Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning (USA, 1985) - Color, Director(s): Danny Steinmann
MPAA Rating: R
[UK: 18]
Approx. 92 min.
Z-rating: 1 stars out of 5
Cheese Factor: 4 stars out of 5
Following the success of the fourth installment, of course they'd try to squeeze out more sequels. What better way to follow up the best movie in the franchise than with the worst one? Often cited as people's least favorite movie, it is easily the weakest film of the franchise. The death scenes are totally weak, it has the most obnoxious characters in the world, and it's not even the real Jason killing people.
Everyone was left wondering what became of little Tommy Jarvis after hacking away at Jason with the machete screaming, "Die! Die! Die!" and then staring ominously into the camera at the end. A young Tommy Jarvis (played by Corey Feldman) is visiting the grave of Jason Voorhees as two guys approach and dig up Jason's corpse. Suddenly, Jason awakens and kills both of them and turns his attention to young Tommy Jarvis. Turns out it's only a nightmare that the now older Tommy Jarvis is having. He's on his way to some kind of halfway house, seems like Tommy never fully recovered from his encounter with Jason.
At the house, the other troubled teens are all doing chores when this fat kid offers everyone a chocolate bar. The psycho chopping wood flips out for no reason and hacks the fat kid into pieces with an axe. Shortly after, the counterfeit Jason starts killing off a bunch of inconsequential characters that weren't even introduced before they were killed. I understand that Jason sometimes kills random characters too but it's usually on his way back to Camp Crystal Lake. This bogus Jason spends way too much time killing trivial characters before finally getting around to the main cast. The phony Jason is chasing a kid and a woman who works at the halfway house named Pam, after killing off the teens in the house, when he finally comes face-to-face with Tommy Jarvis. Tommy has been missing this entire time and when he shows up, you're expecting some epic battle against the man that ruined his life. The only thing he does is stand there, freaking out, as "Jason" slashes him across the chest with a machete. Then he stabs imitation Jason in the groin with a switchblade before passing out in the hay. After a brief struggle, the pretend Jason is killed and his whole sham is revealed.
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| At least Pam was a total bad ass |
Nudity: Thank goodness for the nudity because the death scenes are totally lame. The Friday the 13th franchise is known for delivering nudity and violent death scenes. Almost feels like they knew the kills were lousy, so they over-delivered on the boobies. Nudity alone doesn't save this film though.
Gore: The deaths in this movie were so weak, it's almost a shame to have them weighing down the series. Aside from the scene where we see the fat kid AFTER he's been chopped up by the psycho with the axe, the rest of the kills are really tame. In the scene where the slutty waitress is killed, the camera barely finishes panning over her dead body before they fade into a different scene.
Awesome: Not awesome at all. At the time, this installment had the poorest performance of all the sequels. I read that this film has gained a cult following and is considered a "psychological horror" probably due to the twist that someone is pretending to be Jason. I think that's just a garbage excuse covering for a bad movie. There's no big mystery as to who was killing everyone because we see that it's a guy in a hockey mask, nobody is trying to figure out who's really under the mask because we're led to believe it's really Jason until the end. The entire movie plays out like an average (or below average) Friday the 13th flick until the very end when it turns out that someone dressed up as Jason. That's not a twist, it's a cheap ending. Also, the snot-nosed hick that lives with his mother is the most annoying character ever. This movie sucks.