Tommy Jarvis

‘Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning’ Remains the Franchise’s Worst Sequel

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

Friday the 13th Part V A New Beginning poster

The “Friday the 13th” movies have always divided critics and moviegoers. The utter hatred of from critics like Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert ended up giving people more of a reason to see them. But that’s the great thing about “Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning” because it’s the first movie in this endless franchise which succeeded in bringing critics and fans together as everyone agrees this one is flat out terrible. After all these years, it remains the worst “Friday the 13th” movie ever, and it proved to be an utterly pathetic attempt to keep the series going. It was not unlike when Blake Edwards tried to continue “The Pink Panther” series after Peter Sellers passed away, and we all know how that turned out.

This sequel is the second in the Tommy Jarvis trilogy which started with “The Final Chapter” and concluded with “Jason Lives.” Corey Feldman returns briefly as Tommy, and we see him visiting Jason’s grave and hiding behind trees when two guys show up with shovels. They are the first of many stupid characters introduced here as they dig up Jason’s grave, and he immediately rises again and slashes them with a minimum of vicious effort. Following this, Jason then spots Tommy and goes over to get his revenge, and then Tommy wakes up. From there he is played by John Shepherd, and we see Tommy is still dealing with the psychological aftermath of killing Jason years later. Feldman’s presence in the film is a mere cameo as he was busy making a much better one called “The Goonies.”

We learn Tommy has gone from one mental hospital to another with increasing regularity, and “A New Beginning” starts with him arriving at the Pinehurst halfway house. Poor Tommy has been prescribed just about every antidepressant and anti-psychotic drug on the market, but this hasn’t stopped him from working out in the gym as he looks more buff than the average mental patient. It’s enough to help him beat the crap out of others, and we should at least admire Tommy for managing to survive puberty as killing Jason changed him for the worst.

Here’s what separates “A New Beginning” from all the other “Friday the 13th” movies with the exception of the original; Jason Voorhees is not the killer. This sequel is actually a whodunit, and you won’t know who the real killer is until the end. Or maybe you will if you look at the suspects very closely, especially their eyes. The Scooby Doo ending is unbelievably ridiculous as we learn the killer’s motive and how thy dressed up like Jason to keep from getting caught. This just adds to the unintentional humor this sequel elicits from scene to scene.

The characters in the “Friday the 13th” movies have never been more than one-dimensional human beings who are out to party and get laid, and this one doesn’t change that dynamic. What is different though is how infinitely annoying they are. Two teens named Pete and Vinnie bitch and moan at each other while they’re fixing their car (talk about a friendship which never should have been). Just check out their dialogue:

“Aww, what’s the matter, Vinnie? You scared of the dark? You all creeped out by that murder at the nuthouse?”

“Oh yeah, sure. Look, as far as I’m concerned, all those loonies should be killed off one by one. Can you try it now?”

“Geez, man, can’t you do anything? Stop screwing’ around! Get this thing done by the time I get back. I gotta take a crap.”

“Crap my ass!”

“Just do it, man! I mean it.”

Then there’s Billy, an employee at the halfway house, who gets all coked up to where he believes he is god’s gift to women. There’s at least one of these schmucks in every sequel:

“That’s it. That’s the whole frackin’ thing right there. There it is, you just stay right there, doll. That’s just what the doctor ordered. Nothing’ like a little prevented medicine. And, the forecast is; Cloudy in the mountains, sunny in the valleys, and snow flurries, up your nose!”

For some utterly bizarre reason, a local waitress named Lana can’t wait to screw Billy. Seriously, nobody can be that desperate:

“LANA! HEY, LANA!”

“Sorry buster, we’re closed.”

“It’s alright; I just want a take-out order.”

“You do, huh? Well, what would you like?”

“I would like Lana to go with nothing on her.”

“Oh, and who wants her?”

“The pride of the Unger Institute of Mental Health who has just dumped his last bedpan and would like very much to party.”

A developmentally challenged boy named Joey walks around with a chocolate bar in his hand offering help to anyone who needs it, but he inadvertently stains clothes that have just been washed. His gift of a candy bar is also melting in his hand, and this does not make it particularly appetizing. Not to give anything away, but he is the first to be killed off.

