Tag: Kimberly Beck

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)

FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE FINAL CHAPTER (1984) ***
Once upon a time, I called Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter the most schizophrenic movie ever made and what I mean by this bit of hyperbole is that The Final Chapter largely alternates being a rather brutal, occasionally mean-spirited horror movie sequel and a jovial teenage sex comedy especially made explicit in casting Lawrence The Last American Virgin Monoson in one of the key supporting roles.

The Final Chapter has some of the best and also some of the worst moments in the entire 12-movie Friday series, easily the best cast and most likable characters from (almost) top to bottom, Tom Savini’s return as makeup artist, Harry Manfredini’s first-rate musical score, Ted White’s brutal conviction selling his kill scenes as Jason Voorhees, and it’s arguably the quintessential Friday the 13th movie.

Let’s hit a couple of the high points first.

The Final Chapter introduces us to Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman), a 12-year-old boy with a hyperactive imagination and penchant for monster make-up and masks not unlike Savini; Trish Jarvis (Kimberly Beck), Tommy’s older sister and our Final Girl; Mrs. Jarvis (Joan Freeman), Tommy’s and Trish’s single mother; Gordon the Family Dog, the golden retriever whose fate remains uncertain. Anyway, this family dynamic is something fresh and new for the Friday series.

Crispin Glover, one of the great movie eccentrics, makes his mark on The Final Chapter and his Jimmy becomes one of the most unforgettable horny (dead) teenagers in a series that served them up by the hundreds as fodder for the slaughter. Jimmy and his buddy Ted (Monoson) especially feel like refugees from a teenage sex comedy, like they continued playing their characters from My Tutor (Glover) and The Last American Virgin (Monoson). Jimmy’s dance and exit line in this movie have become the stuff of slasher movie legend.

Feldman and Glover provide us two of the most likable characters in any of the dozen Friday movies, something that’s ironic given the fact The New Beginning (which arrived in theaters around 11 months after The Final Chapter) has almost no likable characters among the largest cast of corpses in series history. Never mind that Tommy did not exactly pan out in The New Beginning and Jason Lives like the endings of The Final Chapter and The New Beginning seemed to promise.

I almost forgot Rob (E. Erich Anderson), the older brother of a character killed by potato sack Jason in Part 2. Rob seeks revenge against Jason and fortunately he meets Trish and Tommy first, though ultimately it does not matter because Rob represents one of the great missed opportunities. Here’s a character who could have served as a basis for an entire movie and The Final Chapter makes him completely underwhelming. His death scene, designed to be poignant, instead becomes laughable (‘He’s killing me. He’s killing me’) and it wishes it could be as enjoyably bad as the bookseller’s death in Dario Argento’s Inferno. You might recall that the creepy old book retailer’s done in by rats and a homicidal Central Park hot dog vendor.

Now, we’ve moved on to the more negative.

Our first two new corpses in The Final Chapter represent one of my least favorite scenarios that’s commonly found in Friday movies. We spend several minutes, it feels even longer, much much much longer, with super horny morgue attendant Axel (Bruce Mahler) and super uninterested Nurse Morgan (Lisa Freeman) before they are massacred by Jason. Maybe it’s only a few minutes, but I never want to watch their scenes ever again to find out. I’ll use their introduction as my cue to go make some scrumptious butter popcorn.

Like the beginning of Part III and the obligatory murder of the lakefront store owners, these are minutes of my life that could have been attended to better things, even during a Friday movie.

The Final Chapter loves breaking glass and characters falling through windows.

The Final Chapter gets straight at the heart of the ambivalent relationship between parent company Paramount Pictures and the Friday movies.

One immediately gets the feeling that Paramount wanted The Final Chapter, you know, to be the end of Jason once and forever because the studio hotshots were ashamed to be associated with such a disreputable and sleazy franchise, but, alas, at the same time, The Final Chapter leaves the door open for more sequels with one of the series’ trademark endings. Paramount walked through that very door — actually, more like sprinted — when The Final Chapter returned a hefty profit.

The Final Chapter finished in the top 25 box office for 1984 and put together a $11.1M opening during the weekend of April 13.

Friday, April 13, 1984. The Challenger returned to Earth from their 11th space shuttle mission. India beat Pakistan by 54 runs to win the first Asia Cricket Cup in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates.

Paramount released A New Beginning on March 22, 1985, and 1983 and 1987 are the only years of the ’80s without a Friday the 13th movie. Do 1983 and 1987 belong to another decade?

I more or less grew up with the Friday movies, so I might be more forgiving of them for all their numerous faults than people who grew up in different times.

Then again, I might not be, because I only consider Jason Lives (the best made and the only entry that deserves a place near second- or third-tier classic horror movies like Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man), Part III (the most suspenseful and the one where Jason acquires his legendary hockey mask), and The Final Chapter even worth recommending. Most of the rest of them have their isolated moments, all of them are excuses for reels of sex and violence and vulgarity, and the movies definitely created their own distinctive space in the cinematic marketplace.

