I know that Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter ranks pretty high on most Jason aficionados' top lists, but I think it may be my favorite of the entire lot. Swept in just before the franchise took a turn for the spoof, it was allegedly intended as the final sendoff for Mr. Voorhees and his treacherous ways. One 32 million dollar gross at U.S. theaters later, and we've had six more sequels and probably another seventeen forthcoming. I don't know if I'd classify The Final Chapter as a perfect finale for the series, but it's easily some of Jason's best work, encapsulating the true spirit of the franchise perhaps even better than the first installment.
I know I'm dealing with a good bad movie these days if I end up watching it over and over again with no real intention of throwing a review on the site. That's been the case with The Final Chapter, and while the current DVD release has awful sound, it's compensated with nice picture clarity and the requisite theatrical trailer. Added inspiration for my lust was the fact that the DVD only cost ten bucks. Since this is one of the rare occasions where I'm literally suggesting that you go out and buy something, I won't spoil the entire plot. I hereby swear, I'll only spoil the good parts.
The movie begins right where Part III left off -- the usual, with Jason dead. The rest of the plot is by the numbers; Jason springs to life, goes on another murderous spree, dies again. What sets this particular chapter apart from the pack was the creativity and willingness of the cast and crew to take an expectedly awful script and totally do their best to pretend it wasn't so awful. In that, we're given performances with lots of dreadful phrases and actions but with a whole lotta energy and honesty. There are stereotypes in the characters, but it's never a thing where you're mentally referring to 'em as "Boy #1" or "Girl #4." They've got some vague semblance of depth (however superficial), and depth scenes make death scenes carry all the more weight. It doesn't hurt the some of the cast is recognizable -- you've got Corey Feldman sort of in a lead role as a horror-obsessed whiz kid who somehow becomes a focal point of the plot, not to mention a young Crispin Glover as the most absurd, goofiest horny teenager in any Friday the 13th flick I've seen.
Much has been made of Tom Savini's work on the special effects side, and not to throw a redundant point into a hat already so full of 'em, but yeah, he does a great job. In most of the Jason movies, there's a really quick shot of the gore that often leaves the worst parts up to our imagination. Some viewers enjoy this trick, but I'm a much bigger advocate of how Savini does it in The Final Chapter, always lingering that extra second longer than the norm to really show off the violence and gore. Yes, there's the usual gamut of reckless sex, marijuana and unspoken genre rules, but they're welcome additions for the smaller percentile who still get a kick out of these movies twenty years later. You know what you're getting into with this kinda flick, and The Final Chapter doesn't disappoint in delivering every cliche possible in the most imaginative ways. And there's a really cool climax where Jason's head gets stuck in a machete and splits in half. Spoiler alert.
Rather than go X-E's usual route of detailing every last nuance of a film, I'm flip flopping on this one and will only name my ten favorite moments. Check this shit out and tell me you're not just the least bit curious to pick up the movie afterwards. The working title for this article was "Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter: Ten Reasons I Am In Love With Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter," but it wouldn't fit on the marquee up there. Ch ch ch ch.
#1: First off, Jason was in rare form this time around. I never had the sense that I was dealing with one of the more "jokey" versions of the character, nor did the plot spend much time playing on Jason's hidden emotional facilities. His past survives only in legend (and flashbacks, of course) in The Final Chapter, and audiences benefited from a killer who didn't waste valuable time trying to find out what he is or where his mother went or why his wallet is empty or how kids do that with their hair. He just kills, kills more, and kills again. It's been said that Tom Savini only signed to be the effects artist so he could properly end the character he brought to life, and he did a terrific job at making Jason appear gritty, wet and cold -- as he should. Ted White took the reigns of actually playing Jason for this installment, and he maintains the correct ambiance and stature throughout the film. Ted's also sort of known for talking down the franchise since starring in it; it's a weird deal I've noticed pretty frequently with these actors-behind-masks-all-silent roles. They either completely embrace everything about the lore, or completely trash it. Even though Ted White keeps making fun of one of horror's greatest icons, I must give him due credit for knowing how to stand in a frightful position without looking silly. I'm sure this was all much harder than it looked.
The high body count paints Jason as extremely gruesome and ticked off for this round, killing with more voracity than ever. There's no fucking around this time -- Jason wants everyone dead, and is more interested in serving that goal than causing a bunch of prank scares (there's plenty of those, but don't blame him) or sharing a comedic moment with a neighbor kitten who doesn't know he's so deadly. I'm eternally grateful for this, especially because I got to see Jason stab Crispin Glover's hand with a corkscrew. Jason is only onscreen for a few moments in the film, but when he is, it counts.