But these characters are nothing compared to Ethel and her man child of a son Junior whom she treats like crap. You’ll never find a more repellent set of characters in any “Friday the 13th” movie, and this includes “Jason Takes Manhattan.” Just imagine if Lenny from “Of Mice and Men” had a mother:

“That is one fucking ugly man that goes there.”

“That’s one fucking ugly man, Mama.”

“Would you shut your trap? You ain’t so pretty yourself, you know.”

“I ain’t so pretty myself, I know.”

In terms of the kills in “A New Beginning,” they are unimaginative and puny compared to what we saw in the previous films. The gag with the flare in a guy’s mouth was put to much better use in “Dead Calm.” Same thing goes with those gardening shears plucking out a character’s eyes as there have many knock offs which used this because Jason already had dibs on the machete.

But what this sequel is missing most is Tom Savini who gave us deaths and copious amounts of blood and gore combined with a vicious sense of reality. Savini stuck to his word that “The Final Chapter” would be his last “Friday the 13th” since it allowed him to kill off Jason for good, but those who took over from him cannot equal what he accomplished.

Also, time has not been kind to this sequel. There is a young boy named Reggie (Shavar Ross) who gets to meet up with his older brother, Demon (Miguel A. Núñez Jr.), who lives in a van outside of town. Demon looks like he came straight out of one of those 1980’s breakdancing, and seeing this style today makes an unintentionally hilarious sequel even more hilarious than it was ever intended to be.

Jason is played by Tom Morga, a stuntman who has worked on “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” and “Spider-Man 3” among other movies. His work as Jason is not bad, but it’s hardly memorable compared to what other actors like Kane Hodder brought to this character. Then again, this is not a role which requires method acting. Of course, if someone were to try method acting in this role, they would end up in solitary confinement or death row.

As Tommy, Shepherd gives us the most intense and screwed up version of this character as he manages to convey Tommy’s extreme mental anguish without having to say too much. In fact, Shepherd has only 24 words of dialogue throughout the whole movie, and this does not include all the laughing and yelling he does.

The director of this fiasco is the late Danny Steinmann whose other credits include “Savage Streets” and “The Unseen,” and “A New Beginning” ended up being his last film. Learning of this makes me feel sorry for him because no one wants their movie career to be cut short, and it sucks to be remembered for directing such a horrible movie.

You could say “Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning” is one of those movies which is so bad it’s good. Watching the bad acting, terrible dialogue and weak direction is an entertainment unto itself. But even though it has long since gained a cult following, nothing changes the fact this is the worst sequel in this franchise. After this one, it didn’t matter if bringing Jason back from the dead defied all logic. Anything was better than seeing the series take the course of Tommy Jarvis becoming the new Jason.

½* out of * * * *

‘Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter’ – Yeah, Whatever

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

Friday the 13th Part IV The Final Chapter movie poster

I was in the second grade when this movie came out in 1984. It was also one of the few movies in this endless series to actually open on Friday the 13th. Looking back, it was interesting to see 8 and 9-year-old kids get excited about a movie they had no business watching at that age. Whether adults liked it or not, these movies played a big part in our lives, and they were to my generation as the “Saw” and “Paranormal Activity” movies are to today’s. The sight of bloody violence on the big screen, as opposed to real life, is still exciting to watch, and this has been the case for much longer than we realize.

“Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter” was the first film in what became known as the Tommy Jarvis trilogy, the other two being “Part V: A New Beginning” and “Part VI: Jason Lives.” Tommy is played here by Corey Feldman in a gleeful performance as he delights in making scary masks he can hide behind, but this glee eventually becomes undone by Jason’s bloody rampage. This film marked the beginning of Tommy’s descent into madness which was eventually cut short by a much-needed franchise retcon after “Part V.”

When Jason got an ax to the head in “Part 3-D,” it was the first time in the franchise in which he actually got killed off. Jason didn’t appear in “Friday the 13th” until the very end when he gave us one of the biggest jump scares in movie history, and he wasn’t even killed off in “Part II.” Sure, he got his ass kicked, but it was not a fatal blow for he was slowly grabbing his machete as the virginal heroes walked away. When “Part III” came along, it was assumed Jason finally met his maker. That is, until Paramount Pictures realized they made $36 million off a movie with a $2.5 million budget.

