In 1984, one of the dumbest sequels ever made was unleashed donning a bloody hockey mask, FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE FINAL CHAPTER.
Corey Feldman and Crispin Glover are among Jason's targets this time, providing the only distraction from buckets of fake blood and a goofy plot.
The film opens with a surprisingly casual bunch of cops and ambulance drivers cleaning up the mess from the last (and by far the best) 3D installment, "Friday the 13th Part 3".
Jason's body is loaded into an ambulance and whisked off to the morgue, where he's very quickly off the stretcher and butchering horny nurses and medical examiners.
Why he comes back to life, or even how the hell he got out of the straps on the stretcher in the morgue freezer are never explained. Leave any intelligence at the door when entering.
The horrific dialogue is only exceeded by the heinous acting and the complete lack of logic of any of the players.
We meet another bunch of horny, especially foul mouthed characters on the way to the area around Camp Crystal Lake, even though the blood isn't even dried from the last batch.
Crispin Glover (Back to the Future) brings his usual off-the-wall delivery to his role as Jimmy, who's even more worried about getting laid than everyone else in the station wagon.
80's kids will remember Peter Barton from "The Powers of Matthew Star", here he's the victim with the best hair and shortest shorts. The house they are all staying in is right across the driveway from a Mom, daughter and her son Tommy, played by Feldman. Feldman is, by light years, the best actor in the bunch as the annoying 13 year old little brother. His actions and reactions always seem like they are from planet Earth.
Which is a vast improvement over the rest of these yahoos.
After a girl watches her boyfriend get killed by Jason in the basement, she goes back down into the basement to check it out. Bear in mind the guy yelled "Run Trish run!" a dozen times. Maybe she was stopped in her tracks by the other line he repeats as he's attacked with sharp garden tools. "He's killing me! He's killing me!"
Um, yeah, we can see that ya dolt.
Some other great dialogue:
That horny nurse yelling at the morgue doctor: "Axel, you are the Super Bowl of self-abuse!"
Cops at the scene of the mass killing:
Vincent: [looks at Jason's body] "This the guy that's been leaving the wet stuff?"
Officer Jamison: "Yeah. This time he got seven kids and three bikers. This time they got him."
Tommy's Mom and sister:
Mrs. Jarvis: "Someone left the front door open again."
Tommy: "We're in the country."
Mrs. Jarvis: "Well, what happens if a psycho wanders in?"
Trish: "He'd probably challenge him to a game of Zaxxon."
Good lord, who wrote this crap?
The ending is a lame allusion to the final moments of Hitchcock's "Psycho".
The good? Tom Savini's 80's make up is gruesome and bathed in fake 80's blood but pretty fun for this kind of classic slasher era flick and Harry Manfredini's music score is fun and exactly like you remember...."chh chhh chhh..ahh ahh ahh....."
The title is a lie. This is, of course, NOT the Final Chapter.
After it grossed $33 million on a $2.6M budget for Paramount, we all knew Jason was coming back. It was followed the next year by "Friday the 13th: A New Beginning".
As for chapter four, it's NEVER scary, ALWAYS stupid and REALLY horny, stabbing and hacking it's way to a dismal D-.
Enjoy the original trailer with that fantastic deep voiced narrator that ruled trailers when we all grew up!
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