How did the world end up with 12 Friday the 13th movies and legendary status for both the series overall and serial killer Jason Voorhees specifically, when similar movies like My Bloody Valentine, The Burning, Happy Birthday to Me, and Madman failed to produce one sequel among them. Granted, the original Friday finished 15th in the 1980 American box office sweepstakes and the first three sequels also proved to be solid hits among strong competition, while The Burning grossed $700 thousand, Madman $1.3M, My Bloody Valentine $5.7M, and Happy Birthday to Me $10.6M.

Money obviously talked for Jason.

Roller Boogie (1979)

ROLLER BOOGIE

ROLLER BOOGIE (1979) *1/2

Hot on the heels of reviewing THANK GOD IT’S FRIDAY, here’s another one where it’s a soundtrack in search of a movie.

Or, in other words, a gimmick in search of a movie. ROLLER BOOGIE belongs to a specific time and place of quickie exploitation flick: post-SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER boogie down and roller skating, hence that genius title.

ROLLER BOOGIE should have been a better film. I mean, director Mark L. Lester went on to make CLASS OF 1984 and COMMANDO, two films that go above-and-beyond in going over-the-top and that’s both films’ best virtue by far.

Not in ROLLER BOOGIE, though, which earns a ‘PG’ from the MPAA. It should have been ‘R.’

I’ll give one example.

Early on in the picture, we’re talking first few minutes here, our female lead Terry Barkley (Linda Blair) gets dressed and we sense there’s a missing nude scene, like they filmed one but left it on the cutting room floor. This early scene establishes the awkwardness that we sense around Blair’s character all movie.

We find Blair, who was in her late teens when she made ROLLER BOOGIE, in her transition period, between her breakout in THE EXORCIST (1973) and later exploitation films like CHAINED HEAT and SAVAGE STREETS. Maybe it’s because I watched ROLLER BOOGIE after her later films that I felt like the 1979 film teases us with possibilities that it ultimately did not want to pursue, undoubtedly for commercial reasons. The one song that should have been written for Blair: “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman,” which was instead written for Britney Spears at the turn of the 21st Century. Rick James wrote “Cold Blooded” (title song for his 1983 album) about his relationship with Blair. “Cold Blooded” hit No. 40 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Upon further reflection, ROLLER BOOGIE does go above-and-beyond in recycling grand old cliches and stereotypes, pilfering from both the Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland “Let’s put on a show” movies of the late 1930s and early ‘40s and the Frankie Avalon-Annette Funicello BEACH PARTY movies of the early ‘60s in addition to SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER and the disco and roller skating fads more contemporaneous with ROLLER BOOGIE.

Like THANK GOD IT’S FRIDAY, ROLLER BOOGIE rattles off characters and scenes we have seen many times before.

Terry develops a romance with roller boogie master Bobby James (Jim Bray), who, get this, comes from another socioeconomic class than rich girl and musical genius Terry. Bray makes both his film debut and finale, basically playing a fictional version of himself … not all that well. He does skate convincingly, of course, and he does possess a great smile, but in any scene that requires any emotion whatsoever Bray absolutely falls flat on his face. Bray apparently had already earned 275 trophies for his skating before he made ROLLER BOOGIE. For his acting, though, Bray received “Dishonourable Mention” from the Stinkers Bad Movie Awards; Robby Benson won “Worst Actor” for WALK PROUD. Blair lost “Worst Actress” to Barbra Streisand in THE MAIN EVENT.

Then we have Franklin (Christopher S. Nelson), who’s this hopeless rich snob always lusting after Terry’s bod. We’ve seen this character archetype before, like Collins Hedgeworth (Paul Linke) in GRAND THEFT AUTO and Spaulding Smails (John F. Barmon Jr.) in CADDYSHACK. You remember Spaulding? He’s the snotty but spectacularly slobby grandson of Judge Smails (Ted Knight). In a classic scene, Spaulding wants a hamburger, no, a cheeseburger, a hot dog, and a milkshake … before Judge Smails sets the impetuous lad straight, “You’ll get nothing, and like it.” Well, there’s nothing that funny or worthwhile in ROLLER BOOGIE. Franklin’s scenes drag ROLLER BOOGIE down.

Cartoon gangsters lean on Jammer Delaney (Sean McClory), the owner of roller boogie rink Jammers. Nobody would ever believe this plot thread, but this here old Jammer, why he’s the last property owner holding out. Jammer’s sitting on a relative gold mine and he’s standing in the way of progress. We have seen this old cinematic war horse trotted out for everything ranging from BLACK BELT JONES (where property owner Scatman Crothers died from the weakest punch in cinematic history) to WHO’S THE MAN? Cartoon gangsters rarely ever bode well for a motion picture spread and they do not for ROLLER BOOGIE. I do not want to write another word on the plot.

Kimberly Beck’s next screen credit would be as final girl Trish Jarvis in 1984’s FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE FINAL CHAPTER. She famously said of the FRIDAY THE 13TH series: “I had never seen any of the FRIDAY films. And I didn’t want to see any of them. I still have never seen any of them. I just don’t like that kind of genre at all. And this was not even a B-movie, it was really just a C-movie.” Unfortunately, we do not have a quote from Beck detailing her experience playing Terry’s best friend Lana, who does really fill out her outfits rather nicely in ROLLER BOOGIE. She provides one of the fleeting pleasures of the movie. Sometimes, you take it wherever you can find it and ask questions never.