When “The Final Chapter” starts, the police have arrived at Crystal Lake and Jason, wearing the hockey mask first introduced in “Part III,” is being shipped off to the morgue. When he arrives at the hospital, he is left in the care of the biggest slob of a doctor/coroner ever, Axel (Bruce Mahler). Seeing him slobber all over his burrito while watching women in skin tight spandex clothing doing aerobics makes one wonder how he got hired in the first place. For some bizarre reason Axel ends up making out with Nurse Morgan (Lisa Freeman) even though she is utterly repulsed by him. Then again, if common sense was used by any of the characters, this movie would not exist. These two get murdered (big surprise), and Jason somehow makes it pass security with his hockey mask on and heads back to Crystal Lake.

Actually, he ends up going next door to Crystal Lake and drops in on a mother and her two kids who have rented a house next to another where a bunch of teens are looking to have a good time which includes drinking beer, smoking pot, watching vintage porno movies, having as much premarital sex as possible and indulging in some mandatory skinny dipping. You know, the normal weekend one has in Las Vegas. You know what happens next; Jason proceeds to do his Benihana act on everybody like a drunk with power landlord who never hesitates to evict tenants who haven’t paid their rent in months.

The “Friday the 13th” movies usually feature actors you never hear from again, but aside from Feldman there is another actor who still works a lot: Crispin Glover. He plays Jimmy, a man who has had no real luck with women. Throughout the movie, he keeps getting woman advice from Ted (Lawrence Monoson) who seems to know everything about them. Guess who gets laid first. No, it’s not who you think…or maybe it is.

It’s a kick to watch Glover here, as “The Final Chapter” came out before he hit it big as George McFly in “Back to the Future.” You also gotta dig his great spastic dance moves which more or less predated the break dancing era. No one dances like he does, and no one else dies like he does in this movie. Could he be as strange as the characters he plays? Maybe so, but these days he seems to be using his strangeness to good effect.

Of course, we always look forward to Jason laying waste to these unsuspecting teenagers, and he definitely gets a number of seriously nasty cuts in which were probably even nastier until the MPAA came in and said “no I don’t think so.”

One classic moment features a guy getting it right in the groin. Oh to be in a theater when this scene was displayed on the silver screen. It’s one of the few times where you can see a whole audience of men grab their crotches, thankful it was not them who suddenly got turned into falsetto singers. There is also a nice shower scene as well which ends with Jason doing a Norman Bates routine. It’s not as suspenseful as “Psycho,” but it sure is a lot bloodier!

Much has been said over the years of how sexist the “Friday the 13th” movies are towards women. Granted, some female characters are treated like sex objects with magnificent bodies who are out to seduce whatever men end up getting locked in their crosshairs. But at the same time, these movies feature women as being the bravest and most heroic of the bunch. They’re the ones who find the to defeat Jason after everyone else has failed because they were busy making out or doing drugs. Why do critics keep forgetting it’s typically a lone woman who is left alive after all this bloody carnage has reached its inevitable conclusion?

This “Friday the 13th” sequel is also notable for being the last one Tom Savini did the makeup effects for. Having worked on many horror films like “Dawn of the Dead” and “Maniac,” his work has a realism to it as uncomfortable as it is brutally effective. This is even more so when you look at the rest of the sequels where the kills began to look fake and were played for laughs. Apparently, Savini based a lot of his work on what he saw as a combat photographer and soldier in Vietnam, so there is a real authenticity to his work we cannot ignore.

The director for “The Final Chapter” was Joseph Zito, and his credits include “Missing in Action,” “Invasion U.S.A.” and “Red Scorpion.” Zito is one of those workmen-like directors who gets the job done and simply gives the audience what they want. Other than that, his style of directing doesn’t have any distinguishing characteristics.

Playing the immortal Jason Voorhees in “The Final Chapter” is Ted White, but you wouldn’t know it since he had his name taken off the credits. White was selected for the role because he is a big guy (6′ 4″ tall), and he said he only did it for the money. But White, for what it’s worth, gave this film a brutal and seriously terrifying Jason which ranks among the series’ best. He may not have been happy while working on this one, but White has no business thinking this “Friday the 13th” sequel was a waste of his time. After all, he could have been in “Jason X.”