#2: Criminally enough, I actually enjoyed the characters in The Final Chapter. The scenes where they're doing stuff other than being killed managed to hold my interest, and that's more than I can say for some of Jason's other flicks. Always the scene-stealer, Crispin Glover plays Jim, the loser of the group who doesn't know the right moves to get laid. You wouldn't think his buddy Ted more of a heartthrob based on appearances, but he talks like he gets fucked a lot, so he must. There's a shitload of bad dialogue sprinkled into their conversations, but it's usually funny stuff...albeit mostly in unintentional ways. Example: at the start of the movie, a doctor in charge of Jason's corpse puts the moves on an uptight nurse, who voices her offense with the end-all retort, "you're the Superbowl of self-abuse." They end up trying to fuck anyway, and Jason ultimately rips the doctor's head off before gutting the nurse with a surgical knife. Generally, when you hear something excessively stupid, the character who spoke it is five minutes away from being murdered. A more famous example of the movie's misshapen script occurs soon after, with Jim discussing his female troubles with Ted on their way to Camp We're Dead...
ACTUAL, SWEAR THIS REALLY HAPPENS IN THE MOVIE CONVO: Jim: Why do I always strike out with women? Ted: ::taps knees:: Computer says you're a dead fuck. Jim: Dead fuck?! I'm not a dead fuck. Ted: Computer doesn't lie. Jim: Unnngahhhh I'm so horny.
Yup, poor Crispin assumes the role of a "dead fuck," an undesirable moniker that sticks with him for the duration of the movie and somehow becomes the focus of nearly every conversation Jim or Ted take part in. Factoring the number of times "dead fuck" is overheard with the amazing business The Final Chapter did at the box office, I'd be surprised if the phrase didn't gain some steam as a real catchphrase. Hey, any of you who were old enough in 1986 to curse without giggling or getting punished afterwards: was "dead fuck" an in thing back then? If not, I've decided that time has no meaning, and will formulate a master plan to make "hey dead fuck" the most commonly spoken phrase since "man Sopranos sucks this season." Two HBO references in two consecutive articles -- I'm a dry, dead fuck.
Ted's imaginary computer is a source of dire trauma for Jim, who ultimately uses it to his advantage by asking Ted to "run that through his computer" whenever a girl either turns down Ted's advances or gives in to Crispin Cock. You have to admire the balls of any movie willing to make its biggest subplot the "dead fuck" debate. We never draw any final conclusion about which character was truly the deader fuck, in part because Jason kills them both in the span of three minutes and they're completely forgotten immediately following. From dead fuck to dead. Fuck.
#3: If you like your Friday the 13th flicks with lots of extraneous nudity, this is probably one of the better picks of the series. Though the classier wenches only show their stuff through silhouettes or frosted glass, I do recall seeing at least a few sets of tits. After all, male murder fodder in any of Jason's adventures are noted by their desire to screw, and that's pretty much all the guys in this film are looking to do. Fortunately, their targets are usually attractive, including a pair of twin bimbos who were either imports from Britain or trying really hard to sound that way.
Obviously, no personal lusts will be fulfilled through watching a Friday the 13th flick. Anyone who argues that they're subversive porn films has likely only seen the trailers, incidentally the very reason why many of these scenes were filmed to begin with: to taunt potential ticket-buyers with promises of bare skin. Yet, something would feel completely wrong with any entry to this franchise without all the sex, and The Final Chapter sets a saucy tone by throwing every character who's over 13 or not completely boring into slimy fits of half-onscreen ecstasy. One of the cardinal rules of this series has always been Jason's inkling to kill those who fuck, and just knowing what lurks around the corner makes all the bad sexual innuendo worth it. You don't pay attention to the sex scenes to get turned on -- you just want to keep track of who to bet on in the death pool.
Corey Feldman isn't bad as "Tommy," the neighbor boy from across the street and Jason's worst nightmare. Crediting him for the most emotional effort in a film like The Final Chapter is no high honor, but it's still his. Tommy is a horror nut who crafts all of these cool latex masks in his spare time, drawing no suspicions that he's psychotic from his mother or Trish, the true star of the movie, Tommy's sister and, of course, the only virginal one. The topic of sex doesn't even come up around Trish. The only catch was that she accidentally saw a few of the other teens swimming naked, but how would Jason ever find that out?
