#12 - Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter - 1984
"Hey, Ted, where's that corkscrew?"
-- Jimmy
This was billed as 'The Final Chapter' but of course we know it was anything but. These days everyone just refers to it as 'Part 4'. We open up in the immediate aftermath of the turgid 'Part 3' (Or 'Part 3D' if you want to get technical. A film that has some nice kills but feels too gimicky, and has the worst final girl in history). Jason's lifeless body is carried off to the morgue and apparantly no one thought to check his vital signs being as he wakes up not too soon after, quickly dispatching of a horny Coroner and what I guess is a nurse. We then meet young Tommy Jarvis and his family (Played by a young Corey Feldman) and learn that the house next door is being rented for the Weekend by a group of teens. Of course, our masked friend turns up and enages in a little bit of the old ultraviolence.
'The Final Chapter' is one of the better entries in the series, which to be fair isn't all that hard. Like 'Part 2' and the later 'Jason lives' (Part 6) there's a lot given over to character here. The teens aren't merely killing fodder, sure they're annoying and constantly horny but hey, show me a Teenager that isn't. It's only a 90 minute film but it proves there's plenty of room to at least build up your characters a little before you off them. It was rare then and hell, it's even rarer now.
And off them we do. FX maestro Tom Savini returns for this installement. Supposedly doing so because he thought it actually was the end of the series, and wanted to give Jason a good send off. There's plenty of stabbings, face crushings and Corkscrews in the hand here to go around, and the Director (Joseph Vito - Not directing much before, or since) stages it all quite well. Apart from a weird shot where we're treated to a Dog jumping, slow motion, through a Window. This film, by the way, actually features 3 different characters going through windows in slow motion. Whether by choice or by the hand of our retarded friend.
The film starts its own little mini-arc too, with Tommy Jarvis providing the only recurring character in the series (Unless you count Crazy Ralph, which you probably shouldn't) aside from Jason himself. He shows up again in the shitty 'A New Beginning' (Part 5) before growing up and killing Jason again in 'Jason Lives'. Of course, this series is hardly strong on continuity so all that is thrown out of the Window in favour of some 'Psychic connection' bullshit in 'The New Blood' (Part 7). It was cool that they decided to create a foil for Jason, like Doctor Loomis in 'Halloween', someone to essentially serve Crazy Ralph's function without being too much like Crazy Ralph.
Anyway, the film features the best death of Jason, his face sliding down the blade of his own Machete. And it ends with the slightly unsettling sight of a young Corey Feldman shaving his head so he resembles Jason and hacking the crap out of him with his blade. Of course, they had never really ended the series, it makes it clear that maybe young Tommy Jarvis was so disturbed by his encounter with the masked one that he'll go on killing. It never quite comes to fruition, but it's a little sneaky of them.
All in all an enjoyable entry to the series.
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