While this sequel is certainly dated stylistically, it holds up better than many of the others. It was also the last “Friday the 13th” movie which was truly scary, and the series more or less went downhill from there. Even if it got a lot of the predictable hatred from film critics, it is nowhere as bad as some of the later entries, let alone the even cheaper knock offs it inspired.

“Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter” is a movie most people like more than they would ever openly admit. Call it a guilty pleasure if you will, but it is an entertaining one even if it rots your brain like others accuse it of doing. Any guy who tells you they hate these movies has got to be lying to a certain extent, especially when they are just going out the door to see the latest horror movie sequel. They’ll say it’s different, but c’mon! Who are they trying to fool?

* * * out of * * * *

Tom McLoughlin Revisits ‘Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives’ at New Beverly Cinema

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

Tom Mcloughlin Jason Voorhees tombstone

On Friday June 5, 2009, Phil Blankenship presented a triple feature for horror fans at New Beverly Cinema with “Friday the 13th Parts IV, V, & VI.” The fourth film was called “The Final Chapter,” and seeing its title on the screen induced uncontrollable laughter in every member of the audience for obvious reasons. The fifth film, “A New Beginning” remains the most despised of the sequels as it tried to continue to the series without Jason, and it proved to be an embarrassing failure. “Jason Lives,” on the other hand, is one of the best in the series thanks in large part to the great sense of humor the filmmakers brought to it. All the sequels which came after this one turned out to be completely stupid and unintentionally hilarious with a few exceptions. In retrospect, these three movies marked the franchise’s peak as well as the start of its downward spiral.

As time went on, these three “Friday the 13th” sequels became known as the Tommy Jarvis trilogy. We first meet Tommy Jarvis in “The Final Chapter” where he is played by a very young Corey Feldman and spends his time playing on his computer or indulging in his hobby of making masks. Tommy ends up killing Jason with his machete, and then he can’t get himself to stop bashing him with it. In “A New Beginning,” we see an older Tommy, now played by John Shepherd, still dealing with the intense psychological damage his encounter with Jason thrust upon him. And then in “Jason Lives,” Tommy (this time played by Thom Matthews) is convinced Jason is not dead despite having been buried for years. But of course, he ends up accidentally resurrecting Jason and has to take him down yet again.

Blankenship gave the crowd a special treat by bringing out the writer/director of “Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives,” Tom McLoughlin, to talk with the audience about its making. McLoughlin started off by saying how glad he was to be at New Beverly Cinema as he got all of his film education here, that shooting this sequel remains the most fun he has had as a filmmaker, and he confessed he has not seen a print of it since 1986.

Friday the 13th Part VI Jason Lives poster

When first hired to direct “Jason Lives,” McLoughlin admitted the only “Friday the 13th” movie he had seen previously was the first one. As a result, the executives at Paramount Pictures forced him to watch the other four. With “Jason Lives,” McLoughlin was intent on ignoring the events of “A New Beginning” because he said it really pissed him off. The audience at the New Beverly was in complete agreement with this, and they applauded him loudly.

McLoughlin also said he had originally planned to introduce Jason’s father, Elias Voorhees, into this sequel in order to give the iconic slasher more of a back story. We all know about his crazy mother, but not much has ever been said about Jason’s poppa. But Paramount Pictures was not crazy about this plot element because they weren’t sure which direction it would take the franchise in, so they put the kibosh on it. However, the DVD reissue of “Jason Lives” does have the film’s original ending with Jason’s father in the form of storyboards, and it is a must see for fans.

One fan asked McLoughlin how he got Alice Cooper to contribute songs to “Jason Lives.” It turns out Cooper is a big fan of the “Friday the 13th” series and was more than happy to participate, even allowing McLoughlin to use any of his songs in the movie. Cooper gave “Jason Lives” its end title song of “The Man behind the Mask,” but McLoughlin said the original version was much faster.

Blankenship asked McLoughlin the inevitable question about how he dealt with the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and of what it took to get “Jason Lives” an R rating. Surprisingly, the MPAA didn’t want McLoughlin to cut scenes, but frames instead. McLoughlin said the frames didn’t have blood or gore in them, but the MPAA found them to be too intense. In the end, he made no secret he wanted this movie to be a “huge bloodbath.”