In an early scene that establishes Tommy's lunatic persuasions, he lies on his bed spying on two copulating teenagers through the window. It's a situation many of us faced during youth, though our reactions certainly differed. In Tommy's case, the reaction is of the "twirl around in psychotic, epileptic fits making Herby Derby noises and wiggling your fingers like you're trying to prove you're not paralyzed after a severe car wreck" kind. The best part: despite the fact that Tommy does indeed go bananas by the movie's climax, I'm 100% sure that all of these clues were purely unintentional. We're not supposed to think he's nuts in the slightest, but there he is, performing the courting dance of a male botia. Worse yet, this next scene...
Okay, I'm giddy about this one, lemme set it up. There's a relatively unimportant character named Doug, neither tied to the house full of sexy teens or the house full of boring family people but still pertinent for his chosen role as the slayer of Jason. He and Trish eventually form a completely platonic bond, so platonic that it seemed they were blood related and had some previous sexual experience that they forever try to compensate for by acting completely silent and awkward around one another. It's onscreen chemistry like this that helps me appreciate Dick Tracy's marriage proposal to Tess Trueheart all the more.
Doug visits the house, and since Tommy is in dire need of social graces, he immediately forms a male bonding thing with the Jason Slayer, dragging him up to the bedroom to "show him something." It's not what you think, but it's still kind of weird: his collection of demonic devil masks. Tommy beams with pride as Doug stands there whispering a halfhearted "wow," but you can totally tell from the look on his face...he thought the kid was out of his mind. Then, it gets worse.
Tommy sits Doug down on the bed to show him something extra special. It's this brown demon head puppet thing with manual controls to move his eyes and mouth around, a fact Tommy illustrates by shoving the beast in Doug's face, making it scowl and tacking on his own growling sounds for added effect. Well gee, thanks for letting us into the deepest corners of your warped little mind, Tommy. Though armed with a machete in case of any Jason sightings, Doug resists temptation to cut his tormentor in half. It's not really a death thing. It's a "he won't be able to shove more puppets in my face and oink" thing.
The merit of any Friday the 13th flick stems from its death scenes. I'm pretty sure Shao Kahn would give brutality points only to Friday the 13th Part II, but this chapter packs its fair share of gore. Crispin, for example, takes a corkscrew to the hand and a meat cleaver to the forehead. Cool stuff. If you're the type who prefers a halfway decent onset special effect to an amazing CG creation, The Final Chapter is a great film to help remember a time when it took real ingenuity to make it look like Crispin Glover had a cleaver in his head.
Though the movie often treads into ditzy territory, the death scenes are treated with muchos respect -- they're all actually meant be scary, and many of 'em are indeed cringe-worthy. Murders include: saw to the neck, head-twist, gutting, under-boat spear stabbing, harpoon shot to the dick, knife to the skull, super-powered bone-crushing thumb to the nose, ax through the door to the stomach, toss out of a window, and amazingly enough, still a few more. Keep in mind, the amount of visceral crap they'll show you during these kind of scenes was a lot more meaty back then than it became in Jason's future outings. Society shifts and the MPAA are more to blame than the filmmakers for that progression, but the The Final Chapter is still one of the last times they did the bad stuff the way we wanted to see it.
We're used to a more methodical Jason; in this chapter, he's pretty direct in his approach. It's not really the norm for the series, but I think I prefer it this way.
In perhaps the film's most famous scene outside of Jason's death, Jim asks one of the mostly disinterested hot twins to dance, winning the entire room over with a two-minute body spasm complete with that rolling fist shit Bald Bull used to do before throwing a body blow. I guess they were trying to establish the character as lovably hopeless, but Crispin goes well beyond the call of duty to make this one of modern cinema's truest "what the fuck am I watching?" moments. Oda Mae didn't flip out this much when that old guy commandeered her body at the psychic parlor. Watching the movie is worth it even if only for this scene alone; the skit will haunt your dreams and emerge at the front of your mind at all the worst times. It's so hard to believe that so little time passed between Glover's role here and his arrival as George McFly. And now he's covered in rats and kicking Letterman in the head. You know you'd buy this guy's book.
This part of the film doesn't cause quite the same level of rioting as the previous, but it's still pretty out there. Gordon, the good family's good dog, finds himself trapped alone with Jason. We don't see it for ourselves, but that's certainly the implication as the frightened dog runs up the stairs and hops through the glass window, in slow motion, from the second floor of the house, complete with dreadful dreary music which suggests that we should care a whole lot about what we'd just seen. And, technically, this counts as another death scene.
