Originally today’s post was about the 1978 iteration of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, starring Donald Sutherland. But when I went to watch it, it decided to disappear off of all the streaming services I use. Great. So instead of writing about something I was prepared for, let’s just talk about one of the Friday the 13th movies instead.
It’s Friday the 13th yet again, and with Jason Voorhees totally dying in the last film, young adults are free to start sucking and fucking once again at Crystal Lake. Young adults like Trisha Jarvis (Kimberly Beck) and Jimmy Mortimer (Crispin Glover). Except it turns out that Jason isn’t dead at all from being killed in the last movie. He’s totally alive, and he’s out for blood. I’m not talking donations to the American Red Cross either, this is the murdery kind of blood. And there’s plenty of it to go around.
Ironically enough it’s taken until the 4th film to reach what might be called the definitive Friday the 13th movie. You’ve got Jason as the killer, he’s got the hockey mask, there’s no silly 3-D gimmicks, if you asked someone who had never seen Friday the 13th to describe a Friday the 13th movie, this is round about what they would describe. Perhaps in presenting what they market as the ‘final chapter’, the idea was to strip the concept down to the bare bones. No characters you care about, no storylines, just some dude in a mask killing people for 90 minutes. Which it pulls off quite well.
For those gorehounds in the audience, Part IV might not be as violent as they might hope. There is certainly death in the film, blood, violence and all that, but it seems very reluctant to do so, with audiences only seeing a second or two of the killshot before cutting away. Studio interference perhaps, I believe the series had a lot of issues with censorship and whatnot, nut in any case it results in this contradictory movie that feels incredibly violent but is also squeamish about it.
It turns out, The Final Chapter would not turn out to be the last Friday the 13th movie. If it had been, it certainly would have been a better sendoff than most horror franchises get, and better than the purgatory than the franchise resides in these days. As it is, it’s an alright slasher movie with much more Corey Feldman than its peers, which might be the most terrifying thing of all. Pick it up for an alright movie night.
STATUS: RECOMMENDED
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