Thom Matthews was cast as Tommy Jarvis in “Jason Lives” as McLoughlin wanted someone who seemed more heroic. Plus, John Shepherd, who played Tommy in “A New Beginning,” didn’t want to return because, as McLoughlin put it, “he got all religious.” Shepherd had since become a born again Christian and his church didn’t feel like doing a slasher movie was in his best interest.

With this particular “Friday the 13th” sequel, McLoughlin admitted he tried to give it a strong sense of humor. This is apparent right from the start when you see how the opening title shot is a clever homage to the gun barrel sequences in the James Bond movies. Indeed, you come out of this sequel feeling like McLoughlin actually took the time to work on the script instead of just throwing something together at the last minute. Plus, the interplay with the kids, and this is one of few movies in this franchise which actually had kids in it, was great like when they hide under the beds and one boy asks another, “So, what were you going to be when you grew up?”

Ron Palillo, who plays Allen Hawes, is best known for playing Arnold Horshack on “Welcome Back, Kotter.” This got McLoughlin talking about how everyone in the city kept calling Palillo “Horshack” wherever he went. Looking back, he said this made him realize how hard it is for actors to get past a character they played which was so popular.

Another fan asked McLoughlin if he had any favorite on-set stories he could share. This got him to talk about a stunt man who came on the set dressed like Evel Knievel and said, “I’m here to crash something. So what do you want me to do?” The stunt he performed was an especially dangerous one as it required him to drive a big RV (is there any other kind?) over a ramp at 90 miles an hour. McLoughlin said this was the scariest time he ever had on a film set as he worried this guy would get killed. Fortunately, the stunt came out perfectly with the RV crashing on its side the way it was supposed to, and the stuntman pulled himself out of the wreckage and said, “Did I do alright?”

It turns out there were different endings thought up for “Jason Lives,” but McLoughlin made it clear he always intended for Jason to end up back in Crystal Lake. One of those endings did include Jason’s father bringing him back to life with voodoo magic. In the end, McLoughlin decided to keep it simple and used the image of Jason’s good eye suddenly opening up wide to show the audience that, surprise, he’s not done killing camp counselors yet.

As for the man behind the mask, two actors were hired to play Jason. The first was Dan Bradley who has since become known as the premier stunt coordinator for Hollywood movies like the Jason Bourne franchise. The powers that be at Paramount Pictures, however, after watching some dailies, decided he should be replaced because they felt he didn’t have the character’s build. Enter C.J. Graham who had just finished a stint as a United States Marine and had no previous acting experience. McLoughlin said Graham came onto the set answering all of his questions with “yes sir.” Today, Graham is a casino manager in Las Vegas.

In regards to his favorite death in “Jason Lives,” McLoughlin replied it was when Sheriff Michael Garris (David Kagen) gets folded in half. This came about because he wanted Jason to kill in ways he thought would seem “superhuman.” The fact Jason starts off being struck by lightning makes it seem all the more logical he would kill people this way. It certainly made for many memorably gruesome moments!

The last question for McLoughlin was if Paramount asked him to direct another installment, and why this didn’t happen. He said he was actually approached by Frank Mancuso to do the next sequel, and Mancuso asked him, “How about Jason vs. Freddy?” To this, McLoughlin replied, “How about Cheech & Chong vs. Jason?”

Later on, McLoughlin did get the offer to direct “Freddy vs. Jason,” but he said he didn’t like the script given to him. New Line Cinema, which ended up buying the rights to “Friday the 13th” from Paramount, invited him for a meeting to talk about it. However, the meeting lasted only ten minutes after which he walked out, and he has not been involved with the movie franchise since.

Since making “Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives,” McLoughlin has gone on to make movies like “Date with An Angel” which featured Emmanuelle Béart at her most beautiful, and he also directed episodes of the “Friday the 13th” television series. His other credits include the Stephen King TV movie “Sometimes They Come Back.” Outside of his contribution to the “Friday the 13th” franchise, he has made a good and comfortable career as a director. Having him speak to the fans at New Beverly Cinema was a real treat, and he really enjoyed the time he spent with them. Special thanks go out to Phil Blankenship for putting this screening together. This particular sequel still remains one of the best of this series, and McLoughlin’s appearance made sitting through “Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning” somewhat bearable.