I'm a sucker for any Friday the 13th movie featuring a clear shot of Jason without his mask, and I'm gonna have to go with this version as a personal favorite. You probably see a bit more of him in Part VI, but by then he was more of a zombie than some fucked up twisted retard. Yeah, he looks cheesy, but I love the fact that he still appears somehow human. Bearing the wound from the ax he took to the head in Part III, Jason's screwed up face has all the right traits -- damage from drowning, a creepy drooping eye and a pair of Goofy Teeth sent out to kids from the Heinz company after they collected enough proofs-of-purchases from ketchup labels. Viewers barely had a chance to recover before something even more insane turns up onscreen, making the last three or four minutes of the movie some pretty kickass awesome stuff. Notice how the ear survived unscathed? I think that was so Ted White could point himself out to his wife at the big Ziegfeld premiere.
Sally: Honey, honey! I see it! I see your ear! Ted: Notice how I remembered not to smile? I foresee recognition from the Academy. Sally: Wait a second -- where's the wink?! You told me you'd wink to the camera for me! Ted: I was winking! Sally: Divorced, I get half.
Of all the Friday the 13th films, The Final Chapter delivers one of the most satisfying, impressive ending sequences. Jason's offed everyone except Trish and Tommy, the former of which he torments and begins strangling, taking way too much time to get the job done. How much time? Well, enough for Tommy to read up on Jason's history, gaze as some past artist's interpretations of what he looked like, cake on twelve pounds of Max Factor and shave his head with a Bic razor. That's right -- Tommy's going for the ever-popular "freak Jason out so he'll stand perfectly still and let us kill him" routine. Maybe it sounds contrived, but look at Corey Feldman and tell me you don't forgive it.
Jason immediately recognizes Tommy as golly gee HIMSELF as a child, lumbering over to him like a dog who first noticed its reflection in a mirror. This does not bode well for those who've made arguments that Jason is smarter than Freddy. How Tommy predicted such a subdued reaction is beyond me, but it works. Distracted, Jason flip flops between staring at Corey Feldman's bald head and attacking Trish, leaving a just-long-enough window open for Tommy to grab the machete and stab Jason, headfirst. That's the death blow, but since they used practically the same death blow in the previous installment, something had to be done to make this one seem a bit more final. The result: Jason falling onto a table, with the machete slowly slicing through his face. Check it out...
It's graphic, it's long, it's absolutely perfect. Then it gets even more perfect. Tommy and Trish embrace, but at the sight of Jason's fingers moving, Tommy goes absolutely batshit ballistic, stabbing him over and over again with the machete in an evil fit of rage. We then enter slow motion mode, with Trish pleading with Tommy to stop stabbing Jason because this is obviously not a situation of duress but rather a sign of brotherly insanity. The scene immediately shifts to a dramatic, deliberate tone -- Tommy keeps stabbing and stabbing, and we're supposed to be all freaked out by it. Given the situation, I don't understand how anyone could think Tommy was overreacting. But whatever, that's the avenue they took, and it pays off with my last favorite moment: the ambiguous ending.
In the last scene, Tommy and Trish are recovering in the hospital. Jason's dead and gone, presumably forever because THIS...IS...THE LAST...CHAPTER! Trish voices some concern over Tommy's prior behavior to the doctors, but they assure her that it was a moment of extreme self-defense and that there's positively nothing to worry about. As the siblings embrace in the closing shot, Tommy stares coldly towards the camera, signifying his evolution to eventual madman and serial killer. Later, in Part VI, he's a pretty nice guy with a completely different hair color and skin tone. Oddly, the same went for Jason.
I don't want to compare this against all of the other Friday the 13th films too much, because opinions are subjective and I don't want to spark any "you're wrong" debates over this being the best one, because I hate being wrong, and because this is the best one. Put it this way: I'd bag it up with such X-E favorites as Ghoulies and Critters for a drunken bad movie night at a friend's place, and it'd probably be the first one in the VCR. If I had to assign various trophies from R.C. Pro-Am to The Final Chapter, I'd pick these:
I know that Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter ranks pretty high on most Jason aficionados' top lists, but I think it may be my favorite of the entire lot. Swept in just before the franchise took a turn for the spoof, it was allegedly intended as the final sendoff for Mr. Voorhees and his treacherous ways. One 32 million dollar gross at U.S. theaters later, and we've had six more sequels and probably another seventeen forthcoming. I don't know if I'd classify The Final Chapter as a perfect finale for the series, but it's easily some of Jason's best work, encapsulating the true spirit of the franchise perhaps even better than the first installment.
