens. He still has bad dreams about Jason, and he's obviously got issues. He doesn't talk much and is awkward around other people. Well, just after he arrives at the new group home, one of the teens murders another (very annoying) teen. Then murders start happening in the surrounding area. Tommy is one of the main suspects. Is it Tommy, a copycat, or is Jason really back?
Well, the answer is a bit convoluted and, I can't hide the fact, stupid. Little spoiler here, but everyone knows it by now. Jason isn't the killer here. Hell, even the hockey mask isn't the same. The red marks of the original mask are replaced by two blue ones. That should be a hint to anybody. The red marked mask does show up in some of Tommy's hallucinations, however. Oddly enough, though the killer is an otherwise ordinary human being, he seemingly still has superhuman strength, which I will just put down to the fact that Paramount wanted a new Jason without it really being Jason, and Jason has to have great strength and cunning. Yeah, whatever Paramount.
So that's the trailer for this odd little movie. They made sure people knew that Corey Feldman was in the film, as he was well liked by now having been in the last film and in Gremlins the year before. Well, he's in about two minutes of the beginning of the film. He was making The Goonies at the time of filming and could only spare a Sunday, which was his day off from the other film. So they shot some shots of him in his back yard. After that, you don't see Feldman in the series again. They also set the film up as some sort of mystery, which seems fun, but it's a let-down when you find out who it is. It's the proverbial Scooby-Doo ending!
What the trailer doesn't show you is how friggin' odd and downright sleazy the movie feels. And this is the only movie in the series I would call sleazy. There's the first use of cocaine in the series, a lot of dark morbid humor, a hardcore sex scene that was very much cut by the studio but is still sleazy as hell, and someone even dies on the crapper. Oh, and the director? He was known for one thing. He was a porn director! That's right, Paramount decided they needed a director of porn for the new film. This makes a certain sense, as slasher films were seen as just above porn by most critics and audiences. I suppose in a way they have a point, but as many people secretly watch a lot of porn, so do people like to watch idiots being hacked away by numerous sharp objects!
Speaking of deaths, this one has a body count of 21! That's the most until Jason Goes To Hell. The disappointing part about that? There's very little blood and gore to these deaths. Part V was one of the most censored films in the series. It was censored so much that besides some reaction close-ups of victims' faces or shots of the initial impalement or whatever, everything was cut. The director to this day dislikes the film due to the MPAA cuts. Sadly, these cuts are lost for good apparently. There are a few shots of some interesting post-death gore, such as the result of a few chops with an axe (not done by not-Jason), and a shot of a girl who had gardening shears put through each eye, then closed. (That was a cool death, by the way. Too bad they didn't actually show it happening.)
Oddly enough, the acting isn't all that bad. The teens are all cliches to be sure, but they aren't horrid actors. Now I'm not saying they are good ones either, just acceptable. In fact, one of the best actors in the film is the one that plays Tommy Jarvis. After this film he became a hardcore Christian and went to seminary, but here he's quite good as a mental patient trying to move past his traumatic experiences. The only really bad acting here is by some characters that should never have been put into the screenplay in the first place. The redneck mother and son that live next door to the youth home. My God are they annoying! Here's just an example, but at least you can delight in their deaths.
Besides that, the movie is just another slasher film. It's not set at Crystal Lake for the first time in the series, but that makes no difference as Jason isn't the killer here. Now a few fans of the series consider this one the last film in the series that has the feel of the first few films. After this, the series went downhill and became something else. Well, I have to agree that this is the last film with the feel of the Friday series up to this point, but I think the next installment was better than this one, and most agree with me on that one I think. A New Beginning gets a bad rep, just like Halloween III for not having the series' main villain as the baddy. However, this film is not the huge piece of trash some would have you think. It's certainly not great, but the series would go much lower in just a few years. I'd say it's a definitely low on the list of ones I'd recommend in the series, but you can do worse. I mean, at least you get to see some odd interpretive dance moves in this one!
Also in this film is another case of a child in danger. Again, he's a smart quick thinking boy. He screams like a girl and wears a red track suit, but hey, token black guy!
Yep, I went there!
Oddly enough, the acting isn't all that bad. The teens are all cliches to be sure, but they aren't horrid actors. Now I'm not saying they are good ones either, just acceptable. In fact, one of the best actors in the film is the one that plays Tommy Jarvis. After this film he became a hardcore Christian and went to seminary, but here he's quite good as a mental patient trying to move past his traumatic experiences. The only really bad acting here is by some characters that should never have been put into the screenplay in the first place. The redneck mother and son that live next door to the youth home. My God are they annoying! Here's just an example, but at least you can delight in their deaths.
Besides that, the movie is just another slasher film. It's not set at Crystal Lake for the first time in the series, but that makes no difference as Jason isn't the killer here. Now a few fans of the series consider this one the last film in the series that has the feel of the first few films. After this, the series went downhill and became something else. Well, I have to agree that this is the last film with the feel of the Friday series up to this point, but I think the next installment was better than this one, and most agree with me on that one I think. A New Beginning gets a bad rep, just like Halloween III for not having the series' main villain as the baddy. However, this film is not the huge piece of trash some would have you think. It's certainly not great, but the series would go much lower in just a few years. I'd say it's a definitely low on the list of ones I'd recommend in the series, but you can do worse. I mean, at least you get to see some odd interpretive dance moves in this one!
Also in this film is another case of a child in danger. Again, he's a smart quick thinking boy. He screams like a girl and wears a red track suit, but hey, token black guy!
Yep, I went there!
No comments:
Post a Comment